Wednesday, October 22, 2008
I'm a what now?
Identity, one simple word with a huge variety of meanings. What is your identity? How is it defined? By race? Religion? Taste in music? I think Identity is a complex combination of many traits and characteristics, and can never clearly be simplified down to one solid definition. We are often told that your identity is "who you are," however we are also often told (especially teens and young adults) that we are still looking for "who we are." Dose this mean that when we are young and still searching that we have no identity? Or mearly that it is incomplete? I think that part of what makes us individuals is that our identities are constantly changing, along with our thoughts and beliefs. Who defines our identity? Do we choose for ourselves or do other choose for us. When we label people and put them into groups like "Black" "Jewish" "Geeky"... are we defining that person's identity?
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2 comments:
This is a really good post. I think that people want to believe that they decide their own identity, but sometimes people let others decide their identity for them. I think that people separate others into groups in an attempt to try to decide their identity for them, but much of the time they are wrong and stereotypical. If you make a generalization about a group of people it can be very offensive if it is incorrect, or sometimes even correct. I think that it is important for people need to decide their own identity for themselves, and not pay attention to what others say, and others need to stop trying to decided peoples’ identities for them.
Ellery,
This is a thoughtful inquiry on an important topic. I especially like the rhetorical Q you add in the middle of the post -- that our search for identity implies we have no identity.
This topic is worth further inquiry. Isn't it possible that we have many identities and that they are situational? Psychologists also talk of twin problems: premature identity and the inability to form identities. This is actually a huge issue in another class I teach called SWS -- Senior Writers Seminar.
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