>>18307136For me, the notion of self is hazy. It changes over time and it's easily temporally (or permantently) altered, for example via chemical substances. But it does seem that in general the self is quite adamant, because even if you abuse various chemicals, you'll still probably keep your old self somewhat intact when you bounce back, meaning there are some specific more permanent structures in the brain maintaining your base identity.
For the question of whether I can know myself and my real intentions objectively, I'd say no, I cannot. These intentions arise from something, be it desires or some other sort of motivational concepts. It's very difficult for me personally at least to unravel this "matryoshka" for each action I do. This tells me most actions we do might arise from the subconscious part of our brains. And on top of this, our brains are run by very complex biochemical processes, to me we are simply marionette dolls who were given a partial illusion that they have a choice, partial because I do believe we still have at least some degree of freedom in our thinking.
>>18307745It's good that you want to maintain a certain level of morale, but why do you want to do that in the first place?
