ABSTRACTION

What ls 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 is distinct 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 selfs 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, emotions, and thoughts converge. Finally,
the self is private. Each person sorts out information, felings 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 word.
However, we also see that this potential clash between the self and the external reality is the reason for the
selfto have a clear understanding of what it might be, what it can be, and what it will be. From this
perspective then, one can see that the self is always at the mercy of external circumstances that bump and
colde with 比 ts ever-changing and dynamic, alowing extenal nfuences to ake 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 constructionists argue
for a merged view of the person' and their social context' where the boundaries of one cannot easily be
separated from the boundaries of he 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 a 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 girifriend. 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 calim, al-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 it
also is 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, the French Anthropologist Marcel Mauss has an explanation for this phenomenon. According
to Mauss, every self has two faces: personne and moi. Moi refers to a person's senşe of who he is, his
body. and his basic identity, his biological givenness 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 institution, 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 to 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 professorial 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, Jon
retains who he is, his being Jon-his mo -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 wil notice how suddenly law-abiding the said Filipino
becomes. A lot of Filipinos has anecdotally confirmed this observation. In these varied examples, we have
seen how language has something to do with culture. It is a salient part of 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 research, 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 into 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 given 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 selves. That 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 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 a form of an internal dialogue in
our head. Those who deliberate about moral dilemmas undergo this internal dialog. "Should I do this or
that?" “Butir 1do this, t will be ike this" "Don'tl want the other option?" And so cognitive and emotional
development of child is always a mimicry of how it is done in the social world, in the extermal reality
where he is in. Both Vygotsky and Mead treat the human mind as something that is made, constituted
through language as experienced in the external world and as encountered in dialogs with others. A young
child internalizes values, norms, practices, and social beliefs and more through exposure to these dialogs
that will eventually become part of his individual world. For Mead, this takes 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 a child delineates the
from the rest. Vygotsky, for his part, a child internalizes real-ife dialogs that he has had with others, with
his family, his primary caregiver, or his playmates. They apply this to their mental and practical prbblems
along with the social and cultural infusions brought about by the said dialogs. Can you notice how
children eventually become what they watch? How children can easily adapt ways of cartoon characters
they are exposed to?

Self in Families

Apart from the anthropological and psychological basis for the relationship between the self and the
social world, the sociplogical 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 we 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 thie 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
uneohscious. 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 infernalizing due to parental or familial 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 alreadya miracle. His being a fuly human person witha sense of
selfhood is a different story though. The usual teleserye plot of kids getting swapped in the hosptal and
getting reared by a different family gives an obvious manifestation of the point being made in this section.
One is who he 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 selif 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, a 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 thę 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 mán in a family is expected to head the family and
hold it in. 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 mothers take 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 womenäs 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. 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 a 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 this social constructivism. The Filipino language is incredibly interesting 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 a 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 a 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."