Please match the following concepts with our people stories. See sample Two of Us analysis
Key concepts for Mind of a Thief
Key concepts for Skin
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. ~Jane Austen
True to self: Anybody who is any good is different from anybody else. (Felix Frankfurter)
Different personalities: Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions. ~D.H. Lawrence, Pornography and Obscenity (different self for different relationships)
In 2010 the Gallup press published a book called The Economics of Wellbeing. The authors identified as one of the most significant underwriters of our wellbeing our connection with our community. Evidently as social animals such connections are vital. They are fundamental to our sense of self and help us discover who we are and our place in the world. Take away our relationships and our place within the group and we suffer from loneliness and isolation. We are frequently unhappy.
Difference: and parents: Andrew Solomon (Far from the Tree): believes that the way parents negotiate differences is critical to family relationships, and “even if they’re very diverse differences, that negotiation of differences is a central part of how parents and children develop a relationship to each other.”
The importance of being an individual: Zorba the Greek wisely said, “a man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free.”
Age cartoonist and writer Michael Leunig, says “if we don’t make for ourselves some small hand-crafted peculiarity it will certainly be provided by fate in due course.”….
Our identity is always changing and developing: The Age cartoonist, Michael Leunig states, “any life lived well enough is nothing else but ongoing rehabilitation.” (214)
According to the Dalai Lama “our enemy is our guru”. His comment alludes to the fact the conflict need not necessarily be destructive. Often moments of stress or adversity can provide an insight into our characters; the way in which we deal with stress and conflict can also be character building.
Author and social commentator Hugh Mackay states, “we are defined more by our interdependence than our independence”.
“A person is a person through other persons.” (Former Archbishop of South Africa, Desmond Tutu)
“We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are.” (Desmond Tutu)
A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.” (Desmond Tutu)
The Age columnist, Ross Gittins also asks, “take away all our relationships and who would have much reason to keep living?”
Age cartoonist, Michael Leunig states, “any life lived well enough is nothing else but ongoing rehabilitation.” (214)
Exclusion and difference : negative aspects of identity (no sense of “place”; lack of roots)
Dr Michael Schluter, an important social thinker and founder of Britain’s Relationships Foundation draws attention to the fundamental importance of relationships in our lives and its role in securing our wellbeing. The Age columnist, Ross Gittins also asks, “take away all our relationships and who would have much reason to keep living?”
The Age columnist, Ross Gittins emphasizes that we are, “above all, social animals”. After we have secured our physical survival, the most important thing in each of our lives is our relationships: with friends, neighbours, workmates and, above all, with our families – our parents, siblings, spouse and children.” He notes that even if we’ve avoided speaking to them for years, even if they’re dead and gone, we can’t stop thinking about them. If we have cut ourselves off from our family, be sure we’ve sought to fill the vacuum with other relationships. Take away all our relationships and who would have much reason to keep living?
Dorothy Rowe states in her book, “Why we Lie” that we lie to please others, being “disliked is so frightening”. “We don’t want to be disliked, because being disliked erodes our sense of being a person.”
Novelist and The Age writer, Fiona Scott-Norman states in her book, Don’t peak at high school” from bullied to A-List, that people who are bullied or are unpopular at school are often forced to rely on their own resources and become very resilient. Norman states that people like Penny Wong and Megan Washington who have been threatened at school, often develop amazing life skills and a fierce determination to succeed. This may be because they know how unbearable it is to be lonely and depressed.
The moral of their stories is that all conquered their fears and went on to have successful lives. In other words, when the going got tough, they got going. “Being bullied shaped these people,” writes Scott-Norman. “There are advantages to being unpopular at school, because you are forced to fall back on your own resources.”
In the 1950s US psychologist Harry Harlow found when infant rhesus monkeys were taken from their mothers during key nurturing phases they were permanently emotionally damaged. This supported the theory that the early days of childhood set the path for life.
Prisons are full of inmates from dysfunctional homes where violence is normalised and dishonesty is a family tradition. (John Silvester, 20/6/2015).
Writer, journalist Romana Koval asks ,”does coming from somewhere tell me anything about who I am” and then wonders what if you do not know where you come from? Does it make a difference to who we are? For most of us, a place is important because it reflects and shapes our identity. A supportive home helps us to grow, and connect with our family and our past. Contrastingly, those who lack a firm sense of place or a supportive home suffer from a loss of self.
“The warp and weft of identity is re-woven every time and is so tightly and thickly made it seems we were born with it, part of our flesh, instead of it being only a cloak” (16)
Return to Summary: Identity
Return to : Please bring to every class