dashing out some ideas really quickly

[erlking]

the lady in the film spoke of the quintessence of a person's self, how even though we are all constantly changing, even physically (she referenced the old 'nothing in your body is more than 7 years old' factoid), we remain quintessentially 'us.' Or I remain 'I' despite these revisions and replacements

Comments

[simon_stylites]

Of course, though, memory is also not trustworthy. And remembering seems to be a matter of mentally re-creating the memory, and then remembering *that* event rather than the original one -- something like that. So our sense of who we were might be heavily dependent on our sense of who we are, rather than the expected other way around. (This is much clearer when you look at, say, historiography.)

On the other hand, that might give a framework that makes a statement like "we remain quintessentially ourselves" meaningful. Of course we do. Because we keep interpreting our past through the narrative we have created about who we are now.