You are You?

If one were to forget all of his/her past, would he/she be the same person? Optimistic people, myself included, would love to say that you are you, no matter what. However, the other part of me that wholeheartedly believes in the "nurture" side of the "nature vs nurture" debate knows that this is impossible. If who you are is just an amalgamation of all your past experiences, then you could never be the same person. On the bright side, you'd still retain key factors (sarcasm!) in determining who you are; things like your mother's smile, your father's chin, and your grandmother's left earlobe!

Of course, I do believe that because you would keep all muscle memory and reflexes, you would quickly discover if you were a pianist or a black belt or a super secret black ops spy. Just going off of the aforementioned amazing movie (that I wont even name here because everyone should have already seen it at least a dozen times), your memories do not include languages spoken or skills gained. If that is indeed true, then much that makes you you is still intact. I won't say that you still are the same person, but you would still have more of yourself than most people blogging on this subject would say.

Augustine would say that your memories define you, no matter what you have done in repentance, so if one were to lose your memories, I wonder what he would say about that. If a sinner were to lose his memories, is he still a sinner? I would say no, because losing your memory is basically a moral clean slate. No experiences, no actions, no thoughts= no responsibility, right? It would make a quite a moral conundrum if a convicted murderer were to lose his memories. I wish ol' Augie were around today. He could comfort us by telling us that the memory loss victim actually IS a sinner, and that we are ALL sinners, because we've stolen fruit, thought about stealing fruit, enjoyed fruit, thought about enjoying fruit, or had sinful feelings for fruit in general.

"I did not have sexual relations with that pear!"