Zeke Newbold
Carbon based biped.
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2015
- Messages
- 1,249
So... this is based on a `human interest` British TV documentary that I caught over twenty years ago. It may have been called something like `He's Not the Man I Married`(or if not, then that was the gist of it, anyway) It concerned the wife of a man who had been in a serious motoring accident, recovered but emerged from it a different person - and the wife's attempt to deal with this fact.
He had suffered trauma to his brain and this had not so much affected his intellect or memory - but his personality, and with it his physical demeanour too.
Previous to the event, the man had been - so the coverage implied - adventurous, charitable,cool - one hell of a sexy, desirable husband, in short. The new post-accident man (who was on camera) was sort of dorkish - but very affectionate.The wife did not conceal her disappointment.
In fact I remember feeling indignation on behalf of the subject of the documentary: it was though he was being set up as an inadequate and allowed to look as though he were inferior to his previous self, and a let down to his wife.
There was one very poignant moment - which has really stayed with me after all these years. The guy (the new one) was shown kissing his young daughters before they went to bed. `Do you love me?` he asked them `Yes` they said. `Then look me in they eye when you say it`, he replied.
Anyway, the whole thing raises a lot of awkward questions about the nature of our very identity. Both geneticists and astrologers hold that our personality is more or less fixed at birth. Developmental psychologists hold that we are born blank slates and acquire our personalities as a result of our experiences.
However, if a knock on the head can turn us into a new person then a whole lot of questions which neither approach answers come to the fore -viz:
* Where did the old personality go to- and where did the new one come from?
* If our personalities can't even survive an accident, then how can we meaningfully consider survival of death?
And so on. Over to you....
He had suffered trauma to his brain and this had not so much affected his intellect or memory - but his personality, and with it his physical demeanour too.
Previous to the event, the man had been - so the coverage implied - adventurous, charitable,cool - one hell of a sexy, desirable husband, in short. The new post-accident man (who was on camera) was sort of dorkish - but very affectionate.The wife did not conceal her disappointment.
In fact I remember feeling indignation on behalf of the subject of the documentary: it was though he was being set up as an inadequate and allowed to look as though he were inferior to his previous self, and a let down to his wife.
There was one very poignant moment - which has really stayed with me after all these years. The guy (the new one) was shown kissing his young daughters before they went to bed. `Do you love me?` he asked them `Yes` they said. `Then look me in they eye when you say it`, he replied.
Anyway, the whole thing raises a lot of awkward questions about the nature of our very identity. Both geneticists and astrologers hold that our personality is more or less fixed at birth. Developmental psychologists hold that we are born blank slates and acquire our personalities as a result of our experiences.
However, if a knock on the head can turn us into a new person then a whole lot of questions which neither approach answers come to the fore -viz:
* Where did the old personality go to- and where did the new one come from?
* If our personalities can't even survive an accident, then how can we meaningfully consider survival of death?
And so on. Over to you....