The philosopher Owen Flanagan puts it this way: “We are born into families and communities with an image of persons already in place. We have no say about the location in space of images into which we are born. The image antedates us, often by centuries. . . . Once we reach an age where we do have some control, we work from the image, from the story that is already deeply absorbed, a story line that is already part of our self-image.” We can become stout defenders of that self-image even as it becomes less and less about ourselves and more and more about an externally imposed image….. Continue reading →