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elijames wrote, in the middle of
a more weighty post about identity and transformation:
"My body is me. Many people would beg to differ that your body is just a shell. But whats an egg with out a shell? not really an egg, just goo."
It jumped out as me as a comment I want to think about a bit and bounce off of other people, apart from the rest of what Eli wrote (which I'll be re-reading a few times).
Body is NOT "you"
Your body is not "you" in any significant sense, because the changes in your
body and the changes in "you" are not always tied together. Or happen the other way 'round -- you don't change because of your body, you change and that changes your body. Yes there are degrees with which we are slaves to them, the hormones especially, but there is the nature of willpower one can exert (if one chooses, many don't and blame the hormones for things -- i blame them for not fighting the hormones). One has a choice to not be a slave to the addictions
of the body, or the chemicals one uses to hide the fact that they're having difficulties controlling them.
(Christian philosphising follows) Our bodies exist to give us a degree of existence not known by others in God's realm of things. The angels don't have them in our sense. We have been given these bodies as a gift, with all the potential for pleasure and pain and all sort of other experiences, and a consciousness to be aware of them and make choices about them that is higher and more complex than the other animals. But the body itself is not "us" to any degree of excluding the conscious mind that can exert control over this body and say "you are not all that I am, I won't let you diminish me like that."