"Lesson 2: The Self, Society, and Culture" PDF

Lesson 2: The Self, Society, and Culture Lesson Objectives At the end of this lesson, you should be able to: 1. explain the relationship between and among the self, society, and culture; 2....

Lesson 2: The Self, Society, and Culture Lesson Objectives At the end of this lesson, you should be able to: 1. explain the relationship between and among the self, society, and culture; 2. describe and discuss the different ways by which society and culture shape the self. compare and contrast how the self can be influenced by the different institutions in the society:and 4. examine one's self against the different views of self that were discussed in the class. INTRODUCTION Across time and history, the selfhas been debated, discussed, and fruitfully or otherwise conceptualized by different thinkefs in philosophy. Eventually,with the advent of the social sciences, it became possible for new ways and paradigms to. reexamine the true nature of the self. People put a halt on speculative debates on the relationshipbetween the body and soul, eventually renamed body and the mind. Thinkers just eventually got tired of focusing on the ong-standing debate since sixth century BC between the relationshipof these two components of the human person. Thinkers just settled.onthe idea that there are two components of the human person and whatever relationshipthese two have is less important than the fact that there is a self. The debate shifted into another locus of discussion. Given the new ways of knowing and the growth of the social sciences, it became possible for new approaches to the examination of the self to come to the fore. One of the loci, if not the most important axis of analysis is the relationshipbetween the self and the external world. What is the relationship between external reality and the self? In the famous Tarzan story. the little boy named Tarzan was left in the middle of the forest. Growing up, he never had an interaction with any other human being but apes and other animals. Tarzan grew up acting 12 Understanding the Self strangely like apes and unlike human persons. Tarzan became an animal, in effect. His sole interaction with them made him just like one of them. Disappointedly, human persons will not develop ashuman persons without intervention. This story. which was supposed to be based on real life, challenges the long-standing notion of human persons being special and being aparticular kind of being in the spectrum of living entities. After all, our selves are not special because of the soul infused into us.We may be gifted with intellect and the capacity to rationalize things but at the end of the day, our growth and development and consequentially, our selves are truly products of our interaction with external reality. How much of you are essential? How much of who you arenow a product of your society, community, and family? Has your choice ofschool affected yourself now? Had you been born into a different family and schooled in a different college, how much of who you are now would change?  ABSTRACTION What ls the Self? The self, in contemporary literature and even common sense, is commonly defined by the following characteristics: "separate, self-contained, independent, consistent, unitary, and private" (Stevens 1996). By separate, is meant that the it self is distinct from other selves. The self is always unique and has its own identity. One cannot be another person. Even twins are distinct from each other. Second, self is also self-contained and independent because in itself it can exist. Its distinctness allows it to be self-contained with its own thoughts, characteristics, and volition. It does not require any other self for to exist. It is consistent because it it has, a personality that is enduring and therefore can be expected to persist for quite sometime. Its consistency allows it to be studied, described, and measured. Consistency also means that a particular self's traits, characterístics, tendencies, and potentialities are more or less the same. Self is unitary in that is the center it of allexperiences and thoughts that run through a certain person. It is like the chief 14 Understanding the Self CS CamScanner command post in an individual where all processes, emotions, and thoughts converge. Finally, the self is private. Each person sorts out information, feelings and emotions, and thought processes within the self. This whole process is never accessible to anyone but the self. This last characteristic of the self being private suggests that the self is isolated from the external worid. It lives within its own world. However, we also see that this potential clash between the self and the external reality is the reason for the selfto havea clear understanding of what it might be, what it can be,and what it will be.From this perspective then, one can see that the self is always at the mercy of external circumstances that bump and colide with it. is ever-changing and dynamic, allowing external influences to take It in its shaping. The concern then of this lesson is in understanding the vibrant part relationship between the self and external rèality. This perspective is known as the social constructionist perspective. "Social constructionists argue for a merged view of the person' and "their social context' where the boundaries of one cannot easily be separated from the boundaries the other (Stevens 1996). of Social constructivists argue that the self should not be seen as a static entity that stays constant through and through. Rather, the self has to be seen as somethingthat is in unceasing flux, in a constant struggle with external reality and is malleable in its dealings with society. The self is always in participation with social life and its identity subjected to influences here and there. Having these perspectives considered should draw one into cncluding that the self is truly multifaceted. Consider a boy named Jon. Jon is a math professor at a Catholic university for more than a decade now.Jon has a beautiful wife whom he met in college, Joan. Joan was Jon's first and last girtfriend. Apart from being a husband,Jon is also blessed with two doting kids, a son and a daughter. He also sometimes serves in the church too as a lector and a commentator. As a man of different roles, one can expect Jon to change and adjust his behaviors, ways,and  even language depending on his socialsituation. When Jon is in the university, he conducts himself in a matter that befits his title asa professor. As a husband, Jon can be intimateand touchy.Joan considers him sweet, something that his students will never conceive him to be. His kids fear him. As a father, Jon can be stern.As a lector and commentator, on the other hand, his church mates knew him as a guy who is calm, all-smiles, and always ready to lend a helping hand to anyone in need. This short storyis not new to most of us. We ourselves play different roles, act ways depending on our circumstances. Are we being hypocritical in different in doing so? Are we even conscious of our shifting selves? According to what we have so far, this is not only normal but also is acceptable and expected. The self it is capable of morphing and fitting itself into any circumstances it finds itself in. The Self and Cuiture Remaining the sameperson and turning chameleon by adapting to one's context seems paradoxical. However, the French Anthropologist Marcel Mauss has an explanation for this phenomenon. Acoording to Mauss, every self has two faces: personne and moi. Moi refers to a person's sense of who he is, his body. and his basic identity, his biological givenness: Moi is a person's basic identity. Personne, on theother hand, composed of the social concepts of what it means is to be who he is. Personno has much to do with what means to live in a particular it institution, a particular family, a particular religion, a particular nationality, and how to behave given expectations and influencesfrom others. In the story above, Jon might have a moi he has to shift but certainly, personne from time to time to adaptto his social situation. He knows who he is and more or less, he is confidentthat he has a unified, coherent self. However, at some point, he has to sport his stern professorial look. Another day, he has to be the doting but strict fatherthat he is. Inside his bedroom,he can play goofy with his wife, Joan. In and more, Jon retains who he is, all this his being Jon-his moi that part of him that is stable and static all throughout. This dynamics and capacity for different personne can be illustrated better cross-culturally. An overseas Filipino worker (OFW) adjusting to life in another country is a very good case study.In the Philippines, many people unabashedly violate jaywalking rules. A common Filipino treats road, even national ones, as basically his and so he just merely crosses whenever and wherever. When the same Filipino visits another country with strict trafic rules,say Singapore, you will notice how suddenly law-abidingthe said Filipino becomes. A lot of Filipinos has anecdotallyconfirmed this observation. 16 Understanding the Self CS CamScanner  The same malleabilitycan be seen in how somemen easily transform into sweet, docile guyswhen trying to woe and court a particularwoman and suddenly just change rapidly after hearing a sweet "yes. This cannot be considered a conscious change on the part of the guy, or on the part of the law-abiding Filipino in the first example. The self simply morphed according to the circumstances and contexts. In the Philippines, Filipinos tend to consider their territory as a part of who RNALRaSAM they are. This includes considering their Makisy TAPA7ENEae. immediate surrounding as a part of them, thus the perennial "tapat ko, linis ko." Filipinos most probably do nót consider national roads as something external to who they are. It is a part of them and they are a part of it, thus crossing the road whenever and wherever becomes a no-brainer. In another country, however, the Filipino recognizes that he is in a foreign ttritory where nothing technically belongs to him. He has to follow the rules or else he will be apprehended. Language is another interesting aspect of this social constructivism. The Filipino language is incredibly interêsting to talk about. The way by which we articulate our love is denoted by the phrase, "Mahal kita."This, of course, is the Filipino translation of love you." The Filipino brand of this articulationof love, unlike in English, does notspecify the subject and the object of love; there is no specificationof who loves and who is loved. There is simply a word for love, mahal, and the pronoun kita, which is a second person pronoun that refers to the speaker and the one being talked to. In the Filipino language, unlike in English, there is no distinction between the lover and the beloved. They are one. Interestingtoo is the word, mahal. In Filipino, the word can mean both love" and "expensive."In our language, love is intimately bound with value, with being expensive, being precious. Something expensive Someone whom we is valuable. love is valuable to us. The Sanskrit origin of the word love is "lubh,"which means -desire.Technically, love is a desire. The Filipino word for it has another intonation apart from mere desire, valuable. Another interesting facet of our language is its being gender-neutral. In English, Spanish, and other languages, the distinction is clear between a third person male and third person female pronoun. He and she; el and ella. In Filipino, it is plain, "siya."Thereis no specificationof gender. Our language does not specify between male and female. We both call it "siya."  In these varied examples, wehow language has something to have seen do with culture. is a salient part of culture and ultimately,has a tremendous effect It in our crafting of the self. This might also be one of the reasons why culturaldivide spells out differences in how one regards oneself. In one research, was found it that North Americans are more likely to attribute being unique to themselves and claim that they are better than most people in doing what they love doing. Japanese people, on the other hand, have been seen to display a degree of modesty. If one finds himself born and reared in a particular cuture, one definitelytries to fit in a particularmold. If a self is born into a particularsociety or culture, the self will have to adjustaccording to its exposure. The Self and the Development of the Social World So how do people actively produce their social worlds? How do children growing up become soclat beings? How can a boy turn out to just be like an ape? How do twins coming out from the same mother turn out to be terribly different when given up More than his givenness (personality, tendencies, for adoption? and propensities, among others), one is believed to be in active participation in the shaping of the self.Most often, we think thehuman persons are just passive actors in the whole process of the shaping of selves. That men and women are born with particúlarities that they can no longer change. Recent studies, however, indicate that men and women in their growth and development engage actively in the shaping of the self. The unending terrain of metamorphosis of the self is mediated symbol by language. "Languageas botha publicly shared and privately utilized system is the site where the individual and the social make and remake each other" (Schwartz, White, and Lutz 1993). Mead and Vygotsky For Mead and Vygotsky, the way that human persons develop is with the use of language acquisition and interaction with others. The way that we process information is normally a form of an internal dialogue in our head. Those who deliberate about moral dilemmas undergo this internal dialog. Should I do this or that?" "But if Ido this, it be like this." "Don't want the other will I option?" And so cognitive and emotional development of a child is always a mimicry of how it is done in the social world, in the external reality where he is in. Both Vygotsky and Mead treat the human mind as something that is made, constituted through language as experienced in the external world and as encountered in dialogs with others. A young child internalizes values, norms, practices, and social beliefs and more through exposure to these dialogs that will eventually become part of his individual world. For Mead, this takes place as a child assumes the "other through language and role-play.A child conceptualizes his notion of "self'through this.Can you notice how little children are fond of playing role-play with their toys? How they make scripts and dialogs for their toys as they play with them? According to Mead, it is through this that a child delineates the "" from the rest. Vygotsky, for his part, a child internalizes real-life dialogs that he has had with others, with his family, his primary caregiver, or his playmates. They apply this to their mental and practical problems along with the social and cultural infusions brought about by the said dialogs. Can you notice how children eventually become what they watch? How children can easily adapt ways of cartoon characters they are exposed to? Self in Families Apart from the anthropological and psychological basis for the relationship between the self and the social world, the sociplogical likewise struggled to understand the real connection between the two concepts. In doing so, sociologists focus on the differernt institutionsand powers at play in the society. Among these, the most prominent is the family. While every child is born with certain givenness, disposition coming from his parents' genes and general Condition of life, the impact of one's family is deemed as a given in still understanding the self. The kind of family that we areborn in,the resources available to us (human, spiritual, economic), and the kind of development that we will have will certainly affect us as we go through life. Asa matter of evolutionary fact,human persons are one of those beings whose importance of family cannot be denied. Human beings are born virtually helpless and the dependency period of a human baby to its parents for nurturing is relatively longer than most other animals. Learning therefore is critical in our capacity to actualize our potential of becoming humans. In trying to achieve the goal of becoming a fuly realized human, a child enters a system of relationships, most important of which is the family. Human persons learn the ways of living and therefore their selfhood by being in a family. It is what a family initiates a person become that serves as to the basis for this person's progress. Babies internalize ways and styles that they observe from their family. By imitating,for example, the language of its primary agents of rearing its family,babies learn the language. The same is true for ways of behaving. Notice how kids reared in a respectful environment becomes respectful as welland the converse if raised in a converse family. Internalizingbehavior may either be conscious or uncohscious. Table mannersorways of speaking to elders are things that are possible to teach and therefore, are consciously learned by kids. Some behaviors and attitudes,on the other hand, may be indirectly taught through rewards and punishments. Others,such as"'sexual behavior or how to confront emotions, are learned through subtle means, like the tone of the voice or intonation of the models. It is then clear at this point that those who develop and eventually grow to become adult who still did not learn simple matters like basic manners of conduct failed in internalizingdue to parental or famililal failure to initiate them into the world. a family, biologically and sociologically,a person may not even Without survive orbecome a human person. Go back to the Tarzan example. In more ways than one,the survival of Tarzan in the midst of the forest is already a miracle. His being a fully human person with a sense of selfhood is a different story though. The usual teleserye plot of kids getting swapped in the hospital and getting reared by a different family gives an obvious manifestation of the point being made in this section. One is who he is because of his family for the most part. Gender and the Self Another important aspect of the self is gender. Gender is one of those loci of the selfthat is subject to alteration,change, and development. We have seen in the past years how people fought hard for the right to express, validate, and assert their gender expression. Many conservatives may frown upon this and insist on the blological.However, from the point-of-view of the social sciences and the self, is it important to give one the leeway to find, express, and live his identity. This forms part of selfhood that one cannot justdismiss. One maneuvers into the society and identifies himself as who he is by also taking note of gender identities. A wonderful anecdoteaboutLeo Tolstoy's wife that can solidify this point is narrated below: SoniaTolstoy, the wife of the famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, wrotewhen she was twenty-one, "l am nothing but a miserable crushed worm, whom no one wants, whom no one loves, a useless creature with morning sickness, and a big belly, two rotten teeth, and a bad temper, a battered sense of dignity, and a love which nobodywantsand which nearly drives me insane." A few years later shewrote, "It makes me laugh to read over this diary. It's so full of contradictions,and one would think that was I such an unhappy woman. Yet is there a happler woman than I? (Tolstoy 1975) This account illustrates that our gender partly determines how we see ourselves in th world. Oftentimes, society forces a particular identity us depending on our unto sex and/or gender. In the Philippines, husbands for the most part are expected The eldest man in to provide for the family. a family is expected head the family and hold it in. Slight to modifications have been on the way due to feminism and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism but for the most part,patriarcty has refmained to be at work. Nancy Chodorow, à feminist,argues that,because mothers take the role of taking care of children, there is a tendency for girls to imitate the same and reproduce the same kind of mentality of womenas care providers in the family. The way that little girls are given dolls instead of guns or any other toys or are encouraged to play with makeshift kitchen also reinforces the notion of what roles they should take and the selves they should develop. In boarding schools for girls, young women are encouraged to act like fine ladies, are trained to behave in a fashion that befits their status aswomen in society. Men onthe other hand, in the periphery of their own family,aretaught early on how behave like aman.This normally includes holding in one's emotion, being to tough, fatalistic, not to worry aboutdanger, and admiration for hard physical labor. Masculinityy is learned by integrating a young boy in a society. In the Philippines, young boys had to undergo circumcision not just for the original, clinical purpose of hygiene but also to assert their manliness in the society. Circumcision plays another social role by initiating young boys into manhood. Chapter -Defining the Self: Personal and Developmental 21 Perspectives on Self and ldentity CSCamScanner The genderedself is then shaped within a particular context of time and space. The sense of self that is being taught makes sure that an individual fits in a particular environment. This is dangerousand detrimental in the goal of truly finding one's self, selfdetermination, and growh of the self. Gender has to be personally discovered and asserted and not dictated by culture and the society.