Do you have an identity of your own or are we the by-product of someone else’s essence imprinted upon us?

Question

..in who we are, what we are, how we choose to define ourselves.

Answer 1

W t f are you babbling about?

Answer 2

This is the classic nature vs. nurture debate. It's not going to end today...

I think we need to stop worrying about "who we are" and just be that person, always working to be better. (whether we choose that or whether that's a result of some sort of imprint is immaterial)

Answer 3

We are the totality of our relations to capital. The individual is the product of power.

Answer 4

don't define yourself let the people make your identity and alwayes be happy and be on time . please send your e mail ID tht I can send u mails ok

buy buy atke care.

Answer 5

Yes I do!

Answer 6

yes my parents

Answer 7

Hello,

(ANS) Ahh!! the 64million dollar question!! who are we in reality? Its my belief that our self identity as a human being, as a person is a very complex mixture of different factors.

These factors are:- a) Genetic basis, meaning that part of who are are is pre-determined by our genes. Meaning that much of what we are or become, comes directly from our parents and from our ancestors. Not only our body type, our eye, hair colour, etc but also many of our personality traits too.

b) Nuture & Nature, our childhood envirnoment and who & how we were cared for. Has a very significant influence upon our development and helps to shape & sculpt who we become.

c) Our own life experience also shapes us in ways that are very hard to fully appreciate. We are what we know & have experienced (knowledge).

d) We also have our own inate & utterly unique qualities as a person, qualities that make us completely different from anyone else. Make us special if you like.

ALL of these factors & process's help to make us who we are and give us our special individuality. Thus each person will always be essentially different from someone esle.

**So much of who we are resides in our unconscious self anyway (outside our conscious awareness), only the bits we are aware of, are used to make selective chooses.

IR

Answer 8

In my opinion every person tends to evolve his ( her ) own identity, that's simply because we're free to chose what we really want to be. There's a problem however, when someone is over influenced by some particular persons' character. We also tend to be " political animals ", which is bad as well...further on we are very much influenced by the media like radio, TV or Internet...Resuming all possible sources of influence, I must conclude self definition is definitely a major problem to most of us !

Answer 9

Just wanted to add to Ivan's answer, as he touches on some good points but misses an important element.

People all too readily buy in to the idea that their identity is entirely under their own control, a matter of choice.  Or, if not, in the case of biology, still within themselves even if it is not entirely under control.  This corresponds to the individualistic ideologies that are seen as essential to success in American society, which often obscure the ways that we are intimately interconnected to each other in a dense web of social relationships.

But, we are also defined by others.  Other individuals, other groups, social institutions, corporations, governments and the like, all of whom have their own ways of defining us regardless of our 'self-identity' and treating us in certain ways based on their own definitions.  This is the essence of racism, that people are marginalized and subjugated based on external definitions, regardless of the identities constructed by the people themselves.  Also, we come to define ourselves by the categories that we find ourselves placed into, as these are often the only ways that we can be recognized and pursue political action.  

There is no easy answer here.  Our identity is a mix of our own personal agency and wider structural processes in the society around us that both enable and constrain these identities, and contribute to the formation of new ones.