Republic of The Philippines

Commission on Higher Education

Region V
BAAO COMMUNITY COLLEGE
San Juan, Baao, Camarines Sur
E-mail: baaocommunitycollege@gmail.com
Telefax (054) 455 – 7015

Understanding
The Self
RICARDO B. BOLALIN JR.
Instructor
OPENING PRAYER
 Lesson 2:
The Self, Society, and
Culture
Lesson Objectives
▪ At the end of this lesson, you
should be able to:
▪ explain the relationship between
and among the elf, society, and
culture;
▪ describe and discuss the
different ways by which
society and culture shape the
self;
▪ compare and contrast how the
self can be influenced by the
different institutions in the
society; and
▪ examine one’s self against
the different views of self
that were discussed in the
class.
 “
Discussion
▪ Across time and history,
the self has been debated,
discussed, and fruitfully or
otherwise conceptualized
by different thinkers in
philosophy.
▪ Eventually, with the advent of
the social sciences, it became
possible for new ways and
paradigms to reexamine the
true nature of the self.
▪ People put halt on speculative
debates on the relationship
between the body and soul,
eventually renamed body and
the mind.
▪ Thinkers just eventually got
tired of focusing on the long-
standing debate since sixth
century BC between the
relationships these two have is
less important than the fact
that there is a self.
▪ The debate shifted into another
locus of discussion. Given the new
ways of knowing and the growth
of the social sciences, it became
possible for new approaches to
the examination of the self to
come to the fore.
▪ One of the loci, if not the most
important axis of analysis is
the relationship between the
self and the external world.
▪ What is the relationship between
external reality and the self?
▪ In the famous Tarzan story, the little
boy named Tarzan was left in the
middle of the forest.
▪ Rowing up, he never had an
interaction with any other human
being but apes and other animals.
▪ Tarzan grew up acting strangely
like apes and unlike human
persons.
▪ Tarzan became an animal, in
effect.
▪ His sole interaction with them
made him just like one of them.
▪ Disappointedly, human persons
will not develop as human
persons without intervention.
▪ This story which was supposed
to be based on real life,
challenges the long-standing
notion of human persons being
special and being a particular
kind of being in the spectrum of
living entities.
▪ We may be gifted with intellect
and the capacity to rationalize
things but at the end of the day,
our growth and development and
consequentially, our selves are
truly products of our interaction
with external reality.
▪ How much of you are essential?
▪ How much of who you are now a product
of your society, community, and family?
▪ Has your choice of school affected yourself
now?
▪ Had you been born into a differently family
and schooled in a different college, how
much of who you are now would change?
 Activity #3
My self through
the years
My self through the
years
Paste a picture of you when you
were in elementary, in high school,
and now that you are in college.
Below the picture, list down your
salient characteristics that you
remember.
My Elementary Self
My High School Self
My College Self
 ANALYSIS

After having examined your “self”

in its different stages, fill out the
table below:
 Similarities in all Differences in my Possible reasons
stages of my “self” “self” across the for the differences
three stages of in me
my life
 “
What is the Self?
▪ The self, in contemporary
literature and even common
sense, is commonly defined by
the following characteristics:
▪ “separate,
▪ self-contained,
▪ independent,
▪ consistent,
▪ unitary,
▪ and private”
▪ (Stevens 1996).
▪ By separate, it is meant that the
self from other selves.
▪ The self is always unique and has
its own identity.
▪ One cannot be another person.
▪ Even twins are distinct from
each other.
▪ Second, self is also self-
contained and independent
because in itself it can exist.
▪ Its distinctness allows it to be
self-contained with its own
thoughts, characteristics, and
volition.
▪ It does not require any other
self for it to exist.
▪ It is consistent because it has
a personality that is enduring
and therefore can be
expected to persist for quite
some time.
▪ Its consistency allows it to be
studied, described, and
measured.
▪ Consistency also means that a
particular self’s traits,
characteristics, tendencies,
and potentialities are more or
less the same.
▪ Self is unitary in that it is the
center of all experiences and
thoughts that run through a
certain person.
▪ It is like the chief command
post in an individual where all
processes within the self is
private.
▪ Each person sorts out
information, feelings, and
emotions, and thought
processes within the self.
▪ This whole process is never
accessible to anyone but the
self.
▪ This last characteristic of the self
being private suggests that the self is
isolated from the external world.
▪ It lives within its own world.
▪ However, we also see that this
potential clash between the self and
the external reality is the reason for
the self to have a clear understanding
of what it might be.
▪ From the perspectives then, one
can see that the self is always at the
mercy of external circumstances
that bump and collide with it.
▪ It is ever-changing and dynamic,
allowing external influences to take
part in its shaping.
▪ The concern then of this lesson is
in understanding the vibrant
relationship between the self and
external reality.
▪ This perspective is known as the
social constructionist perspective.
▪ “Social constructionist argues for
a merged view of ‘the person’
and ‘their social context’ where
the boundaries of one cannot
easily be separated from the
boundaries of the other” (Stevens
1996).
▪ Social constructivists argue that the
self should not be seen as a static
entity that stays constant through and
through.
▪ Rather, the self has to be seen as
something that is in unceasing flux, in
constant struggle with external reality
and is malleable in its dealings with
society.
▪ The self is always in participation
with social life and its identity
subjected to influences here and
there.
▪ Having these perspectives
considered should draw one into
concluding that the self is truly
multifaceted
▪ Consider a boy named Jon. Jon is
a math professor at a Catholic
university for more than a decade
now.
▪ Jon has a beautiful wife whom he
met in college, Joan.
▪ Joan was Jon’s first and last
girlfriends.
▪ Apart from being a husband, Jon
is also blessed with two doting
kids, a son and a daughter.
▪ He also sometimes serves in the
church too as a lector and a
commentator.
▪ As a man of different roles, one can
expect Jon to change and adjust his
behaviors, ways, and even language
depending on his social situation.
▪ When Jon is in the university, he
conducts himself in a matter that
befits his title as a professor.
▪ As a husband, Jon can be intimate
and touchy.
▪ Joan considers him sweet,
something that his students will
never conceive him to be.
▪ His kids fear him.
▪ As a father, Jon can be stern.
▪ As a lector and commentator, on
the other hand, his church mates
knew him as a guy who is calm,
all-smiles, and always ready to
lend a helping hand to anyone in
need.
▪ This short story is not new to
most of us.
▪ We ourselves play different roles,
act in different ways depending
on our circumstances.
▪ Are we being hypocritical in doing
so?
▪ Are we even conscious of our
shifting selves?
▪ According to what we have so far,
this is not only normal but is also
acceptable and expected.
▪ The self is capable of morphing
and fitting itself into any
circumstances it finds itself in.
 “
The Self and Culture
▪ Remaining the same person and
turning chameleon by adapting to
one’s context seems paradoxical.
▪ However, French Anthropologist
Marcel Mauss has an explanation
for this phenomenon.
▪ According to Mauss,
▪ every self has two faces:
personne and moi.
▪ Moi refers to the person’s sense
of who he is, his body, and his
basic identity, his biological
giveness.
▪ Moi is a person’s basic identity.
▪ Personne, on the other hand, is
composed of the social concepts of
what it means to be who he is.
▪ Personne has much to do with what it
means to live in a particular family, a
particular religion, a particular
nationality, and how to behave given
expectations and influences from
others.
▪ In the story above, Jon might
have a moi but certainly, he has
to shift personne from time to
time to adapt his social situation.
▪ He knows who he is and more or
less, he is confident that he has a
unified, coherent self.
▪ However, at some point, he has to
sport his stern professional look.
Another day, he has to be the doting
but strict father that he is. Inside his
bedroom, he can play goofy with his
wife, Joan. In all this and more, Joan
retains who he is. His being Jon—his
moi—that part of him that is stable
and static all throughout.
▪ This dynamics and capacity for
different personne can be
illustrated better cross-culturally.
▪ An overseas Filipino worker
(OFW) adjusting to life in another
country is a very good case study.
▪ In the Philippines, many people
unabashedly violate jaywalking
rules.
▪ A common Filipino treats road,
even national ones, as basically
his and so he just merely crosses
whenever and wherever.
▪ When the same Filipino visits
another country with strict traffic
rules, say Singapore, you will notice
how suddenly law-abiding the said
Filipino becomes.
▪ A lot of Filipinos has anecdotally
confirmed this observation.
▪ The same malleability can be
seen in how some men easily
transform into sweet, docile guys
when trying to woe and court a
particular woman and suddenly
just change rapidly after hearing a
sweet “yes.”
▪ This cannot be considered a
conscious change on the part of
the guy, or on the part of the law-
abiding Filipino in the first
example.
▪ The self simply morphed
according to the circumstances
and contexts.
▪ In the Philippines, Filipinos tend
to consider their territory as a
part of who they are.
▪ This includes considering their
immediate surrounding as part
of them, thus the perennial
“tapat ko, linis ko.”
▪ Filipinos most probably do not
consider national roads as
something external to who they
are.
▪ It is a part of them and they are a
part of it, thus crossing the road
whenever and wherever becomes
a no-brainer.
▪ In another country, however, the
Filipino recognizes that he is in a
foreign territory where nothing
technically belongs to him.
▪ He has to follow the rules or else
he will be apprehended.
▪ Language is another interesting
aspect of social constructivism.
▪ The Filipino language is incredibly
interested to talk about.
▪ The way by which we articulate our
love is denoted by the phrase,
“Mahal kita.”
▪ This, of course, is the Filipino
translation of “I love you.”
▪ The Filipino brand of this
articulation of love, unlike in
English, does not specify the
subject and the object of love;
there is no specification of who
loves and who is loved.
▪ There is simply a word for love,
mahal, and the pronoun kita, which is
the second person pronoun that
refers to the speaker and the one
being talked to.
▪ In the Filipino language, unlike in
English, there is no distinction
between the lover and the beloved.
They are one.
▪ Interesting too is the word, mahal.
▪ In Filipino the word can mean both
“love” and “expensive.”
▪ In our language, love is intimately
bound with value, with being
expensive, being precious.
▪ Something expensive is valuable.
▪ Someone whom we love is valuable
to us.
▪ The Sanskrit origin of the word love is
“lubh,” which means desire.
▪ Technically, love is desire.
▪ The Filipino word for it has another
intonation apart from mere desire,
valuable.
▪ Another interesting facet of our
language is its being gender-
neutral.
▪ In English, Spanish, and other
languages, the distinction is clear
between a third person male and
third person female pronoun.
▪ He and she; el and ella. In Filipino,
it is plain, “siya.”
▪ There is no specification of
gender.
▪ Our language does not specify
between male and female. We
both call it “siya.”
▪ In these varied examples, we
have seen how language has
sometimes to do with culture.
▪ It is salient part of the culture and
ultimately, has a tremendous
effect in our crafting of the self.
▪ This might also be one of the
reasons why cultural divide
spells out differences in how
one regards oneself.
▪ In one search, it was found that
North Americans are more likely
to attribute being unique to
themselves and claim that they
are better than most people in
doing what they love doing.
▪ Japanese people, on the
other hand, have been
seen to display a degree of
modesty.
▪ If one finds himself born
and reared in a particular
culture, one definitely tries
to fit in a particular mold.
▪ If a self is born in a
particular society or
culture, the self will have
to adjust according to its
exposure.
 “
The Self and the
Development of the
Social World
▪ So how do people actively
produce their social worlds?
▪ How do children growing up
become social beings?
▪ How can a boy turn out to just
be like an ape?
▪ How do twins coming out
from the same mother turn
out to be terribly different
when giving up for adoption?
▪ More than his givenness
(personality, tendencies, and
propensities, among others),
one is believed to be in active
participation in the shaping of
the self.
▪ Most often, we think the
human persons are just
passive actors in the whole
process of the shaping of the
selves.
▪ The men and women are born
with particularities that they can
no longer change.
▪ Recent studies, however, indicate
that men and women in their
growth and development engage
actively in the shaping of the self.
▪ The unending terrain of the
metamorphosis of the self is
mediated by language.
▪ “Language as both a publicly shared
and privately utilized symbol system
is the site where the individual and
the social make and remake each
other” (Schwartz, White, and Lutz
1993).
 “
Mead and Vygotsky
▪ For Mead and Vygotsky , the
way that human persons
develop is with the use of
language acquisition and
interaction with others.
▪ The way that we process
information is normally
form of an internal
dialogue in our head.
▪ Those who deliberate about
moral dilemmas undergo this
internal dialog.
▪ “Should I do this or that?”
▪ “But if do this, it will be like
this.” “Don’t I want the other
option?’
▪ And so cognitive and
emotional development of a
child is always a mimicry of
how it is done in the social
world, in the external reality
where he is in.
▪ Both Vygotsky and Mead treat
the human mind as something
that is made, constituted through
as experienced in the external
world and as encountered in
dialogs with others.
▪ A young child internalizes values,
norms, and practices, and social
beliefs and more through
exposure to these dialogs that
will eventually become part of his
individual world.
▪ For Mead, this take place as a child
assumes the “other” through
language and role-play.
▪ A child conceptualizes his notion of
“self” through this. Can you notice
how little children are fond of
playing role-play with their toys?
▪ How they make scripts and
dialogs for their toys as they play
with them?
▪ According to Mead, it is through
this that that a child delineates
the “I” from the rest.
▪ Vygotsky, for his part, a child
internalizes real-life dialogs that
he has had with others, with his
family, his primary caregiver, or
his playmates.
▪ They apply this to their mental and
practical problems along with the
social and cultural infusions
brought about by the said dialogs.
▪ Can you notice how children
eventually become of the cartoon
characters they are expose to?
 “
Self in Families
▪ Apart from the anthropological
and psychological basis for the
relationship between the self and
the social world, the sociological
likewise struggled to understand
the real connection between the
two concepts.
▪ In doing so, sociologists
focus on the different
institutions and powers at
play in the society.
▪ Among these, the most
prominent is the family.
▪ While every child is born with
certain givenness, disposition
coming from his parents’ genes
and general condition of life, the
impact of one’s family is still
deemed as a given in
understanding the self.
▪ The kind of family that we are
born in, the resources
available to us (human,
spiritual, economic), and the
kind of development that will
have will certainly affect us as
we go through life.
▪ As a matter of evolutionary fact,
human persons are one of those
beings whose importance of
family cannot be denied.
▪ Human beings are born virtually
helpless and the dependency
period of a human baby to its
parents for nurturing is relatively
longer than most other animals.
▪ Learning therefore is critical in our
capacity to actualize our potential
of becoming humans.
▪ In trying to achieve the goal of
becoming a fully realized
human, a child enters a
system of relationships, most
important of which is the
family.
▪ Human persons learn the ways of
living and therefore their selfhood by
being in a family.
▪ It is what a family initiates a person to
become that serves as the basis for
this person’s progress.
▪ Babies internalize ways and styles
that they observe from their family.
▪ By imitating, for example, the
language of its primary agents of
rearing its family, babies learn the
language.
▪ The same is true for ways of behaving.
Notice how kids reared in a respectful
environment becomes respectful as
well and the converse if raised in a
converse family.
▪ Internalizing behavior may
either be conscious or
unconscious.
▪ Table manners or ways of
speaking to elders are things
that are possible to teach and
therefore, are consciously
learned by kids.
▪ Some behaviors and attitudes, on
the other hand, may be indirectly
taught through rewards and
punishments.
▪ Others, such as sexual behavior or
how to confront emotions, are
learned through subtle means, like
the tone of the voice or intonation
of the models.
▪ It is then clear at this point that
those who develop and eventually
grow to become adult who still did
not learn simple matters like basic
manners of conduct failed in
internalizing due to parental or
familiar failure to initiate them into
the world.
▪ Without a family, biologically and
sociologically, a person may not
even survive or become a human
person.
▪ Go back to the Tarzan example.
▪ In more ways than one, the survival
of Tarzan in the midst of the forest
is already a miracle.
▪ His being a fully human
person with a sense of
selfhood is a different story
though.
▪ The usual teleserye plot of
kids getting swapped in the
hospital and getting reared
by a different family gives an
obvious manifestation of the
point being made in this
section.
 “
One is who is because of
his family for the most
part.
 “
Gender and the Self
▪ Another important aspect of
the self is gender.
▪ Gender is one of those loci of
the self that is subject to
alteration, change, and
development.
▪ We have seen in the past
years how people fought
hard for the right to
express, validate, and
assert their gender
expression.
▪ Many conservatives may frown
upon this and insist on the
biological.
▪ However, from the point-of-view
of the social sciences and the
self, it is important to give one
the leeway to find, express, and
live his identity.
▪ This forms part of selfhood that one
cannot just dismiss.
▪ One maneuvers into the society and
identifies himself as who he is by also
taking note of gender identities.
▪ A wonderful anecdote about Leo
Tolstoy’s wife that can solidify this
point is narrated below:
▪ Sonia Tolstoy, the wife of the famous
Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, wrote
when she was twenty-one, “I am
nothing but a miserable crushed
worm, whom no one wants, whom no
one loves, a useless creature with
morning sickness, and a big belly, two
rotten teeth,
▪ and a bad temper, s battered
sense of dignity, and a love which
nobody wants and which nearly
drives me insane.”
▪ A few years later she wrote, “It
makes me laugh to read over this
diary.
▪ It’s so full of contradictions,
and one would think that I
was such an unhappy woman.
▪ Yet is there a happier woman
than I?” (Tolstoy 1975)
▪ This account illustrates that our
gender partly determines how we
see ourselves in the world.
▪ Oftentimes, society forces a
particular identity unto us
depending on our sex and/or
gender.
▪ In the Philippines, husbands for the most
part are expected to provide for the family.
▪ The eldest man in a family is expected to
head the family and hold it.
▪ Slight modifications have been on the way
due to feminism and lesbian gay, bisexual
and transgender (LGBT) activism but for the
most part, patriarchy has remained to be at
work.
▪ Nancy Chodorow, a feminist,
argues that because mother
takes the role of taking care of
children, there is a tendency for
girls to imitate the same and
reproduce the same kind of
mentality of women as care
providers in the family.
▪ The way that little girls are given
dolls instead of guns or any
other toys or are encouraged to
play with makeshift kitchen also
reinforces the notion of what
roles they should take and the
selves they should develop.
▪ In boarding schools for girls,
young women are encouraged
to act like fine ladies, are
trained to behave in a fashion
that befits their status as
women in society.
▪ Men on the other hand, in the
periphery of their own family, are
taught early on how to behave like
a man.
▪ This normally includes holding in
one’s emotion, being tough,
fatalistic, not to worry about
danger, and admiration for hard
physical labor.
▪ Masculinity is learned by integrating
a young boy in a society.
▪ In the Philippines, young boys had
to undergo circumcision not just for
the original, clinical purpose of
hygiene but also to assert their
manliness in the society.
 “
Circumcision plays
another social role by
initiating young boys into
manhood.
▪ The gendered self is then
shaped within a particular
context of time and space.
▪ The sense of self that is being
taught makes sure that an
individual fits in a particular
environment.
▪ This is dangerous and detrimental
in the goal of truly finding one’s
self, self-determination, and
growth of the self.
▪ Gender has to be personally
discovered and asserted and not
dictated by culture and the
society.
 Activity #4
Application &
Assessment
Application &
Assessment
Answer the following
questions cogently but
honestly.
Write your answers in the
space provided.
1. How would you describe your
self?
2. What are the influence of family
in your development as an
individual?
3. Think of a time when you felt you
were your “true self.” what made you
think you were truly who you are
during this time of your life?
4. Following the question above, can
you provide a time when you felt you
were not living your “true self”? Why
did you have to live a life like that?
What did you do about it?
5. What social pressure help
shape your self? Would you have
wanted it otherwise?
6. What aspects of your self do
you think may be changed or you
would like to change?
Thanks!