Building the self

Many people believe that the self is something that happens randomly to someone. You are born with certain characteristics and so on. It is true that a lot in us is influenced by inborn characteristics. Yet I believe in the free will and in the fact that self is just something we can make up through our free will. I believe I am in the way I am because I am the product of my preferences, first of all. I have explored, read, seen, learned and defined what I like and what I don’t. What I think it’s right and what I think it’s wrong. And I pick up what I find beautiful and right and internalize it inside myself. If I like a certain character and I think such character (whether a true person or fiction) is cool then I just try to internalize some of his/her characteristics. Because I believe we should try to improve ourselves all the time, and never believe that it’s our genes that define us. What defines us is our beliefs in what is right and beautiful. We internalize our beliefs in ourselves in order to make a better version of ourselves. I believe I am like this because I have chosen to be like this. I watched around and I created my own beliefs about truth, beauty, and goodness. And if I choose to like some people that is also in respect to my concepts of beauty and goodness. That is in respect to my beliefs too. I like and choose people based on my beliefs and preferences, in the same way as I build myself based on my beliefs and preferences. If a person turns out he/she is not the way how I thought he/she was, then I will just stop liking that person. And even stop loving such person. Because love is just the result of what we believe it is beautiful in the world. This is true for everyone, we just don’t want to accept it. We lie ourselves in believing that we love somebody because it just happens. But the truth is that we love what a person represent. It has to represent what we believe is beautiful. Otherwise we will just stop loving such person. I don’t like the concepts of having to love somebody just because that person randomly happened to be a member of our family. That is to be a slave of the past, a slave of the chance. What if your persons are really monsters, would you love them just because they are your parents? I believe that doing such things is to be a slave. We should do everything in possible to transcend the chance, to transcend what randomly happened to us, like for example being born in a hopeless place or being raised by evil people.

The tragedy of this world is that quite the majority of the people are just slaves to the chance, and many even just believe that they’re just their genes and there is not such thing as free will. It is tragic that there are even scientists believing in such thing. The majority of people will even inherit the cruelty and the horror of their ancestors. This is why many ethnicities and many countries never evolve. It happens because children just inherit and don’t try to transcend the reality in which they live. Their children don’t built a concept of what is wrong and what is right based on themselves, on their own exploration and experience. They build a conception of what is right and what is wrong based on their families and tradition. If the family where they are raised is a criminal family, or a family that believes in torture punishments and has dangerous ideas, they will just inherit those opinions.

I really cannot understand this, I cannot understand inheritance at such a level. I cannot understand how many people just don’t create a sense of self based on what they have seen and explored and reasoned and learned and experienced. Maybe the issue is that many people just don’t explore enough. Maybe they just don’t know that there are more beautiful worlds out there because they are kept in the darkness? Maybe they just don’t have enough imagination to built a better world in their minds in the moments when they live in the darkness. And so many people just accept the reality as it is and are fine with it. And they accept their community and family as it is and are fine with it. Even when it just causes pains to them. And maybe they just accept their selves as a bunch of genes and are fine with it. And maybe they are really fine in not wanting to have a free will. And maybe they just don’t have enough imagination to think about how much things could get better, and how much their selves could get better. Maybe the only true difference between human and animals is imagination. And imagination is the only recipe to freedom and individuality. The only recipe to free will. I hope that in the future there will be more people who build up themselves based on their preference and imagination. People who transcend their past, who transcend their ancestors. A new kind of humanity. This new kind of humanity will be more and more various and unpredictable.