I think that we all have one identity that we are supposed
to be and that our soul, body and mind will help lead us there and that we have
the choice to realize who we are supposed to be and whether or not we will be
that person. In The Lion King, Simba purposefully choses to
forget and runaway from who he was because it was easier. Then the sight of
Nala starts to remind him of who he was. I would also say that his soul starts
to tug him into that direction, and eventually leads him to someone that could
help, Rafiki. Then he follows Rafiki and sees his father in the sky who
directly states who he is supposed to be (this clip can be seen below). Also,
for Mufasa to exist after death he must have something that could be separated from
his mind and body, which we would call a soul, but that is for another
response. Furthermore, in X-Men, Wolverine chose to search for who
he is supposed to be. The surgery that gave him his claws wiped all of his
memories clean, but yet they still come up in dreams. I think this is the soul
trying to help Wolverine realize who he is supposed to be. The mind may have
started his search by allowing him to glimpse his past, but his interactions
with the rest of the X-Men also helped him learn who he was supposed to be. For
both of these cases the characters discover who they are supposed to be through
interactions in the world, that would involve both the mind and the body, and
that there is also something else beyond those two that helps them discover who
they are. In addition, everyone has the chose to either be that person or to be
someone else.
Great post, Travis. Griffin followed up with a competing view. There was a series on TV called Doll House that touched on this idea. Quick plot summary:
ReplyDeleteA futuristic laboratory assigns different tasks to its various residents, who then have their memories erased upon the completion of their assignments.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135300/
Some little vestige of a memory seems to remain and the show deepens the notion of some kind of vigilant consciousness that emerges.
Great post Travis with two awesome movies, but I do have some comments. You say that your soul guides you to be who you are meant to be (i.e. your one true identity), but at the end you say that “everyone has the chose to either be that person or to be someone else.” If you have one soul and one true identity how can there be a chose, you are going to be who you are no matter what because never can you see another version of you. The path that you take to become who you are may lead you through points in your life where you aren’t who you are in the end but it can’t be said that those points were not necessary and could just be skipped over. Simba had to leave behind the life he knew and become a completely different lion/person in order to be the King in the end; I would say it is not so much the soul guiding him back to what he was meant to be but more of the deterministic point of few. All the things that happen to Simba and Logan/Wolverine had to happen to lead them through life and have them develop into who they are ultimately. Simba’s dad died causing him to leave the pride land to later accept himself and have him come back as the rightful King. Logan had to become Wolverine and lose his memory to later find his please with the X-men even though his memories before the operation are gone. All these events were in the grand scheme of things.
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