In my experience, this is very, very rare. Unless someone experiences something traumatic, they very rarely change.
There are very few people out there that are willing to accept that their own character traits and choices are the main determinants of the kind of life they are living.
This is an interesting topic. I agree with you in general -- people's core traits may remain -- but I think most people change at least superficially due to circumstance, i.e. marriage, kids, responsibilities ... and other people really do outgrow things and change in fundamental ways, just to what extent and how many such people there are is an open question.
I know there have been fundamental shifts in the way I do things based on experiences and what I wanted at any given time. I can't be that uncommon.
The worst shot in Batman ?89 is the FIRST shot we see of Batman.
Agreed, it looks like junk.
[...]We've talked about this before, but this is generally how I see things too. You're meant to "shed" things as you grow up and reach a certain age. A few things remain from each period and together they form a sort of "collage". A person isn't meant to keep holding onto literally everything they've ever consumed. That's asinine and it has no point. It doesn't reflect character. It sounds a bit silly to say this about pop culture, but I take taste in all things into account. Music, Literature, Film, Sports, anything and everything. As time goes on you focus on a few specifics and indulge in them only.
So are we changing, or are their fixed aspects of our personality ever-present that grow dominant as time renders other experiences trivial?
In my experience, people don't change. Even the ones that make a mistake, a big one at times, and are forgiven, still don't. The more you give them, the more they'll take. And aside from "leeches", nobody I've ever known has ever changed.
I've seen at least 2 people I grew up with change, or appear to. One bettered himself, the other one spiraled. If you'd taken a snapshot of me at 15 or 16 there is no way you could have predicted me from 26 to 47. I made some massively out-of-character choices that set me on very different paths. Or was it in my character all along? Chicken or egg.
To truly change, one has to have the need to change something. If you're happy with what you are, there's no point. If you do want to change, you need to look inwards and recognize your faults. And then comes the hardest part which is taking action. It requires will and determination, and the majority simply lacks those things. They can theoretically change, but it's not some constant; it happens rarely. I don't believe that everyone enters a coocoon at some point and emerges a butterfly. Some are born snakes, others lions, others worms and so on and so forth. A person's type is visible since childhood. At least IMHO.
A lot of truth to that. I can think of 3 fundamental changes within my own personality over the decades. Some of them came via sheer will, another I'd chalk up to experience but it becomes that confounding chicken and egg question.
When it comes to collecting and generally pop culture, I think we all follow a constant path too. We have a type since childhood and that caries us across the mediums and genres and everything.
On some level, I'll always love ANH and ESB. At least set-pieces or scenes. But that's childhood. Star Wars in general is a mess and the more I've engaged with it as an adult the less I want to. The ST was a pile of steaming trash, and if I'm honest with myself, about one-third of The Mandalorian is good, the rest is mediocre to bad, and without the visuals and production design, I would ignore it completely. I decided I don't need any of that merchandise. I was considering it but felt no real drive for it in the end.
I feel like it was a thing of the past I re-discovered and after the initial flush of nostalgia and excitement, I found myself looking at it critically and feel I can leave it behind. It's better as a memory than an experience. This has been a recent development but it's not mere burn-out. I just can't see myself engaging with this content anymore. I feel pity for some of the stunted personalities on YouTube but that's a whole other story.
This leads me to another wild tangent -- I have such fond memories of the '90s in spite of knowing that *objectively* almost everything about me as a human being and the way I spend my time is better now, by an order of magnitude. Memories
lie. And I think as we comb through the films of the past we often discover that.
Except Commando because that was always silly and not something that I ever elevated.
