Being a human, everyone has their personalities and properties which people can base on to distinguish a group of people or an individual. There are many factors that affect our characteristics. Value and identity differ from person to person, therefore people should respect and accept it even it is good or bad. According to the writers in chapter one, there are three assumptions which are used to define the word “identity”: “Identity is what we’re born with”, “Identity is shaped by culture”, and “Identity is shaped by personal choices.” These things contribute to shape our identities. Identity can be defined as who you are, how you act or what makes you different from others. To my way of thinking, culture and personal choices are the main points that forms person’s identity, and the most important factor is what we choose which will decide our present and future state. Additionally, people’s consciousness is the element which decides people’s identities. Therefore, if we want to define the so-call ‘’identity’’ we can not overlook the culture, the consciousness, and the people’s choice which are the main points to identify a person.
What you were born with is a part of basic components helping to identify who you are since you appear in this life. Is your identity given or created? In my point of view, identity is created and improved by ourselves and our surrounding environment. However, we all know that we have some identity information which we were given and we cannot change or choose such as our race, gender, and the place where we were born. These elements are the foundations for community and society to know our existence in this life. For instance, if you are born in Thailand, you are male, and you was raised by Catholic parents, so your identity includes all this information, and society acknowledge us through them . These things cannot change even if you have adaptability in a new place, and you have various experiences in your life. In others words, there are lots of people who come from the same cultures and religions with us. Thus, many people have similar traits with others if we compare their identities in this perspective. Furthermore, some people have many special abilities since they were born without any teaching or training. For instance, somebody is talent and has a high IQ since they were born, and maybe they are transmitted the wonderful genes from their parents. It is no problem if we don’t have that lucks. We all have a few restrictions. Our identities are not given and fixed like that forever because we can practice and be educated to change our situations and efficiency time to time. These are the simplest details to point out who you are, but these are not the major viewpoints to make you specially distinctive and prominent from others.
On the other hand, some other things such as your character, your appearance, your costume, and your lifestyle play a huge role in defining your identities and making us unlike other groups. Which make we shape these traits is our culture. In forming a cultural identity, people come to identify with and attach themselves to a particular region or national identity. Culture has a significant affection on our actions and treatments. Culture is a combination of language, custom, more, belief, religion, behavior, and how to communicate with people around you. Furthermore, educational influence is the priority practice to mold an individual personality. For example, how we treat and speak to other people are determined by our living environments, education, and social cultures. As a human, we all have some characteristic to make us distinct from each others, and culture is a part of hint to present the difference among a lot of people who come from the various cultures in the world. Culture and tradition are spiritual value which is created by a group of community. A person’s identity is formed by one’s own personal features. Culture and identity are different in meaning, however they have a closely relationship because all individuals live in their specific communities with its cultures. Consequently, culture influences on a person’s identity whether that culture is good or not good. The traits of culture are one of the popular perspectives which people count on to identify someone and know where they come from because each culture has their typical distinctions. Culture is the particular and beautiful specialties of a race. Moreover, it represents specifically ethnic traditions and customs of a group or single person whom we meet in our daily lives. This is not determined by where we were born, or what is our gender, but it is formed by social and environmental influences. In my opinion, there is no culture or identity is bad. It depends on how people realize and judge the matter. It has many cultures and religions which have many strange actions to us, nevertheless we should learn about it to know that it makes them beautiful and special. Everyone has the right to be respected and identified even if people like them or not. For instance, as a child grows up in a particular culture they will absorb the beliefs, and practices, then they will begin to use them in everyday activities. The opinions of people about identity have changed over time. In particular, in many historical cultures, people’s weight were the sign of good health, wealth, and beauty, so it was easily to identify the lower or higher working class while we see their well fat outside appearance. In our society today, food is not hard to gain; thus, the weight is not evaluated in the same way as it was before. Social culture plays an essential role in how we evaluate and define ourselves identities. We can not define a person’s identity without the context of culture and society. Our identities are assessed differently in different cultures and time periods. Therefore, cultures, region’s traditions, and customs play important roles in developing the view of our identity.
The third aspect of identity we will consider is personal choices. In my opinion, besides surrounding environments, personal choice is the most important factor which contribute to complete our identities. Regardless the cultural context which we are living in, I believe that the choices which we make shape our private identities. We cannot choose our race, our origin, and our family, but we can choose who we want to become by our personal choices. We might make a strange decision beyond our common culture to create unique things , and make us outstanding. People judge us through what we act, how we response, and how we behave kindly towards someone. In addition, the mean which we choose to do something in our daily lives is one of the most powerful factors impacts on our traits, and describe who we are and who we want to become. To illustrate this point, if we choose to go on a right way, it will lead us to the bright streets, and if we do in a wrong way, we will go to a dark tunnel. Especially, in our lives there are numerous things might happen to us which we cannot know, or predict it before such as what will happen tomorrow, and so on. Nevertheless, we could not choose what should happen to our life, but we can choose how we should act to solve and response the problems. We should know and think that by our choice, we can turn a bad day into a good day. Unfortunately, it is not everything and everyone who comes to our lives is good. For instance, when we have a bad relationship or a bad friend, it might change our thinking and our personality, and it could make us look the life in negative ways and become pessimistic people if we have experienced tough situations. It seems to me that experiencing bad and hard situations is life’s lessons which can teach and help us stronger and maturer. Without failing there is no success, and we cannot be better. People have to learn how to face everything because it is the natural rules of life which we cannot avoid. The key to succeed and change our life in the way we want is how we react and solve the problems. Therefore, you cannot be youself if you don’t have your personal choices, energy and decision. Our personalities and identities might change day by day after a lot of things happen in our life, but how our personal identities change that is the matter only we ourselves can decide it. Our personal choices affect our behaviors, so that every choice we make will open the door to new ways of thinking, acting and behaving . It depends on our decisions to help us move forward or stay behind. The ways we express ourselves and sustain our relationships are factors make up our identities. If we do the right decisions, it will bring us closer to the indentity we want to get. Hence, our decision can change our lives and our identities, and our experiences are influenced by the choices we have chosen. So you should think before you act or doing something carefully because people will consider your identity throughout your behavior and your situation.
Besides impacts mentioned above, physical body and conscious ability are readily available factors that can make people realize who we are. Conscious ability is more necessary for us to gain society’s acknowledgement.The thing that makes you are you is the non-physical elements. It is your consciousness. We can be attracted by beautiful or handsome outside looking, but the core for us to like or love someone is their personalities. For instance, many couples break up after their partner change their character. Physical body and shape don’t play as an important role to create people’s identity. Especially, memory is a part of consciousness, and it is more important to shape our identities because we must be the same person who experiences those memories. For example, according to the film “Black Mirror” (Season 2 Episode 1: Be Right Back) written by Charlie Brooker, the story write about the development of technology. This is a fiction movie which allows the dead to come back to life, via artificial intelligence. Ash is a particular illustration for the root of identity which is identified through the memory . After his death, the technological service have created a robot which has same his outside looking, but the robot does not have emotion and all memory as same as the real Ash. So that, Marthar, his girlfriend, cannot have real feelings with the robot even he has the same outside looking as real Ash because his personality is different. Indeed, this robot does not have Ash’s emotion and reaction. In other words, this robot does not have Ash’s identity. Moreover, Ash robot also does not have its personal choice when the robot obeys everything which Marthar have asked it to do. This detail also illustrates the above paragraph viewpoint “we cannot identify someone in a different ways if they don’t have their personal choice”. The robot is just a machine, it does not have its own awareness and memory, so it cannot have an understanding communication as real Ash in person. Therefore, the memory is the factor that helps us to maintain our personal identity, helps us connect, keep relationships, and respond to other people.
In addition, our personal information and data on social media play a subsidiary part for people figure out who we are through the information, pictures, and events which we post on social net. By this method, people just know us as how we show up our profiles there, and they cannot know or define us in a real life with our true identity. Because on social media people can show fake information without knowing of other people. For example, today many bad people use social media to cheat other people with various purposes as we can see on daily news, or they just give fake information in order to get strangers’ good impressions about them without any harmful. Social media is one of instruments we can use to get someone’s identity, but we should get people’s personalities in selective ways and recognize which information is useful and which is useless.
In conclusion, the relationship between identity and personal choice is the most affection to shape people’s identity. If there are any limitation in your culture or your religion might make people think wrong about you, and if you want to live your own life without imitation, you should make your personal choices to show who you are and how you want to be accepted. What happen to our lives may change and drive us in differents ways, so our identities change from day to day. we should learn how to change it in positive means to have a good life. It is deeply important when we think about how we should live our lives in order to become the unique among a lot of people who live in the same culture, country, and conditions with us. We should create our identities in good ways of different sides to get people’s esteem and admiration.