Interestingly enough, not all feelings result from the body's reaction to external stimuli. Sometimes changes are purely simulated in the brain maps.
Antonio DamasioRead
You still have only one self and one identity. However, self, identity and personality are not things, they are not objects, and they certainly are not rigid. Instead, they are biological processes built within the brain from numerous interactive components, step by step, over a period of time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our identity is a dynamic process shaped over time rather than a fixed entity.
In this quote, Antonio Damasio emphasizes that the concepts of self, identity, and personality are not static features of our existence. Instead, they are complex biological processes that evolve through interactions and experiences, illustrating the fluid nature of who we are as individuals over time.
Themes
IdentitySelfPersonalityBiological ProcessesDynamicInteractionChange
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational talk about personal growth, one could use this quote to emphasize the evolving nature of self.
More from Antonio Damasio
All quotes βThe autobiographical self has prompted extended memory, reasoning, imagination, creativity and language. And out of that came the instruments of culture - religions, justice, trade, the arts, science, technology.
Antonio DamasioRead
Consciousness permits us to develop the instruments of culture - morality and justice, religion, art, economics and politics, science and technology. Those instruments allow us some measure of freedom in the confrontation with nature.
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...I sense that stepping into the light is also a powerful metaphor for consciousness, for the birth of the knowing mind, for the simple and yet momentous coming of the sense of self into the world of the mental.
Antonio DamasioRead
When you deal with something like compassion for physical pain, which we know is very, very old in evolution - we can find evidence for it in nonhuman species - the brain processes it at a faster speed. Compassion for mental pain took many seconds longer.
Antonio DamasioRead
We do not merely perceive objects and hold thoughts in our minds: all our perceptions and thought processes are felt. All have a distinctive component that announces an unequivocal link between images and the existence of life in our organism.
Antonio DamasioRead
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