Personal Identity Essay

Asking how I describe myself is a hard question to answer. It forces me to ask myself what it is that defines who I am. Is it that I am human? Where I was born? Perhaps it is my political views or the way I dress. I guess I will have to simply list what most people would consider important. I am a Caucasian American, middle class, twenty four year old male of about average height and intelligence. I am sorry to say that I am among the 68.5% of adult Americans that fall into the obese category, weighing in at a whopping 345 pounds. I am a bibliophile with absolutely no political leanings whatsoever and I am an agnostic despite the fact that I was raised a Presbyterian. Personally, I feel that it is actually more interesting to examine how it

52). A person’s identity is something that develops slowly over time and is influenced by the world around them. Some of the biggest factors that play a role in this development are the three major deep cultural institutions state, family, and religion, The biggest deep cultural institutions that have shaped my identity have been religion and family. By far the biggest influence on my personality growing up was my family. I was raised by a single mother who had adopted three children, of which I was both the youngest ant the only male. Due to this I was raised to have a couple of very particular, and sometimes contradictory, beliefs. The first of which was that women were equal to men in every way and should have the same opportunities. It was actually a bit of a shock to me when I learned later in school that this wasn’t always the case. Growing up all the authority figures in my life, from my mother, teachers, and pastor, were all women. The idea that men could actually thing that women were incapable of succeeding or were somehow rendered unworthy of the same opportunities seemed downright crazy to me. On the other hand, I was also raised under the belief that my sex meant that I had certain responsibilities as well. I was taught that I had to do all of the intense physical labor because I was stronger, do the dirty jobs like taking out the

Despite the fact that I ultimately grew up to reject my religion and became an agnostic, church and religion still played a significant role in my development. I first learned about the importance of charity through the collection plate, of community through the after church gatherings. I learned much about what was right and wrong through Sunday school, and I still have a favorable bias toward Christianity to this day because of my church. One of the biggest ways that religion has played a role in how I see the world is in the way I attempt to communicate with other cultures. I first learned that people were all created equal in Sunday school, and that there was no problem between different people that couldn’t be solved by trying to gain a better understanding of your neighbor. Naturally, I have since learned that this is not always true, but I still feel that a lack of knowledge and understanding is one of the greatest barriers to communicating with other people. When I try communicating with anyone, no matter how different they are, I always try to understand them as much as possible so that I might be able to put myself in their shoes. Admittedly, I often do a very poor job of this when the other person’s experiences are utterly alien to my own. A great example of this is when I talked to another student at BOO-U named Stephen Rehdantz who had spent over eight years in the military. I still live in my home town