Is there a real you?

Julian Baggini: Is there a real you? | Video on TED.com

This video intrigued me because it seems on the surface to make sense, but the premise is incomplete because of the single minded (and closed minded) approach to the subject. Yes our identity is in part created by the sum of our experiences, and yes we can determine who we are and will be, but that is not all of who we are; we are so MUCH more! Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit priest and a philosopher, said: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience."(The Phenomenon of Man) Fundamental to our real identity is the fact that we lived before we came to this earth and that we will live beyond this earth life.

Of the kinship between God and man, the Prophet Joseph Smith taught, "If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves" (TPJS, p. 343). "It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another" (TPJS, p. 345). (2) Adam, Enoch, Noah and all the ancient patriarchs experienced this reality, but the most complete and informative experience was recorded by Moses in the Book of Moses chapter 1, where Moses expresses both his understanding that man is nothing compared to the greatness of God and his realization that as a son of God in the 'similitude of His only Begotten Son' Moses is free to act and chose between good and evil. Moses' knowledge of his true identity 'the real him' empowers him to confront evil, even with an understanding of his mortality and weakness, through the power of Jesus Christ.

It is especially telling in this presentation to watch as the speaker compares human beings to inanimate objects effected by outside forces, and then mentions as an after thought the human power of self determination but in a moral vacuum because we are nothing more than the sum of our earthly experiences.

There is more to me than that; there is more to every human being ever born on this earth than that.
From Ode: Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth:
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home..."

I say with perfect confidence: YES! There is a real you!