@faiazk,
faiazk wrote:
To what extent can a person really change? I mean, can a person change completely? or is there a set of unchangeable characteristics that define a human being, that is encoded within him, every change in personality only being possible when it complies with that certain set of characteristics? been wondering about it.. anybody knows anything about that?
St. Paul changed from a persecuter of Christians to the destroyer of Christianity...That is the sort of radical change that is seen in people, from day to night...
What people can change is their behavior, and in time their behavior will change them...What the Muslims have said: that if you would change the world, first change yourself is true, because to do so one sees the very problem one must overcome mulitplied by the number of people on the earth...It is not easy to change, and reason does not change people because what people are at any given time is true, and in accordance with every notion they think is true...Reason hits at a single brick in a wall having much support...
The real way, almost the only way to make people change is to make them feel different... That is why art has been such a powerful force in history, because it talks to the emotions... When change is presented it must be offered as a complete package, and this is why mass movements have had their success, because people unhappy with their lives are all inclined to lose their individual selves in movements larger than their own petty lives...As in Christianity when people are born again; but people often do find their old selves in the new... So Jesus attacked the power structure, the form of his religion and for that gave his life, and then came Paul who built a whole new form that in time took lives as easily as the old form...
The usual way people change is to change their forms... Their nature, what they need to survive cannot be changed, but with a new understanding, a new form is found; and history has been the exchange of old forms for new within which people have remained unchanged... We change our forms so we will not have to evolve... We adapt...