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1-Page Summary of Identity

Overview

If someone were to ask you “Who are you?”, what would you say? Your name? Where do you live? What is your job title or how much money do you make per year? These factors and more contribute to our identity. We’ll take a look at various cultures around the world, as well as religions, and see why they influence the way we view ourselves.

Religions are not inherently cruel. People make them so when they’re radicalized.

Big Idea #1: “Identity” is a deceptive and loaded word that requires close examination.

When defining yourself, you can choose to define your identity by gender, nationality, sexuality or all three.

The answer to this question is not easy. Identity is a complex concept that’s formed from our various affiliations and influences, including religion, job, race, nationality, people we admire, hobbies, sexual preferences and more.

But, our allegiances aren’t fixed. People can switch their loyalties at any given moment. For example, a wealthy person who has worked hard to get where they are might feel more of a connection with the middle class when among people who have inherited wealth.

People have different identities at different times. Some people identify with one thing, and others don’t really have a fixed identity.

However, it can be tricky to box people into rigid categories. For example, the author is a Lebanese writer who moved to France when he was 27 and has been living there for 22 years now. His first language is Arabic, but he writes in French and identifies as Christian.

The author often gets asked, “What do you feel like deep inside: French or Lebanese?” The question is flawed because there isn’t a way to partition a person’s identity into halves or quarters. A person doesn’t have many different identities, but rather one that combines all the characteristics of himself together.

Big Idea #2: Our identity is affected by how others see us.

Did you know that identity is something we learn? It’s not innate. We all construct our identities by the way we look at others and how they look at us. For example, it may seem obvious to you that Austrians are different from Germans, but every Austrian is also different from every other Austrian. And yet we still lump people together as groups and treat them as one block with identical behaviors or opinions – or crimes. We say “The Americans have invaded,” “The Arabs have terrorized,” etc., even though these generalizations can harm people’s identities because of their negative connotations.

For example, when we group people together in a negative way, they will start to see themselves as belonging to that group. This is especially true if their identity has been attacked by something like the Fascist regime under Mussolini. If someone’s sexual orientation was attacked at this time, he might have seen himself as a proud Italian until then but would become more focused on his sexuality after that attack occurred.

People’s religious affiliation changes when their faith is threatened. When they feel that their race or gender is endangered, they might begin fighting against members of their own faith.

Big Idea #3: No one religion, affiliation or culture is inherently more violent than any other.

Our culture has a tendency to simplify people into stereotypes. For example, Islam is often seen as barbaric and violent, but its history shows that it was once tolerant of other religions. In fact, the Islamic world had non-Muslim populations before Christianity did. It wasn’t until the Enlightenment period in Europe that religious tolerance began to develop there too. Democracy developed in Western countries first, but voting rights were restricted for many years after its founding there because only wealthy men could vote.