A Question of Identity...

[mahf]

So much of the important stuff of life has to do with identity. We claim identities for ourselves, we hide them, admit to them, question which ones are real and which ones don't matter. We spend our lives negotiating with society to achieve certain identities, and much of our social interaction is spent confirming and reconfirming identities to

Comments

[terryostrich]

You're right. People are funny that way. We put so much weight into "what" we are, we get it confused with "who" we are. If I'm not a mother, wife, teacher, student,etc,then who am I? It's in our nature to continuously try to categorize our lives. Somehow, it makes it seem like everything is more in "control", and less like the inevitable chaos that we all fear. I think that's why change is so hard on us. We want things to be stable and in order. We want to hold on to these superficial definitions of who we are. For instance, we go through divorce, and of course the loss is devastating, but what is more devastating is that we put so much of our identity/status/title into that relationship that we seem to have lost ourselves along the way. Same with losing a job, or any other loss for that matter. As far as education goes, I think this labeling behavior is definitely one of our weaknesses as a culture. You are "smart/sucessful" if you receive a diploma, score well on the SAT, receive A's, get accepted into college (which is largely reliant on the aforementioned things), receive more A's, and then get a "degree". We place too much emphasis on titles and labels. This is again, a side effect of our inherent nature to categorize, intellectualize, and measure things. But however flawed this method is, there seems that there has to be some means of assessment. For instance, how does one know if they've "mastered a concept" or are "compotent for a job"? There is no way to truly measure these things, so we resort to tests, grades, degrees, etc. It is, for the msot part, ineffective, but also to a degree, necessary.