Identity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Identity - Essay Example In this variegated world the human beings simply could not avoid the unavoidable and intimate process of socialization that gives way to what is called the individual and collective identity. Thereby, the individual identity is not merely the product of one’s specific self concept, but is rather a concept that is shaped and formed by an array of forces that tend to be economic, legal, social and many a times historical in their ramifications, which scratch and etch the human consciousness and continue to shape, control and define the entity that is called identity. Identity is a notion that happens to be multi-faceted, open and perpetually evolving in its content and scope. As far as I could peek into my childhood days, I could distinctly notice the fact that during the nascent stages of the human life, the development of the individual identity is governed a lot by what an individual thinks about oneself. When I was an infant, my parents where the only outside force that to a large extent shaped my identity (Gielen & Roopnarine 213). The very helplessness and dependence of my child hood state saved me from an early exposure to the multifarious social forces that I had to deal with at a more mature stage. My home and family was the cocoon that not only allowed me to shape my identity in a relatively benign and loving environment, but also protected me from more potent and political outside influences. I was totally oblivious of the fact that in the times to come, forces like ethnicity and color will pervade my inner world and shape my identity in varied ways and forms. Hence, the only god that governed the shaping of my identity was I and my parents. Thereby, I am happy to say that I had quite a happy childhood and this allowed me to develop a positive self concept of myself that shaped an identity that was open, gregarious, happy and confident. The positive reinforcements from my family further ossified this sense of invulnerability and mirth. However, this identity related complacence was not to last forever. As I grew up and my sense of self evolved, I realized that my parents and my family were not only a source love and affection, but also happened to be social individuals who belonged to a specific class, race, ethnicity and culture. It is not that my parents predominantly tried to introduce me to these sometimes hard to acknowledge, but valid facts, but I gradually picked up these facts about my family and hence about myself through eavesdropping into their unsuspecting daily interactions. These socio-economic attributes assigned to my family gradually began to become a part of my identity. Hence, I got a very basic idea of the society and my place in it through this primary socialization with my family (Gielen & Roopnarine 63). Thereby, I could certainly say that my family circumstances largely selected my mother tongue, religion, social class and nationality. It will be true to say that I had a very basic idea about my ide ntity as I entered the mature world. Yet, I was curious to not only test the validity of these identity attributes I inherited, but to practically see as to where I stood in the outside world. In that context I could distinctly identify my young adulthood period