I never said that a person does not govern their actions. Quite the contrary. A person's actions do come from the self, but they are not the self. To change your actions is not in fact to change yourself.
Who you are does not come with a discrete set of reactions to stimulus. If I poke you you might squirm, scream, poke back, laugh, or any number of other things. How you respond is your choice, not just a thing that will happen because you are who you are.
This does not shift blame or responsibilty from a person regarding their actions and move it onto circumstances or upbringing or what have you. It does the opposite it says that you, who you are, your core self, are responsible for what you do. But you are not what you do, and therefore you can change it.
You also have too narrow a view of "self." The self is immutable, but each person's self contains much more than is readily visible or apparent, even the the person himself. The self contains vast reserves of will and understanding. Any person can and will change their behaviors if he truly sees them as objectionable and trily seeks to change them. But he will not change them if he seeks to change his self-- attempting such an impossibility will only sow self-doubt and self-hatred and moreover the endeavor will soon be proved impossible-- leading to inevitable "failure". One channot change one's self--what would be doing the changing? One can change one's actions and viewpoints if and only if one poroperly identifies where the problem lies.
Who you are does not come with a discrete set of reactions to stimulus. If I poke you you might squirm, scream, poke back, laugh, or any number of other things. How you respond is your choice, not just a thing that will happen because you are who you are.
This does not shift blame or responsibilty from a person regarding their actions and move it onto circumstances or upbringing or what have you. It does the opposite it says that you, who you are, your core self, are responsible for what you do. But you are not what you do, and therefore you can change it.
You also have too narrow a view of "self." The self is immutable, but each person's self contains much more than is readily visible or apparent, even the the person himself. The self contains vast reserves of will and understanding. Any person can and will change their behaviors if he truly sees them as objectionable and trily seeks to change them. But he will not change them if he seeks to change his self-- attempting such an impossibility will only sow self-doubt and self-hatred and moreover the endeavor will soon be proved impossible-- leading to inevitable "failure". One channot change one's self--what would be doing the changing? One can change one's actions and viewpoints if and only if one poroperly identifies where the problem lies.
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