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Giannis Delimitsos Quotes

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Famous Giannis Delimitsos Quotes

“We say that a human being is a person and a distinctive, fixed self with a name and a life. He has an identity. But what is this self really made of, except from the basic elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorus etc. and their subatomic particles? If a person is a specific, static, unchanged entity and existence, then what if an accident or a disease completely alters his body features? What if fear or madness changes his thoughts and perceptions? If dementia takes away his memories, or if drugs alter his emotions? And what if life circumstances, good or bad luck, modify his motives, his plans and his desires? Is it still the person we say he is? Or is selfhood a ghost, a useful fiction of the brain? An ever-shifting kaleidoscope of thoughts, feelings and perceptions? Flashes of hopes and desires? A bundle of alternating opinions and ideologies, of conflicting instincts and urges? If we take away all these from him, what would be left behind? If every drop of the ocean evaporates, is not the whole ocean gone? The immutable selfhood is a very old illusion and the last of illusions we ‘re going to abandon; if we ever will…”

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Book:A PHILOSOPHICAL KALEIDOSCOPE: Thoughts, Contemplations, Aphorisms
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“The equivalent of humans searching for their “real selves” is small cats chasing their tails. For it seems to me that there is no “real self”. We humans are ever-shifting, dynamic entities and not unchangeable, rigid selves. And even if there were a kind of centrum within us that we could call an “inner self”, we would never reach down to it, because of our natural biases about what we are and what our place in the world is. When we look in the mirror, we don’t see what we are, but we see what we want to be. Yet, as elusive as the search for self is, so clear is what we have to do on earth: to love and take care of each other. Life is too short and too miraculous to waste it on something other than love and joy!The equivalent of humans searching for their “real selves” is small cats chasing their tails. For I believe that there is no “real self”. We humans are ever-shifting, dynamic entities and not unchangeable, rigid selves. And even if there were a kind of centrum within us that we could call an “inner self”, we would never reach down to it, because of our natural biases about what we are and what our place in the world is. When we look in the mirror, we don’t see what we are, but we see what we want to be. Yet, as elusive as the search for self is, so clear is what we have to do on earth: to love and take care of each other. Life is too short and too miraculous to waste it on something other than love and joy!”

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Author:Giannis Delimitsos
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“I say “I am free”, but what I really mean is “I feel free”; I say “I am unfortunate”, but what I really mean is “I feel unfortunate”; I say “I am powerful”, but what I really mean is “I feel powerful”; I say “the World” , but what I really mean is “my world within the World”. What “I am” will always be a mystery to me.”

WorldSelfMysteryPerceptionEpistemologyOntology
Book:A PHILOSOPHICAL KALEIDOSCOPE: Thoughts, Contemplations, Aphorisms
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