Am I really me? part 1

I have often wondered how much of me is actually truly me? Everything from my deepest thoughts to the clothes I wear to the things I love. How much of that is truly independent of all external influences? I mean ever since I could comprehend, I’ve been bombarded with “thoughts.” Thoughts that are sometimes unique, sometimes novel, but often times derivative.

Let’s consider my fear of ghosts. I technically don’t believe in ghosts, because I don’t think it’s logical that ghosts would exist. At least not exist in the sense that they can actually manifest themselves in the physical world. However, if I was in a haunted house and I happened to see something resembling a ghost, I can’t promise that I will be able to keep my undies dry. Now, consider that if somehow in a parallel universe, I had grown up without any knowledge of ghosts. In this universe, no one has engraved in my mind that after death, living beings can become ghosts. More importantly, that ghosts can harm the living. This means no horror movies, ghost stories, scary images of ghosts and etc. Would I still be scared of ghosts then? I mean first of all, I don’t think I’d even be able to think up the concept of a ghost on my own. I can’t imagine myself coming up with the idea that after someone dies, they can still exist as a ghost, and that we just can’t see them. I would most likely assume that after you die, that’s it, you’re gone. And even if I did somehow manage to conceptualize the idea of a ghost, I don’t think I would have attributed a ghost to being something that I should fear. To me, it seems that a more natural thought would be that the ghost is just a continuation of its living counterpart. I mean if my mom died, I would expect her to be the same loving mom as always. The only difference is that now she’s a ghost. Not to mention that my image of what a ghost would look like would probably be drastically different from how I imagine a ghost to look like now. I would probably just think that they would look exactly the same as when they were living. I have no reason to think otherwise, I mean no one has ever seen a ghost in this parallel universe anyway.  Therefore, I don’t relaly see myself having a fear of ghosts had I not been exposed to horror movies, ghost stories and the likes. However, the kicker here is that although I believe all of this, I still fear ghosts. That right there shows just how deep the indoctrination actually goes. And just by having this fear of ghosts, I’m constantly reminded that I’m partially, if not mostly, just a product of someone else’s thoughts.

Wow that was way longer than I intended, and it was only just one part of what I meant to talk to about. I ramble wayyy too much. I guess I will write about the other parts later so we can just consider this part one of my “Am I really me?” blogs. Next up, I’ll talk about beauty/appearance.

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