My Personal Identity

Every year I look back on the previous and I see how much I have changed. I see the friends I have gained and lost. The heartbreak and the happiness. Despite how rough times have gotten, it has truly made me stronger. Everything has shaped who I am today, it has shaped my identity. Identity is a complex topic because it consists of changeable and unchangeable traits and outside internal influences; my own identity has been shaped by going from private to public school, young life camp, and my current friends.

What truly makes up someone’s identity? “The characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is.” This definition is outdated. A person’s characteristics are not the only thing that defines them. Events in someone’s life affect who they are as a person more than their characteristics do. Identity is how life experiences shape a person and how they view themselves.

My social identity plays a huge part in shaping and defining my role as a leader. The way I view myself combined with the way that others view me frames the narrative of my opportunities to be a leader in many ways. Of my various social identity characteristics, the two that play the largest part in my life are my gender and appearance as a woman and my economic standing as lower middle class.

Personal identity is essential in the human experience. Identity is complex and can be broken down into two main groups: introspective identity, and bodily identity. Introspective identity is based off of the groups, mentalities, or beliefs that you align yourself with, and bodily identity is based off of the physical side of yourself. Whether physical or introspective, your identity impacts every action you take. Whether choices ranging from what colors you prefer to which college you want to attend are primarily based off of your introspective identity, which is a combination of both memory and consciousness, physical identity impacts how others perceive you. Consciousness is mainly the awareness of bodily identity as well as continuous introspective identify, while memory is awareness of introspective identity. These two different facets of identity are imperative in the distinction between bodily identity and introspective identity. In means of personal identity introspective identity (which is evident in memory), is essential, while bodily identity (based partially in consciousness) has less credit.

Squeals pierce my eardrums as little girls talk about “loving” their boyfriends. The overbearing scent of Axe radiates off of every arrogant schoolboy who gallivants across the grounds and stops at my locker. Gossip flutters around me, seducing me into its inescapable vice. Such was Memorial Middle School when I first debuted in August, 2011. Going into sixth grade, I was the most popular girl in school. Although I may have had ebony hair and bubblegum lips, there was no hiding the ugliness of who I was: the meanest girl in school.

Weirob argues that the brain doesn't determine personal identity the body does and that she could not continue surviving within another body with her own brain. She believes, in the Julia North and Mary Beaudine case, that Beaudine had two brains not that North has two bodies. Based on these ideas she decides to disagree with the thought of getting the procedure done by the doctor to transfer her brain. I agree that the body determines the identity of the individual and that survival would be difficult for someone in a new body. I agree with her because she states "If the hospital kept careless records, or the surgeon thought it was of no great importance to keep track of who got the original and who got the duplicate, she might never […] the ease with which I can determine who I am not less but more mysterious than my theory."

I hate when people say “I don’t care if you’re Black, White, Asian, etc.” You should care. Do not erase who I am to make yourself feel comfortable. Do not erase my identity by saying race doesn’t matter. Colorblind ideology will not fix racism. Do not ignore my identity or anyone else’s identity because you’re uncomfortable. Recognize my race and ethnicity and respect that.

I am truly proud of my background and how it has formed my identity. My background consists of me being Portuguese. I could not be any more thankful for how greatly my background has impacted my life into what it is now. It has helped me gain many friends that I am still very close to and gain interests that have started since I was a child. Simply experiencing my family’s numerous customs and traditions is why I love to express that I am Portuguese. It has given me the opportunity to visit Portugal every year during each summer where I fall in love with the country each time. Being Portuguese has taught me many lessons throughout life that I will continue to pass on for future generations of my family.

Identity criteria is a main component of who a person really is, central elements of how someone sees who they are and essential properties are argued to determine a person’s identity. How philosophers view the soul is essential one’s personality. The dualists believe that wherever the soul goes, that’s where the mind goes. The dualists view is based off of the fact that there is more to our brain and ourselves than just the physical aspect, the soul strongly supports this claim. Materialism argues against the dualists because they only believe in the physical component of the world, in their eyes a soul does not exist. Lastly, in the psychological view, John Locke implemented memory into personal identity. Leibniz and Reid challenged Locke’s ideas and came up with a reasonable conclusion.

If we really don’t know how to define ourselves well, then it reaches some point that we feel we don’t have a purpose in life. Finding out who we really are just takes time and thinking about our importance in life. My identity or how I define myself is something that requires elaboration. Generally, I can define myself in terms of religion, education, gender, political, beliefs, sexuality, physical or learning challenges. In terms of religion, I can say am Muslim who believes the God. My level of education is up to college level, a place where I am until today, politically, I am not affiliated to any party, but I believe in service delivery, and therefore, for me to vote in a leader for a political seat will fully depend on his / her leadership

There are status and symbols that are associated with ethnic people. These status or symbols are sometimes positive and others are negative. Therefore, these labels only hinder us from achieving our potential. Stereotypes about minorities are imposed by other cultures. This is also true of gender expectation.

My purpose is to show my individuality and to express myself. This is for others including myself, to see and to remind us that our identity is very complex.

Everybody has an identity, it makes them individual and unique, and it defines who you are as a person. This project about my identity showed me what makes me unique. I would have never known how much my friends mean to me or how my identities connect with each other. I have three identities that make me who I am, cultural, personal, and social. A specific quality that covers my cultural identity is being Czechoslovakian. Both sides of my family have at least a part of Czech in them. My great-grandparents are from Czech Republic and my grandpa was the first generation in America, he was born in Ohio. This is very important because I have always identified as Czech and it is a big part of me, as I am so interested in ancestry. For my personal identity, the biggest part is my personality, being loud and outgoing, has always been important to me. The reason being, it is how people view me. A lot of people know me as the loud person or the person who talks a lot. That is meaningful to me considering I like people to view me in a certain way The last identity, social, is one of the most important to me because it involves my friends, and through this project, I learned how vital they really are to my social identity. I realized that I have a good amount of friends in this project. It is nice to have people as a support system and to relate with. These qualities show that I value being loud and outgoing. It also says that I value my family and they are a big part of life. The last one, social, ties in with the first one because it shows I am outgoing and friendly.

Many people question themselves, what is it exactly that makes them unique? What is it that defines them as a unique person that no one in the world possesses? In philosophy, these questions do not have just one answer, and all answers are correct depending on which theory appeals most and makes sense to you. In general, there are two ways people approach this question, some say that a person’s identity is the “self” that carries all of their experiences, thoughts, memories, and consciousness (ego theorists), and some say that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences and events that a person has been through in their life, these people deny that the “self” exists (bundle theorists). In this paper, I will be arguing that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences, denying the self and the memory criterion.

When I take a look beck on my lifetime, I see that I’ve changed a great deal in regards to my personal identity. For me to put entirely into words on a paper would take me days to explain how and why things went the way they did, so I’d like to shorten these feeling up. In my youth, I had clearly planned to take the superhero path through life. Professional athlete, firefighter, police officer, or basically anything portrayed in society as a model citizen, a class act if you will, all racing through my mind when thinking about my future. I was mistaking, and for good reason as I had these feelings until I was about ten years old. When the first year with two digits associated itself with my age, a certain maturity occurred. I wouldn’t classify it as a life changing realization, but more of an assistant to my later discoveries. In the time I spent working with my father, albeit mostly masonry work, I began to ask questions with higher frequency. For myself, I wanted to further my knowledge, but at that time, I was really annoyed that I couldn’t understand certain aspects to building such as why we used Weld-Crete on all of our bluestone patios when it seemed that we were the only masons doing anything resemblant of our process.