In your opinion, what are the three strongest contributing factors to human identity?
There are three main components that compose the human identity. These conducive factors are circumstance, where you’re placed and situated and how your environment shapes you; relationships, the bonds that you create and form with others; and influence, how socio-ethno-religious factors also mould your identity. These elements combined at their very core form the base of human identity.
Relationships are a very strong factor when it comes to human identity; the ones you foster ranging from friends to family and even strangers in passing all contribute to who you are. The bonds that create with humans across different race/gender/sex/class lines all shape
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Arguably this is the most important element of human identity as these factors combine the nature vs nurture dichotomy in which we know that humans are a product of both, as well as they cover every aspect of a person’s life. For example, education itself fits into how much we know about the past, present and future; about other people as well as our own contexts. School is where we learn tells us about social norms, the unwritten norms too, we’re socialized from how to act in public settings and how to conducts ourselves correctly, as well as curriculums being conducted to display and structure to give us a certain view of the world. Moreover religion and culture, often intersecting depending on your ethnic context, is also a key area that contributes to human identity. Religion generally instills morals and values into people as well as practises and rules in which they live their life accordingly to. Another aspect is visibility within religion, this affects your human identity as your experiences and interactions with the outside world would be vastly different if you were not visibly Muslim/Jewish/Hindu/Sikh and so on as opposed to someone who is who may have to navigate certain spaces differently as opposed to you. Culture connects groups of people under a set form of traits …show more content…
Identity, in other words, is complicated” (Nutt).
And finally, circumstance is another important element to human identity. Where your born, the languages you speak, the social class you’re in, and ultimately the environment you 're around shapes the essence of your identity. For example take identical twins and put them in two different families in different parts of the world and then when they’re brought together they’ll be two vastly different people. Milestone events that an individual can or cannot control in their life, essentially help shape their character whether that be through losing a job, falling terminally ill, or starting a new school. In these instances a person adopts new coping mechanisms, learns lessons and has new experiences in a different setting all contribute to their character and how they evolve. In which certain situations out of
and personal identity; identity is what makes someone, but identity can also be seen as
What influences a person’s identity? Does one get an identity when they are able to differentiate right from wrong, or are they born with it? There is not one thing that gives a person their identity, there are however, many different factors that contribute to one’s identity. From Contemplation in a World of Action written by Thomas Merton, Merton advocates identity by stating that “A person does not simply “receive” his or her identity. Identity is much more than the name or features one is born with. True identity is something people must create for themselves by making choices that are significant and that require a courageous commitment in the face of challenges. Identity means having ideas and values that one lives by” (Merton). Concurring with Merton a person is not given their identity at birth or while developing as an embryo, rather it is something that you create for yourselves over the course of life through decisions and actions made by the individual. Although identity is something that one may not be fully aware of or discover until last breaths. Identity can
Before beginning the explanation of how an identity is formed, one must understand what an identity is. So, what is identity? To answer this, one might think of what gives him individuality; what makes him unique; what makes up his personality. Identity is who one is. Identity is a factor that tells what one wants out of life and how he is set to get it. It tells what kind of a person one is by the attitude and persona he has. And it depends upon the mixture of all parts of one’s life including personal choices and cultural and societal influences, but personal choices affect the identity of one more than the others.
Although the concept of identity is recurrent in our daily lives, it has interpreted in various ways.
Culture and identity are two very strange ideas. They are received at a very young age, yet they are very hard to give to someone else. They will affect you for the rest or your life, yet for the most part you are born into them. However, they soon become very important to us and we cannot, no matter what we do, live without them. They are a part of us, and a vital aspect of society. However, it took me a very long time to recognize that I had an identity and a little while after that before I knew what it was.
In order for us to develop this sense of identity we need to have a
Furthermore, identity comes from how people choose to comprehend and perceive their own self. The elements of identity are limitless because you can choose to be whoever you want to be, despite the opinions of others. Thus, one’s identity tends to be unique, in a sense, compared to other
Identity, an ambiguous idea, plays an important part in today’s world. To me identity can be defined as who a person is or what differentiates one person from another. Identity would be a person’s name, age, height, ethnicity, personality, and more. A quote by Anne Sexton states “It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was”(Anne Sexton). This quote helps me define identity because I believe it is saying that identity is what people are remembered by. When some people think of identity, words such as, uniqueness, distinctiveness, or individuality may come to mind. However, I disagree with this because when I think of identity I think of mimicry, self-consciousness, or opinions.
When thinking about Identity, it might be easy to just say that is “who we are”, or it’s just me. An identity is much more than that though. I like to think of it as a living puzzle. There are hundreds or thousands of pieces that come together to form the complete identity, or the complete “you”. I say living because an identity grows throughout the years and even changes depending on the situation. There is a multitude of influences that goes into forming a person’s identity some of which a person chooses and others they don’t. Family members and guardians are a primary source of learning when a child is young. As a person grows, the sphere of influence broadens to include mentors, media, and school. This identity is then a lens through which
Identity can be described as the way we view ourselves; the way that we distinguish ourselves from others while also comparing our similarities. In other words identity is what makes someone unique and average at the same time. To start off with I was born and raised in Jamaica for 6 years with my parents, but due to the fact that my parents were offered an opportunity to attend school in America they dove for a chance of a better life. My first home was in Jefferson, Missouri where it seemed like it snowed every day. White sheets of snow would cover every inch of the city, no stone or rock was left without an inch of snow. The city was so beautiful to me because it would always light up in front of my eyes. The people there was so nice that
Identity. What is identity? One will say that it is the distinct personality of an individual. Others will say that identity is the behavior of a person in response to their surrounding environment. At certain points of time, some people search for their identity in order to understand their existence in life. In regards, identity is shaped into an individual through the social trials of life that involve family and peers, the religious beliefs by the practice of certain faiths, and cultural awareness through family history and traditions. These are what shape the identity of an individual.
There are millions of words across the globe that are used to describe people and uncover their identity, but what is identity? How can you begin to describe something that varies so greatly from one human being to another? Can you create a universal meaning for a word describing human concepts that people often fail to define for themselves? Of course there isn't one definition to define such a word. It is an intricate aspect of human nature, and it has a definition just as complex.
Identity is an abstract, multifaceted concept, which plays of an essential role in intercultural communication interactions, because of globalization and diversity around the world. In this paper I will describe the basic types of identity, such as human, social, and personal.
A person’s identity is shaped by many different aspects. Family, culture, friends, personal interests and surrounding environments are all factors that tend to help shape a person’s identity. Some factors may have more of an influence than others and some may not have any influence at all. As a person grows up in a family, they are influenced by many aspects of their life. Family and culture may influence a person’s sense of responsibilities, ethics and morals, tastes in music, humor and sports, and many other aspects of life. Friends and surrounding environments may influence a person’s taste in clothing, music, speech, and social activities. Personal interests are what truly set individuals apart. An individual is not a puppet on the string of their puppet-master, nor a chess piece on their master’s game board, individuals choose their own paths in life. They accomplish, or strive to accomplish, goals that they have set for themselves throughout their lifetime. Individuals are different from any other individual in the world because they live their own life rather than following a crowd of puppets. A person’s identity is defined by what shaped it in the first place, why they chose to be who they are, and what makes them different from everybody else in the world. I feel that I have developed most of my identity from my own dreams, fantasies, friends, and idols.
Identity is a clear idea of your own personal likes and dislikes that have been formed from a lifetime of experience. From when you’re little you start forming your own personal identity from things that have happened to you and the people that make these things happen. The way that you react to these experiences define who you are as a person.