Who am “I”?
Question from the Internet:
“How does the experience of living in a multicultural society affect the development of a person’s identity?”
I think that the most important thing is to understand and accept, that existence in a global, multi-cultural world is not our choice, and it is not the result of human activity.
We evolved into this globally integrated and muti-faceted world, where individuals, nations, cultures, traditions and different qualities intermix as a result of an evolutionary necessity.
We are born from and still exist in nature’s finely balanced and mutually integrated single system. And we have to evolve together with the system if we want to survive in it, if we do not want to “fall off evolution’s bandwagon”.
Thus we can’t escape the global interconnections, and we can’t escape multi-culturalism. And we cannot suppress or erase our diversity or vast differences either.
Instead, we have to learn and practice how to coexist and cooperate above and despite our inherent differences and the instinctive mutual distrust and animosity.
This has nothing to do with our arbitrary and baseless ideologies, philosophies and religions. This is dictated by nature’s fundamental laws that govern the system we exist in.
Thus living in a multi-cultural society, learning how to accept others and coexist with others that are vastly different from us, forming unity with these vastly different and even opposing others has a positive efcect on our individual development and identity.
Only through these multi-faceted, dynamic, mutually accepting and mutually complementing interconnections and cooperation can we actually reveal and refine our personal identity.
”I” am not what “I” am in and of myself. My “true self” is the one that positively and constructively manages this mutual integration and becomes a healthy cell in the single, living “superorganism” that is humanity.