personal identity
“Who am I?” It reminds me to a Hollywood movie, with this question as the title, about a person who suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is however not the case for me. This question is a kind of reflective question to know myself more. My answer to it will vary from one period of life to another. Today’s answer will be different from the one from four years ago or perhaps four years from now. Why?
The obvious reason is that people simply change. Although the seed of liberalism was already in me four years ago (due to the internet development and people with progressive way of thinking around me), my mindset was still under the influence of the culture of my country. It more or less saw the world differently from Westerners. It was conservative, which tended to see black and white of everything and less grey area. Rule was rule; no human emotions should be allowed to influence the process. That was until I left for the Netherlands in 2004.
2004 was the beginning of a new era, so to speak. My old mindset met the common ideologies in this country, liberalism and individualism. That old way of thinking started to erode gradually, especially the concept of black and white in seeing the world. The seed of liberalism that had been in me started growing. All those combined together with experience in working with teams, interacting in multicultural environment, and especially working experience in recruitment and Public Relations (PR) areas have constructed the current identity of mine ever since.
My current identity has more human-emotions involved and less rules influence. This consequently has brought me a new way of seeing the world and its daily phenomena. Involving human-emotions, while simultaneously keeping logic, has taken a strong position in my life. For example, I begin to understand a lot more of the reasons for people take certain decisions in life and cause - effect relation in this world. Humanity has therefore become more important than just a set of rules for me. Rules do exist to ensure that everything is in order. However, human interest should not be sacrificed for the sake of rules’ existence.
The development of my identity and the answer of the question “Who am I?” (the current me) have hitherto been discussed. It has pointed out the main difference in my identity. The old concept of conservative thought has changed into a more liberal one. The basic principle in this personal identity analysis is going to come up once again in the third part of this article, Brand Analysis.
The obvious reason is that people simply change. Although the seed of liberalism was already in me four years ago (due to the internet development and people with progressive way of thinking around me), my mindset was still under the influence of the culture of my country. It more or less saw the world differently from Westerners. It was conservative, which tended to see black and white of everything and less grey area. Rule was rule; no human emotions should be allowed to influence the process. That was until I left for the Netherlands in 2004.
2004 was the beginning of a new era, so to speak. My old mindset met the common ideologies in this country, liberalism and individualism. That old way of thinking started to erode gradually, especially the concept of black and white in seeing the world. The seed of liberalism that had been in me started growing. All those combined together with experience in working with teams, interacting in multicultural environment, and especially working experience in recruitment and Public Relations (PR) areas have constructed the current identity of mine ever since.
My current identity has more human-emotions involved and less rules influence. This consequently has brought me a new way of seeing the world and its daily phenomena. Involving human-emotions, while simultaneously keeping logic, has taken a strong position in my life. For example, I begin to understand a lot more of the reasons for people take certain decisions in life and cause - effect relation in this world. Humanity has therefore become more important than just a set of rules for me. Rules do exist to ensure that everything is in order. However, human interest should not be sacrificed for the sake of rules’ existence.
The development of my identity and the answer of the question “Who am I?” (the current me) have hitherto been discussed. It has pointed out the main difference in my identity. The old concept of conservative thought has changed into a more liberal one. The basic principle in this personal identity analysis is going to come up once again in the third part of this article, Brand Analysis.
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