I'm asking you to do a paper about your identity. If we know who we are, then we can figure out what we believe.
The paper should be a minimum of 1.5 pages, double spaced, 1 inch margins, no bigger than 12 point font. It's subject is you and who you identify as.
1. Complete the social identity wheel. Describe which of these social characteristics define you the most, the least, and why. Don't lose this handout, you will turn it in w/ your paper on Friday, Dec. 8.
2. Watch the two Crash Course videos on Identity below. #19 Personal Identity talks about the two theories about identity - body and memory theory. Which do you feel is more of an accurate reflection of you and why? #20 Arguments Against Identity discusses the ideas of a fixed identity and one that is a bundle of impressions. Also, there is a discussion about our identity and the promises, obligations, and responsibilities that we have. Which of these critical ideas do you most agree with and why?
3. Describe yourself. Who are you to your family? Who are you to your friends? Who is the hidden you that no one sees? Also, which do you think has influenced you more - nature or nurture? Explain why with specific examples.
My parents hate grocery shopping so I usually go alone on Sundays. I’ve been doing this since I was 12, so I know the Royal Oak Meijer like the back of my hand. All of the older people shopping always have to do a double take on me. They look at me and smile thinking “what a nice girl helping out her parents shopping.” Then look down at my cart filled with $300 of groceries they make a weird face because they think I have 4 kids. My age is usually the first thing people notice about me. I can tell because of how little they respect me. The less they respect me, the older they are. This has taught me to do the exact same thing. I categorize people into my age, old, and super-old. The older they are, the more I respect them. The social characteristics that define me the most are gender, age, and race. I would say these 3 because it’s what I notice first in other people so I assume that’s what people notice about me. The social characteristics that define me the least are religion, ethnicity, first language and sexual orientation. These are not physical characteristics so I don’t have a constant reminder than I am 10% Hungarian.
ReplyDeleteThe body theory is a more accurate representation of me. My personal identity is based off of I how see myself. My age, gender and race are the social characteristics I identify with. In the body theory, you know who you are because you haven’t changed. I can’t see myself aging a little everyday but I would be able to tell if I switched bodies with someone. If I had a stroke and lost my ability to recognize faces, I would lose my personal identity. Memory theory doesn’t make sense to me because I don’t understand how each memory is connected. My memories are emotional, important or absolutely random events that have occurred in my life. They really aren’t connected in anyway but I know they happened to me because I haven’t switched bodies and/or had a stroke.
I am the youngest child. My brother is weird and my sister is a hypochondriac and master manipulator. I’ve always been the middle ground between them. I tend to take care of everybody, defend my siblings, and take the blame for my sister. Although I am not the favorite child, my parents like me a lot and both think they finally got it right with their third kid. My sister loves to take advantage of me so whenever my parents say “girls please do the dishes” she locks herself in the bathroom until she hears the dishwasher start to run. To my friends, I help make everyone laugh while I solve everyone’s problems. I predict all of my friends lives and warn them of their mistakes before they even happen. I have never been wrong. The hidden me no one sees is funny, introvert, who thinks a lot. I think all the time. I constantly run plays in my head. I really like to argue. I like to prove people wrong. I want to go to law school but my parents are forcing me to be a computer science major. My nature has shaped me the most. Growing up, I hung out with my sister a lot. If my mother died when I was 3 I would think my sister gave birth to me. She has taught me everything I know. If it was just my brother and I, I would be weirder than he is.
Jackie Sullivan
Who Am I?
ReplyDeleteRobbie Hagner
12-7-17
Personally, I relate myself and who I believe I am, to memory. The idea of your memories having something in common, therefore defining that you’re the same person who had the memory before. It’s hard for me to believe the body theory. The body theory says that you’re changing and the prof is that your body changes. It just sounds too simple. But both happen, we can remember other memories and they have something in common, and we also see us change from our body.
The memory theory made more sense for me because I think it’s easier to agree with. The fact you can link every memory you have is true. I can remember what happened 10 seconds ago, and connect them with the memories I had between then and now, to now.
On the topic of obligation, I think we think we’re obligated to oblige to others because it’s what we’ve been doing. He makes a point, if you think you’re a different person than who you thought you were in 6th grade, do you still feel guilty for the bad things you did? If you haven’t changed, then yes you might. But most of us have, and have no guilt because we believe we’re different. For a shorter time period, relationships. Do we still have to uphold our vows if we’re different people? If I made a promise a year ago, should I follow through. Now the other side is, where’s the point where we don’t feel obligated. If I told someone I’d get them coffee, I’d do it and I’d feel obligated because I just told them. Sports, I feel obligated to come to practice because I’m on a team. But I think it fades, people stop feeling obligated. Where is the line where we stop?
Now I’m a person. A person who goes to Groves, has many friends and people who care about him. I’m a brother to my friends and a friend to my brother. I see my close friends as family, and feel just as obliged to uphold my promises to them just as I would of my family. This sometimes gets in the way with family, and there needs to be a line where you say “family’s more important than friends. But who’s to say you’re going to be with your family more than your friends? If we can’t remember the first five years of my life right, and I spend 5 more years with my best friend then I did with my family ( my parents die), who’s to say my family was more important than him? Of course now, we believe that family’s forever, friends aren’t. So I try to uphold both, but if one comes over another it’s family first (depending on the situation).
To myself, I am a widely-recognizable celebrity, because I see myself as this ever-prominent personality throughout everything that happens in the world. I cannot imagine that everything happening around me is caused by an outside force besides myself due to the fact that I never believe in higher powers.
ReplyDeleteTo others, I feel like I am a stranger. I somehow feel like I would seem as if I were nothing more than a speck of identity, a merely atomically small portion of the full encompassment of my whole self. But they would certainly make an initial assumption of me being a writer, or at least be aware that I have an expansive vocabulary. My family would certainly see me for a musician and a writer, they see me as I see myself. How can you really tell if people know that you are good at singing and writing? You would need a special talent and a special method for having the talent be able to obtain a way of informing its witnesses of its presence. False promises are not promises, false promises are false identities of oneself. Promising to write a book is not the same as writing it, and promising to sing everyday is not the same as singing everyday, therefore, you are not the same person when you make a promise as you were when you could actually keep or break the promise.
Who am I? To my friends, I am someone who will help with anything let it be an argument or a math problem I am a friend who will try anything once and give you a comprehensive review on it whether it be started or riddled with the bullet holes of profanity that often go along with exceedingly negative reviews. To my friends, I am occasionally forgetful and happy almost every day. I also have a tendency to want to get my two cents on the subject out before others are done giving theirs.
ReplyDeleteTo my family, I am the youngest of three which means I get a lot of the attention whether it is good or bad. Also as the youngest, I often get underestimated whether it is in my abilities as a wordsmith or my ability to do yard work and other physical labor except for chores I still get a lot of those. To my brothers, I am seen as the youngest but not one who needs protection from the world one who is perfectly capable to deal with any challenges presented. By my dogs, I am seen as a supplier of belly rubs and food which is really everything they desire.
My hidden self is someone who enjoys laughing and making themselves laugh. He is also someone who enjoys eating and cooking. I am also someone who likes to reminisce about old shows like Friends, Fairly Odd Parents, and Drake and Josh. I am a kid who enjoys his free time that involves not writing essays because they are not very fun plus when they are all about me they make me seem really bragy.
I personally believe that nurture has created more of the mental me than nature because my experiences and personal biases have significant impacts on the ways that I make decisions and how I vote plus it is a fact that most children have the same political views as their parents. I also think that nurture plays a big part in who I am because I like most of the shows and same movies that my parents do and hold to a lot of the same traditions as they do such as Die Hard on Christmas and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles on Thanksgiving. Not to mention most of my mannerisms are due to the old “monkey see monkey do” cliche.
I agree the most with the memory theory because in our friends we seek people with interests similar to our own and not to such a large subconscious extent people who look like us this demonstrates that we put a much smaller stock in the physical appearance compared to the emotional and experiences of the people we become friends with. I think that if we were to change an exorbitant amount so much so that we don’t even remember the promise or obligation then I don’t think that we can be held accountable for those promises if we can’t even recall the reason behind the promise.
The characteristics on the social identities wheal that defines me the most would have to be my first language, but not in the sense that that fact that I speak English as my first language but the privileges that come with that fact. Those facts are that since my first language is English I live in a better economically endowed country and that countries like that typically possess superior education systems. The social characteristic that affects me the least is probably my gender because I identify as the same gender that I was born with so I face no diversities on that account which means that it affects me the least negatively.
According to the social identity wheel, I think the social characteristic that defines me the most is the race. I am asian as most people can tell but what's strange is I have a hard time looking myself in the mirror and see an asian face. But clearly a lot of people do because at times I feel more secluded than other races tend to feel. When people look at me, it’s very easy to tell that I am asian and lot’s of assumptions are made in that instant that don’t tend to be very true. It doesn't help that it’s usually just me or maybe 1 other person whos asian in just about every class. Too bad historically asian colleges aren’t really a thing. The social characteristic that defines me the least is my sexual orientation because I am heterosexual and I have never thought twice about it. I’d even go as far to say most people assume that I’m straight.
ReplyDeleteDuring my elementary school years, I had an obsession. I dreamed about the super power to switch bodies with people and live their life in someone else’s shoes. I even remember dreaming about it one time only for me to be abruptly awaken for school. Some tears were shed once I realized it was only a dream. From an early age, I was not a believer of the body theory. I thought of the body and mind as 2 different entities. Memoires is what makes someone unique from other; their own personal experiences are true only to them. I even remember reading about how there's 2-4 people in the world that looks exactly like you but the chance you'll ever meet them is miniscule. So if our own faces aren’t even true to us, then it has to be what’s inside our heads. Instead of fixed identity, I believe we change over time with every interaction we have. Our brains attempt to learn from every situation unconsciously which simultaneously can change who we are as well. This seems like it makes the most sense to me because no one ever stays the same throughout their life.
My family tends to see me as a quiet, keep to myself person. I don’t talk to them much unless I have to and I like to be cooped up in my room. I guess I’m your typical teenager going through the rebellious phase. My friends see me as a fun person who doesn’t go out enough. All my friends love to attend social gatherings including parties which I am not a big fan of. Anything more than 4 people is usually too much for me. I’m fearful of putting myself out there; which gives me a segway into the side people don’t see about me. I very much dislike meeting new people because I worry to much about what others are thinking. There's not really much to worry about when your by yourself! For me, nurture has definitely played a bigger role in influencing me. While I was growing up, I was constantly attacked by my big brother, who is 5 years older than me. Any little thing that would make him mad would always lead to him either screaming in my face or punches being thrown. At a very young age, I was forced to be careful of my every move around him. I very much cared what he thought about me because it pretty much meant life or death. I believe this influenced me to this very day because I still very much care about what others think about me.
The identity that defines me most is my age. Being a Senior in highschool, and an 18 year old my age is the most important thing in my life. Soon I’ll go off to college, be my own man, and have a slew of new responsibilities. Not only that but there is an enormous amount of pressure from a legal sense. Now that I’m 18 there is basically no forgiveness for any type of screw up. You could argue I had already passed that point but at 18 there is no debate that you are an adult in the eye of the law. The identity that defines me the least is probably religion. I was raised Catholic but after I was confirmed in 8th grade, my parents never forced me into religion after that. I made a decision more out of laziness rather than thoughtfulness that I didn’t want to go to church anymore. The more I thought about it the more I discovered that the decision I made wasn’t from a lack of faith, it was a decision that the method of faith that had been chosen for me wasn’t the right fit.
ReplyDeleteI feel the most connected to the John Locke Memory theory. I think that we are most accurately described by our interactions, our upbringing, and our social environment. What shapes these things is our ability to remember things that happened to us. If something ended positively we remember it positively and are more likely to repeat it. If something didn’t go well we are less likely to repeat it. I think physical characteristics are really of the least importance when it comes to real world applications. It doesn’t matter if someone is white, black, asian, tall, short, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, really what matters is a person's actions and for the most part (with the exception of some evolutionary tendencies that can be identified by some heritage or culture) people make decisions based off of this chain of memories that Locke described, what worked well in the past or for others etc. When it comes to the second part I think that we are a little bit of both. Impressions from others is a big part of your identity but I also think that our obligations, promises, and responsibilities are a big part of your identity as well. For instance, one day I’d like to be a father my son/daughter will be a huge part of my life and identity that is an obligation and responsibility that I would have. However, I think that our identities are greatly shaped by our impressions of others.
To my family I am the youngest child by a somewhat large gap. That being said I am supposed to be the immature one, the butt of the joke in almost every circumstance. Unfortunately, I play to heavily into this role and I think that it has lead to me being not taken seriously in certain contexts but it has never been a major problem. To my friends I like to be a funny guy. Someone that is good to hang out with low maintenance and chilled out maybe a little goofy from time to time. Hidden I am a deeply empathetic person. This leads me to the final question. Which has shaped me more nature or nurture.? I think the best parts of me have been shaped by nature rather than nurture. I think of myself as a pretty mentally and physically tough person. This is a result of years of sports and training pushing myself to my very limit. But I also can be very emotional and I think this was a result of nurture. Being the youngest my mom was very concerned about my emotions. So nature or nurture? In my experience you are given the best by nature but that isn’t to say that it hurts to nurture every once in a while. That is why I said that a hidden trait of mine is empathy because deep down I’d like to see everyone to be great.
I am mostly defined the most by my age of 18 years old, because 18 years old is the definition of my capability and personal/academic growth. I don’t think about Judaism much, and my family doesn’t think about it much either. I always feel like religion does not make anyone who they are, it might be an important part of their life, however it is not the thing that influences the way they think about themselves. Religion is a thing that is not meant to influence thoughts, it is meant to be a faith that we can hold on to, and I feel like faith can be found anywhere outside of religion. I identify with the body theory and memory theory, the body theory sums up all of the things that I’ve gone through in life, and the memory theory sums up all the things that I can remember from that.
ReplyDeleteMy family perceives me as an 18-year-old female. I am a nature and nurture believer because they are ultimately both important in life.