"Where she pretends she's horrified while secretly thrilled"

[zimmerwald1915]

Not a case of losing aspects of your personality, so much as changing over time until you're not that same person any more. I'm not the person I was 30 years ago in most ways. I'm more contemplative, more generous, more considerate of others (I hope).

You're making my point.

[Darth Paul]

You're making my point.

Pretty considerate of me, don't you think?

[factotum]

Not a case of losing aspects of your personality, so much as changing over time until you're not that same person any more.
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People never change for the better, they can only get worse and worse, according to this point of view. I'm still a selfish jerk, I've just been putting on a front for the rest of the world for the last 30 years.

So...wouldn't you say you've lost the aspect of your personality that made you a selfish jerk 30 years ago, then? I'm not seeing a substantive difference between "this part of my personality changed" and "I lost this part of my personality and replaced it with something else".

[Darth Paul]

Maybe it's just a semantic difference, but to me, "lost" implies that I have no memories of "the former me", that aspect is as if it never existed. "Changed" acknowledges that I was like that once, and somewhere under the surface, the "past me" exists, I can remember things I did, I remember what I was like, but I've evolved and chosen not to be that person anymore.

[zimmerwald1915]

So...wouldn't you say you've lost the aspect of your personality that made you a selfish jerk 30 years ago, then? I'm not seeing a substantive difference between "this part of my personality changed" and "I lost this part of my personality and replaced it with something else".

With apologies to @Darth Paul for speaking out of turn, I read "added restraint and consideration" in that post. Not "cut out impulsiveness or selfishness."

Hence "he's making my point for me" by his example. Development - as a person or as a fictional character - is primarily additive, not subtractive.

[Kish]

I'm not at all sure "you can't subtract anything from your personality, you can only add that thing's opposite" is a meaningful distinction when talking about things like restraint, impulsiveness, generosity, and selfishness.

[Keltest]

I'm not at all sure "you can't subtract anything from your personality, you can only add that thing's opposite" is a meaningful distinction when talking about things like restraint, impulsiveness, generosity, and selfishness.

Indeed. On a sliding scale, the difference between adding selflessness and subtracting selfishness is.. I'm not even sure it can be called a semantic difference at that point.

[Darth Paul]

With apologies to @Darth Paul for speaking out of turn, I read "added restraint and consideration" in that post. Not "cut out impulsiveness or selfishness."

Hence "he's making my point for me" by his example. Development - as a person or as a fictional character - is primarily additive, not subtractive.

No apology necessary.

I'm not at all sure "you can't subtract anything from your personality, you can only add that thing's opposite" is a meaningful distinction when talking about things like restraint, impulsiveness, generosity, and selfishness.

Is it more meaningful to say these things exist on a continuum, and movement is between one end of the continuum and the other?

Most of us, I've observed, are more or less generous or selfish depending on the circumstances, depending on the value of what's at stake, even just mood at the time. The same would go for courage/cowardice, impulsiveness/restraint, and so on... with most leaning toward one or the other, but everyone having some of each in their character.

I mean, I try to be a generous person, I'm good for a couple of dollars, but on the other hand, to ask for $50 you have to be a close friend. And even my close friends are going to have to have a good reason for me to loan them $500.

[zimmerwald1915]

I'm not at all sure "you can't subtract anything from your personality, you can only add that thing's opposite" is a meaningful distinction when talking about things like restraint, impulsiveness, generosity, and selfishness.

Of course it's meaningful, because you're still left having to manage what you always were and will never stop being with what you want to be. You can't just "add restraint" to impulsiveness, and have done with it, you have to consciously exercise restraint or fall back into impulsiveness.

[Keltest]

Of course it's meaningful, because you're still left having to manage what you always were and will never stop being with what you want to be. You can't just "add restraint" to impulsiveness, and have done with it, you have to consciously exercise restraint or fall back into impulsiveness.

Again, where is the difference here? What do you think "adding restraint" entails if not actually exercising that restraint?

[a_flemish_guy]

hasn't nobody here ever wished harm upon somebody for driving too slow or taking too long at the register?

it usually lasts only a second and afterwards I'm thinking "well, that was cathartic" and go back along my mery way, I don't really wish them harm in the grand scheme of me

the thing is if at that moment somebody would have taken a copy of me and my mood and then later replaced me with that copy who's stuck into that moment then I'd be horrified at what "I" would be doing, even if at one point it was exactly what I would have done

bassicly the FHPOH isn't a twisted version of durkon's soul, rather it's more like a statue made of durkon at his absolute lowest point

[Vinyadan]

About changing yourself: Hamlet, 3, 4:

HAMLET

Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that mattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET

O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either [ appease ] the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.

[zimmerwald1915]

About changing yourself: Hamlet, 3, 4:

Belkar made a similar point about habits.