What Makes Identity?

In our lives, identity is developed gradually throughout our lives. Through socialization, an individual is shaped up into a unique person. In different stages of lives we undergo different kinds of socialization. But for all processes our identity is dependent of our societies. Basically our personalities reflect our societies. There are two types of socialization. One is solely based on our societies where we grow up. This is called primary socialization. When an individual is born, he has no identity. The individual slowly learn and grow so he can be independent of himself. “Every individual is born into an objective social structure within which he encounters the significant others who are in charge of his socialization” (Berger 34). Unfortunately during the process of learning and become an unique person, he must first go through process of primary socialization. This process is absolutely relying on other people in his society. “Infants and young children first of all develop as social beings by imitating the actions of those around them” (Giddens 69). Because babies learn by copying the adults, how the adults act will affect the personalities of them. If the societies within which the babies grow up are bad, the babies will not grow into a coherent person but have a big possibility of being tangled up into drugs addicted, criminals and other negative impacts. From my experience in my country, Indonesia, where many people are still uneducated and suffering from poverty, it is very obvious from the rate of crimes that the society mould the people badly. If I compare the villagers with the urban people in Indonesia who are educated, the one who create havoc and appear in crimes channel more often is the villagers. Of all the people in the society, families are playing the most important roles in shaping up the individuals. “In modern societies, social position is not inherited at birth in this way, yet the region and social class of the family into which an individual is born affects patterns of socialization quite distinctly” (Giddens 71). As the children will spend most of their time with their families, they will internalize the general roles of lives from their families. Families will be the one who teach a lot of important things to the individuals and thus the “generalized other”, the general basic roles which will stick in the individuals for the rest of their lives. I realize that the courtesies that different people have are always different and these are first developed from our homes. When a child is rude, his mother, father, brother and other members of his family will scold him. He will then realize that being rude is bad as all the people are disagree with him. Later on in his life he will always remember his mistake and be a polite person. An individual will first see himself through the eyes of other people. “The individual experiences himself as such, not directly, but only indirectly, from the particular standpoints of other individual members of the same social group, or from the generalized standpoint of the social group as a whole to which he belongs.” (Mead 25). How the people in the society treat him, he will treat himself the same way. The self-esteem of a child is developed by the society. According to my experience in my family, my cousin is a very shy person because she used to be mocked around when she was young. After all the primary socialization has been done, the secondary socialization follows. Secondary socialization happens after all the solid personality has formed. But the secondary socialization can change one’s personality and if the society is good secondary socialization will mould the individual into a better person. For example, the working environment often forces an individual to change to be able to adapt to it. “The work environment often poses unfamiliar demands, perhaps calling for major adjustments in the person’s outlook or behavior” (Giddens 73). A demanding leader in the work place often intimidates an individual, he will try not to make mistake and make him a more efficient worker. The same thing happened for me in my new environment, which is USA. I am an international student from Indonesia, as the labor workers are cheap almost all of the families have servants who will take care of the houses, whereas here I have to take care of my house alone. This forced me to learn to do all the cleaning activities which took me some hard times and changed me to become more independent. The secondary socialization will not stop as our societies are always changing with time. What forms our identity is the society. Our identity is formed through the things that happen in our surroundings. Good society will result in good identity and bad surroundings will create a bad individual. So this interdependent reflect the action reaction law. How a person act is the result of the behaviors in his society.