Society and Identity
After watching various of the Better Lives lectures I was invigorated with each lecture and had an urge to dive deeper into what was executed by the lecturers. Personally, listening to each lecture opened a new mind-set where I was able to analyse situations in more depth and conceptualise. Personally, I was heavily inspired by the lecture on Society, by Katelyn, on the 24.2.2020. I was provoked with multiple theories and thoughts about how we are influenced by the smallest things in every day life. The quotation “What we think, what we feel, and what we say and do are all shaped by our interactions with other people”- (Hughes); I was initially engaged and started to brainstorm from this quotation
The study of society and social expectations of all people inspired me to think how we are all socially grouped by extremely popular categories; for example, people are heavily influenced by sport; art; fashion; mathematics, or literature; however, this made me think how we are quick to assume another’s personality, looks, attractions based off of their social grouping and not their own personal identity. I believe assumption is extremely common when approaching identity within society and has made to become almost a social competition. Referring back to the quotation “What we think, what we feel, and what we say and do are all shaped by our interactions with other people” (Hughes) made me acknowledge how we gain our understanding from other humans’ systems and that we would be much more less capable if secluded. This increasingly also goes for our own fashion and identities, and how we represent ourselves to others. We have our overall identity whilst having additional personalities that come alongside that, that have probably been massively inspired by other people.
A question that I ask myself and others after watching this lecture is what would our exact identity and personality would be like if had been secluded from the start; no inspiration, motivation or stereotypical thought process from other interactions. Would we wear the clothes we wear today? Would people be discriminative towards others in society if not influenced by other opinions? Would we all be under the same large social groups and social conditions or would we have smaller marginalised groups were everyone is socially excluded?
In conclusion, I believe even though we are all under large social groups, our society would be increasingly more interesting if we all had our own initial thoughts and were socially engaged with our unique identities. Personally, communicating our true identities to our society is so important as I believe our social being is learning to depict the stereotype of sectioning people under large social expectations, and are finally being accepting/ experimental with who they really are and not what the rules of society say. The better lives lectures have enabled me to be more open minded and to develop my thought process of society in more depth. I aim to be more thought provocative in day to day life and delve into more depth with things that spark a true interest.
Reference:
Hughes, Michael, and Carolyn J. Kroehier (2008) Sociology: The Core. 8thed. Boston: McGraw-Hill