Does the BIP actually change who we *are*?

[Verbal Mike]

Okay, so I found the assertion that people often consider certain BIP Bars part of their personality when they're not, very illuminating. In a way, it made me understand very suddenly who I am (and I'm grateful to you who wrote the pamphlet for that, by the way.)
But I've been wondering now if Bars don't still quite directly affect who we are. I'm beginning to think they do.
Case at point, I was recently romantically involved with someone you might label feminist hippie. For a while she had me very cautious about male tendencies towards aggression and over-assertiveness, and while I now realize I got too caught up in that specific reality tunnel at the time, I can't help but notice that I now only like pron where the woman seems to be enjoying herself (this was not a main criterion to me before). My personality seems to have been affected in a rather direct way by a Bar I spent a while building and later discarded.
Or maybe I just haven't really torn off that Bar yet.

[LMNO]

Short answer: ABSOLUTELY.


Medium-sized answer: ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY.


Longer answer:  Of course, since the BIP is nothing more than an externalized metaphor for how you see the world and how you act and react in it.  If you date someone who reconstructs your cell (substituting misogynistic pporn for couple-friendly, for example), then you, as a person, will change because of it.

Of course, as you get further down into it, you can have internal conflicts if some of the more modern reconstruction is built on counter-foundations.  From here, you might want to shift into the "conditioning vs imprinting" metaphors of RAW and Leary.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The thing with the prawn might simply be that your consciousness expanded to notice an additional level of "hot/not hot": that sex is sexier when all involved parties are actually enjoying it. I don't know if that's a bar; it might be the discarding of a bar.

[Cramulus]

What do you mean, who we "are"?
Everything changes who you "are".



We're all just a pile of memes anyway - memes precariously balanced and glued together in a way which seems like a personality.


The Black Iron Prison is just another meme - it's a meme which encourages you to look at the shadow of that pile and make some choices about it. It's a good meme to keep around. Hopefully it'll help you act differently than the guy you were yesterday. Does that change who you *are*?

[Cainad (dec.)]

What do you mean, who we "are"?
Everything changes who you "are".



We're all just a pile of memes anyway - memes precariously balanced and glued together in a way which seems like a personality.


The Black Iron Prison is just another meme - it's a meme which encourages you to look at the shadow of that pile and make some choices about it. It's a good meme to keep around. Hopefully it'll help you act differently than the guy you were yesterday. Does that change who you *are*?

Paging Dr. Hume

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What do you mean, who we "are"?
Everything changes who you "are".



We're all just a pile of memes anyway - memes precariously balanced and glued together in a way which seems like a personality.


The Black Iron Prison is just another meme - it's a meme which encourages you to look at the shadow of that pile and make some choices about it. It's a good meme to keep around. Hopefully it'll help you act differently than the guy you were yesterday. Does that change who you *are*?

Niiiiiice!

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I think you may be asking a question that begins with a false premise... that we ARE anything. Or, at least that we ARE anything that we can well define. Every experience we have seems to have the potential to change us, be it romantic, sexual, psychological, or physical.

My first experience in rock climbing and rappelling doesn't seem to have been breaking a bar, but it definitely seemed to change how I perceived myself afterward.

[AFK]

Yeah I think the BIP can change who we are, or at least, how we behave.  It occurs through recognition of the bars that are informing and shaping who and what you are.  You see that an aspect of yourself is making you behave in a certain way.  You decide you don't want to act that way anymore.  So you do as the Asprin commercial suggested to Mal, you stop. 

Of course, as you change how you behave you are changing your cell.  You are making new bars, or altering pre-existing bars (e.g. your porn bar.)

I think this is where the line, "we invite you to a jailbreak, just turn around" comes into play.

Recognition can help you choose whether to stay where you are, or to try moving in a different direction.  If people don't know that its there, they don't change.  Especially when they put their fate in the hands of some deified warden. 

[Cramulus]

another approach, perhaps redundant:

Q: Does the BIP actually change who you are?
A: No, you change who you are.

[AFK]

The BIP is a Catalytic Converter

[LMNO]

The BIP is not something outside of yourself, of "who you are".  The Black Iron Prison is you, and you are it.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I don't think the BiP is necessarily who you ARE, but maybe its who you perceive yourself to be. I think confusing who you are with the filters you use to interpret reality may be akin to eating menus

[LMNO]

I'm saying that your filters are not an external thing.  They are not artificial constructs that Lord Xenu has placed upon your eyes.



No, they are artificial constructs that your very own brain has constructed.

How could they not be part of you?

[AFK]

I think it depends on how one defines the BIP.  

I tend to think of the BIP, and the bars that make up the BIP, my Reality.

But of course, I can only perceive so many of the bars.  Which means I can only react to what I can observe.  

For example, let's say I've got a cancerous tumor somewhere that I am currently unaware of.  I tend to think of that as a bar of physiology that does impact who I am.  It certainly would be affecting parts of my physiology, while those affects may not be manifesting in any way that I detect or pay attention to.  But at some point, it will become apparent and then become on of the visible bars that I can perceive and react to.  

But again, this is my personal definition and I think it's clear we all have our own variations of it.  

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I'm saying that your filters are not an external thing.  They are not artificial constructs that Lord Xenu has placed upon your eyes.



No, they are artificial constructs that your very own brain has constructed.

How could they not be part of you?

I agreee with your position... which is why I said they are not YOU, they are how you (the homunculus sitting in your seat of perception) perceive yourself to be. Of course, your perceptions are a part of you... if if the Bars were really YOU, then we couldn't change them could we? If however, the bars were our own imposed perceptions, our own imposed constraints, beliefs etc... then those can be changed.

This is one of the reasons I find the BiP somewhat limited as a metaphor for reality. There seem to be some physical constraints which will forever limit our Reality (or till we die or get enlightened or eat just the right amount of acid), but most of what we seem able to effect is in letting our little homunculus see moar.

Maybe it would be more clear to state that experiences which change who you are also modify your prison bars and sometimes modifying prison bars may expose you to an experience which will change the person you perceive yourself to be.

Or is that just dancing in circles?