Do you agree with this line that says "You are what you experience" OR..?

Question

Do you agree with this line that says "You are what you experience" OR you would rather say "Experience is what shapes people" ?? In life we know many sincere, generous, good, people who in spite of their goodness becomes victim of the most devastating situations we feel is unfair and we wonder “God why this thing has to happen to them when bad guys are enjoying good life….??” Could we still say that they're what they experience ??

Answer 1

Yes, I think both are correct. I believe we are a product of our experiences. I also believe God uses situations to test and to draw us closer to him. Unless you are tested, you don't know where your faith is. If it doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger.

Answer 2

I think both are true: we collect our experiences in life and depending upon how intense they are, our behavior is effected by them. Therefore, experience does shape people. Life can be / is horrenously unfair and devastating situations are oftentimes random. I ask myself all the time why God allows tragedies. I know that question is a sign of weak faith on my part, but I cannot help it. With genocide, holocausts, murders, and other unfair crimes and even natural disasters, it is hard for me to not be shaped by those experiences, let alone the people who are the victims. Those are the kinds of events that we only hope don't happen because we don't want to be "all the wiser for them."

Answer 3

I believe I am a person with some parts of my charactor formed before I was born, and other parts formed by the way I live, the situations around me and the people around me. I am not a product purely of either experience nor fate, but rather a mix between the two.

Answer 4

Experience would be any input to an organism. Living organisms get this input through their senses. If you have a life without taste, touch, sight, hearing or smell it would have no experience.
It would have some inputs initially from hardwired functions of the brain but would not develop beyond that.

So from that extreme, you are indeed what you experience. Without input (experience) we are just insular carbon blobs.

Peace

Answer 5

This is an imposible question. Our experiences shape our perceptions, and those perceptions then shape our future experiences. Nobody will experience the same event in the same exact way- because of a framework of emotional responses that are hardwired!

Answer 6

Yes, we are what we experience, without a doubt.

We're born basically blank slates, and from that point forward, we can be conditioned to beauty and love or hatred and ugliness.

As a musician, I recognize the many influences in my life, and cannot shake them in any way when it comes to my own particular "style."

I am "who" and "what" I am as a result of my parents and the many musical influences in my life.

Answer 7

We are not what we experience..Experience shapes who we are. .. There would be no good people if we were what we experienced.. because we all have more bad experiences than good ones.. but but but.. one good experience buries 10 bad ones.. yet we learn from them, and it plays a part in our future decisions, for most people..

Answer 8

I would have to say, "experience is what shapes people."

I belive that everyone is born neither good nor bad. We are (as in John Locke's "tabula rasa") a clean slate. But our experiences shape us into the people we become.

If we grow up in a household filled with alcohol, misery, fighting, etc. we will probably grow up hurt and sensative to fighting.

If we grow up in a perfect household with no fighting, everyone is happy, etc. we will probably positive on life.

If we grow up poor, but the people we are with are happy with their lives, we will be optamistic.

And so on.....

So when we experience hardships, we learn through them. If we experience fighting, we learn to deal with it. If we experience poverty, we know to help those who are in need.

Answer 9

I think it's more of a psychology question than philosophical.

But anyway, yeah, a lot of things that happen to a person shape them. I mean, like you said, if someone grew up without a father, a woman let's say, she can grow up to be promiscuous.

Answer 10

I don't agree. You are not the events that you experience, they will definitively modify you, but there's an essence defined by genetic features. Your life is the result of the interaction between both.