Thoughts on Identity

Who are we? What makes up our individual personalities? Where lies the secret of our consciousness, particularly our self-consciousness? And most of all, what is the relationship between our identity and nature, our fellow human beings?

To have an identity as a human as it is understood here and further detailed in the basic definition of terms means, firstly, to have a consciousness and create a relationship between this consciousness and the fellow human beings.

Our identity is the sum of our characteristics, experience, memories and ideas. It shows where we resemble our fellow human beings and where we are different.  Each human being has a unique identity gained by his/her development and stored in his/her autobiographical memory. This development continues in his/her future.

Moreover, our identity can build on true insights and principles of reason we follow - allowing us to be partakers in something that exists across space and time - or it can be based on something that is based on error and cooptation. As also further detailed in the basic definitions, there is no doubt that truth in a scientific sense (mathematics, physics etc.) and principles of reason in the sense of a universal ethic could exist. Although man can acquire only parts of it, and due to falsifiability, the question what parts are acquired or whether these parts are only valid  subject to specific overall conditions and/or whether they are only images reflecting or abstractions of reality, must remain open, there is good evidence that some of that can be seen as  independent of time or place and is, therefore, universally valid and everlasting.

Why are we what we are? What are the reasons for forming exactly our identity, and do we change our identity? These are crucial questions. The genetic endowment passed down from parents is substantial for our identity. But the influences of our environment have a major effect and are deeply connected with our genetic endowment. Our human qualities, experience, memories and ideas depend on how we were treated by our parents, on our parents' socioeconomic status, the number of siblings and our friends, the environment in which we grow up and our education opportunities. (17)   This has been proved extensively in case studies with separated adult monozygotic twin pairs having the same genome. New insights from epigenetics (18)    support the strong impact of the environment.

There is no doubt that our identity depends to a large degree on the culture in which we grow up. Just imagine what a different personality we would have developed if in our early childhood our parents had migrated to a distant continent with completely different customs and practices. (19)   Or what a different identity an adopted child growing up in a new culture will develop.

The answer to one question is obvious: our identity develops continuously.