Re: conundrum?
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Peace parissenoor
I'm not sure I understand exactly what you have said, please explain ...
Your genes are part of you You claim you have power over your mind It means your genes have power over your mind,
... but you said that your genes are part of you, not that they are you, which means some of the 'you' that have power over your mind is due to your genes, but other parts of the 'you' also have power over your mind.
Also, is not your mind part of 'you' as well?
When we say 'me' or 'I' what are we refering to? The self, or soul, or the body, mind and spirit combination or something else?
Surely there is a certain amount of power that we don't have over our minds?
No you see I don't understand please explain I may have misunderstood you.
No, you have understood my words perfectly! Shabash!
These questions you ask , should be asked before trying to understand the discussed issue. But it does not mean there is one set of right answers: yet there are different ways to consider things. I put mine below.
What does 'I' (or me) refer to? it refers to the entity which is my whole subject (or object for others): millions of cells thriving together in symbiosis, and carrying same DNA inherited from my parents, except for some hasardous mutations that has been slightly affecting few of them.
What's mind? chemical and electrical signals in brain carying feelings and thoughts: blood, hormones, nutrient and cells part of the body? so basicallybody and mind are one:
What's s
according to wiki (philo) "Self is broadly defined as the essential qualities that make a person distinct from all others." That's tricky, there are 'fights between' the pros and cons of "self" concept existence. Let's assume it might be ones genes, and ones unique experience of the world: basically it is synonymous with "I".
soul, self, body, mind...all these words are trying to refer to parts of I.
None of us should be separated into self, mind, body, etc...the relationships between any of our cells are too complex for any biologists to modelise. science desparately attempts to cut human beings as an addition of diferent cell groups whereas drugs have to be tested in vivo cause this model does'nt work.
so do we have full power over our minds? we ARE our minds, do we have power over oneself? are we the ones to create ourselves? not only, mostly not, mostly we're a product of others & environement, though we still decide some stuff on our own, it's well bound to external unchangeable factors. Full power within our limited capacity remains little, though rarely used: most of us are too scared (conformity).