Who am I?

[pljames]

I am trying to understand...me. I am my experiences and vice versa. Some are rational and some or not. I am driven emotionally by pleasing others because of my low self esteem which drives me to fanaticism (too please others). When they are pleased then I am pleased. But is this action rational? I am a emotionally driven person because of my upbringing experiences. It seems my emotions get in the way of me making rational decisions in my life. My emotions seem to be my enemy and not my friend. Are their emotions that are rational without them interfering with making a decision emotionally?  pljames

[S. Earl Martin]

I measure "Who I Am" using
What I know
What I think I know.
What I don't know.
What I can't know.
Emotions can be benificial on some levels. I personally am not very emotional. I have been nicknamed Spock after the Star Trek character. I am very logical. However this has lead to problems in relationships.
It has also caused people to distrust me. Because they can't "read me".

Wanting to please others I believe stems from wanting to be accepted. I also strive to please others. Not so much for approval, but because I want them to be happy. I also feel happy when they are happy. In my experience emotions interfer with rational thought. Here is something I wrote in the D-Text.

                                                                Making Choices

People respond to things in many different ways.  They respond with an order of actions and emotions that will typically be a combination of choices.  This is demonstrated by Order of Action = control of and outcome of a situation.


Think-Do-Feel - think about what is the best course of action; do what is necessary to accomplish your goal; feel what you manifested - good or evil.  It's your choice when you think, what you do and how you feel in a situation.


Do-Feel-Think - reacting to actions motivated by emotions; then thinking about it.


Feel-Think-Do - Oowwwww!  Emotional, sometimes complaining a lot.  This leads to again, acting first on your emotions, then thinking it through (possibly still not clearly) and reacting.


Think-Feel-Do - still reacting to emotions; still could achieve more control.


Do-Think-Feel - instantly reacting to actions performed; then thinking about the consequences and feeling the results.


Feel-Do-Think - feeling the emotion (whatever that may be); acting impulsively and then thinking about the results.

This is a diagram of order of action.

[pljames]

I  want to  be accepted.  Thats the key word.    Thanks thats what I am looking for. pljames

[voodoo scientist]

"Who am I?," along with its sibling "Why am I?," is an inherently confusing question that necessarily leads one to formulate statements like "I am my..." that always feel a bit like going in circles. A better question to ask might be "What am I?" An even better question than that is "How am I?" Experiment with hypotheses: what would I have to be in order to be an agent with the characteristics I possess? What conditions might maintain an agent with my characteristics at this point in time?

Or you might isolate variables more. What kind of agent might want to be accepted? What conditions might have created an agent that wants to be accepted? What kind of agent wonders who it is? What kind of agent wonders what it is? The variations are endless and it will take years - and probably a considerable amount of science studying - to run through just a meaningful enough amount to begin yielding answers, but it will eventually yield.

In the end, asking "Who am I?" will always yield gibberish when you are analyzing at the individual level of complexity because you are not using a proper relative framework, like some kind of 21st century psychosocial Newtonian.