Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Defining Yourself

The concept of Neti Neti is used in Vedantic philosophy to figure out who 'you' are. Through a process of negation, 'Not this, Not this', points out that our idea of self can't be something that is temporary. I am not the same person I was yesterday. I will not be the same person tomorrow. Those people are connected through a story, but I am connected in the same way to everyone else through stories too. Stories change. We change. Humanism and the enlightenment raised the sovereignty of the individual over themselves, and created the idea of Nations. 'The People'. When you apply the same Neti Neti process to 'The People', our ideas around Nationalism fall apart. The idea that we are separate falls apart. 

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