Minnow
If you're gonna dig, dig to the heavens!
What do you think about the idea that when a person matures or develops personally and psychologically (in fiction, it would be called character development) that the process is more akin to discovery than growth, or vice versa?
Let me elaborate, I'm asking whether you think that a person goes through Growth or Discovery.
In Growth, personality is ever-changing and mutable, and simply a result of their environment/genetics interacting over time. When someone undergoes personal development, all that happens is the new mindset forms itself from pieces of the old one into something new. There's no real right way or wrong way for this to happen, it just does. Self-actualization can only really be seen behaviorally and has little innate meaning.
In Discovery, each person has kind of an innate ideal, a Platonic Form of their personality which always exists. When they undergo personal development, all that happens is that they discover more of this ideal and integrate it into themselves. This ideal is sort of 'who they were meant to be' and/or who they, deep-down, want to be. Someone may go through many personalities through their life but inevitably will keep coming back to this true self. A self-actualized person is someone who completely lives up to this ideal.
I understand it might not matter since it looks the same from the outside, but it's philosophically interesting.
Let me elaborate, I'm asking whether you think that a person goes through Growth or Discovery.
In Growth, personality is ever-changing and mutable, and simply a result of their environment/genetics interacting over time. When someone undergoes personal development, all that happens is the new mindset forms itself from pieces of the old one into something new. There's no real right way or wrong way for this to happen, it just does. Self-actualization can only really be seen behaviorally and has little innate meaning.
In Discovery, each person has kind of an innate ideal, a Platonic Form of their personality which always exists. When they undergo personal development, all that happens is that they discover more of this ideal and integrate it into themselves. This ideal is sort of 'who they were meant to be' and/or who they, deep-down, want to be. Someone may go through many personalities through their life but inevitably will keep coming back to this true self. A self-actualized person is someone who completely lives up to this ideal.
I understand it might not matter since it looks the same from the outside, but it's philosophically interesting.