I just thought that, we are all aren't our own person, we are all the result of something. I mean, that from our childhood we are shaped by our parents dscisions, going where they want to go, not seeing what they want us to believe, bringing us up with(out) relegion. Most of these traits stay with many people for the rest of our lives, I heard around 86% of people stick with the same relegion our parentstaught us. We are restricted down a pat of education, where we MUST visit school, we MUST leanr, and we MUST do tests to judge our intelligence. We can't go anyother way, we must learn the subjects the school chooses for us, we must improve grades. And after all that we are left to choose what we want to do at our teenage years, whether we want to start a job, continue into education, leanr under an independent teacher such as carpentry or other specialized subjects. After doing what everyone else wants us to do, we have to choose our own future, when for years we have been told by others what we can do, after so many years of influence from almost everything, and most of that influence was to make us listen to other people, but never ourselves. The real question is: Are any of us our own person?
Yes, those points you mentioned only effect us when we are children and if they do follow you on through out your life I would call that being weak minded. So in short i believe that everyone is their own person but they just have to get past the stereotyping of being a child and teenager.
I always enjoy PaW's Questions. I know that i am my own person because everything you've said there,it might have effected me when i was younger but i've changed completely.I think that having an education is my own choice.I would leave if i wanted to but it's an experiance to meet people and develop.My religion faded as my Pholosophy grew.I am my own person.One thing you forgot to mention PaW was Media.I personally,think about what the media tells me and i anlyis it myself and decide what i believe.
Hmm...good question. Yes, everything around us tries to influence us. But what a person does with their knowledge is what makes them an individual, who makes their own decisions and choses their own path. But some things influence you even if you don't want to believe it. Family, faith, lifestyle...they all affect you and what you chose. So to answer the question. I'm surprised I'm going to say No. There is not one person out there who is not influenced by society, media, or anything, so everyone has part of something else in them.
I would say that though we are influenced by society, raised into things such as religions, what education we get, how our environment affects us, etc, if someone is self-aware, he or she should be able to make decisions and look around at the environment and 'expectations' and take what he/she wants from it. Any animal in nature is raised by parents and reacts to environment and that rearing etc but also can make some decisions. We aren't so much different, even if we are more sentient, take in a lot more and can say we have a lot more to be influenced by. Some people may seem to not be 'individuals' and all but in the end we all are. This is where I would say the word 'real' comes into play over 'fake'. We all know people who just do things because of wanting to fit in stereotypes, share biases with others because it's the 'cool' thing to do and follow every fad out there because it 'must' be done. Others, however, choose to investigate their world, check into things, ponder and discover and also set their own style, way they choose to think and set up their own core beliefs whether it goes along with others or not. There's nothing wrong with following a fashion or fad so long as you actually 'like and enjoy' it and it isn't done by peer pressure to be 'cool' or because that's what others 'demand' of you. Being real with yourself is what makes us capable of being individuals and our own selves. Being drones is what makes us -seem- to not be people owned by our own selves. I do feel a lot better about myself since I did give up on just 'following the crowd' and it didn't make me 'radical' either. I am more at peace for it and can see others who are not at peace because they are doing things they feel are 'expected' of them but yet they really don't want to be there in it. There isn't a thing alive that doesn't have to adjust to an environment etc but at the same time, each animal has its own personality and we do too. We just have to be willing to use the personality and develop it in our fashion. Also, we are our own person when we decide to follow or break away. It's a conscientious choice to do either. A big part of being a child is play and development and examining the world around you. A big part of being a teenager is questioning all those rules and orders that parents and other adults in your life have given you to structure your life. A big part of being an adult is having some of those questions you asked as a teenager answered and molding your life to the way you want to be. Whether it follows a 'norm' or not, we are still individuals. The thing with humans is that we are also very social creatures and mirror many things easily. So this can make lines fuzzy at times.
A lot of the things that you mentioned pertaining to childhood aren't so much shaping what we will be in later life. Obviously they will have some impact (especially with religion and ways to live your life), but they are mainly just setting up a platform from which you can decide what you want to do and be. Of course, there are people out there who don't want to be their own person. They want to be told what to be, what to wear and sometimes even how to think. I think that just comes down to laziness. The main answer to the question (in my opinion anyway) is that we make the decision as of how much of our own person we want to be. But, with like 7 billion people in the world, there is bound to be someone else out there who is quite like you lol
We are our own person to a certain extent I would believe. Although we may have our own views, our own personality and charisma, society sometimes unnessecarily alters that not intentionally, but because they believe it to be 'normal.'
They are normal life experiences. What makes us our own person is how we react to them. What do you define as your own person? We are all unique, and if anyone else went through the same experiences we did, they would be different. I can still remember a defining moment of my life. Back in kindergarten, when Real life Role playing was the norm, a boy came up to me and said "Do you want to play pokemon?". Of course, I had no idea what pokemon was. When my mother came to collect me that day, on a hunch I asked her to record an episode of Pokemon. I did not know it was a TV show, I just took a wild guess. I loved it, obviously. I ended up getting a gameboy for christmas. This led me down a path of nintendo. In turn, that drew me to the internet for assistance. Another defining event was the time I played Sonic adventure 2 Battle at a friend's house (note, I may not have been playing Gamecube if not for my gameboy). I liked it, and a few months later I bought it cheap. I found I really liked the music in it, especially the main theme. So I searched the internet for it. I then found a AMV someone onstructed out of Kingdom hearts to the theme. My other friend had told me about KH before, so I asked to borrow it. This led me here. Let me ask you, is it the question that boy asked, or the way I took a hunch and checked tv for Pokemon that shaped my life?
The choices made in childhood shapes a person, so by saying what was in our childhood, yes, we are all our own people. Just because we are bossed around and taught this and that for a period of our life, it still defines us as our own person.
Someone who has their own independent views, who is not following what others have said, has made their own opinion from facts, and not been influenced by other opinions. Most people in the world are moral, believeing in good and evil, probably many people here, influencing how their form opinions. But most people who are never taught it, are not affected by it. They, in a way have a more independent choice, since they are not restrictd by the black and white of good and evil and see the world more as a grey. If you weren't taught by about good and evil do you really think you'd see the world the same way? Influence from your childhood just makes you more of the person your parents are, more of the people around you, we are a mixture of people. We form opinions, ideas, because of others, meaning we are not ourselves but bits of everyone else.
I don't really agree with this as an explanation. Basically you should just say 'are people drones' or not or something to that affect. If we were hive minded beings and not instead social mammals that raise each other and interact, it would be more of a debate by how you word the explanation. The term you use just doesn't work with the example really. Just because people learn things from others early on doesn't mean people aren't their 'own'. Influences are not deciding on how a person will absolutely turn out or we would tremendously stagnate. Also, many people are taught what is constructive (good) and destructive (bad or evil if that word must be used). As an example again of someone who is more independent, the person will have thought about -why- people say something is bad or good, when can it be good instead of bad, whether it even makes sense to call it a bad thing and if it comes out it's not so bad, the person can utterly call it old people stupidity and dismiss it. That person, whether raised on the morals for years or not would then not be restricted. Even if this sort of person determines that a majority of the time some act is very bad and goes along with the moral crowd, it does not mean the person is not 'his/her own person'. It simply means that either the person investigated and didn't find a reason to be unique from the crowd or the person -chose- to not do anything and kept horse blinders on. In the end it's always a personal choice whether someone wants to be prejudiced, just go with stuff and be rather incomplete. Even in the worst of historic times, the one thing no one can take away from you is your -mind- and the right to think, despite how some religions try to make you believe that the God can hear every little nasty thought in your head to go ahead and make you paranoid. We are our own people. Just sadly, enough people don't bother to explore and just don't care to examine -why- something is or -how- it functions.
dam man all ur questions r hard and smart :) i think im not i started out wantin to be a cop cuz i saw them on movies all the time now im into rap and police doesnt interrest me any longer cuz i listen to rap so what i do and listen to is wat made me i dont think that anyone can be his/her own person cuz they get everything from a person or thing but i could be wrong
I think it depends on what we want and what we decide on doing whether we are truly a person, but honestly, it doesn't matter. We are our own person, personality and body wise. I didn't want to make this post too short, so, I thought I would post something of my own. Just for kicks. Imagine if all adolescence comprehended that factor that we are all under the older generation of decisions. And, for that matter, locked it in their skulls. I don't doubt someone has at least thought once thought of so. "Could that be the result of rebellious students?" So, the school administry would ask. And then, when we look into their eyes, we laugh and say that we are our own perso and we just want to do what we want.
But surely that amalgamation of people is what makes us us? Our genetic make up is only our mother and father's genetics. Nothing else. I firmly believe that if I take two newborn children, and put them through exactly the same experiences, they will grow up different. I think that one of them will take the information differently. Perhaps he might challenge it, or simply ignore some. I believe that this is what makes him unique. An analogy of my own design for you. We are all glass prisms of odd shapes, with some coloured panels. Some are clearer than others. None of us are the same. Light refracted by prisms is shone onto other, (usually younger) prisms, which in turn shine it onto more prisms. This way, the light keeps getting refracted, and beamed around prisms. When the light passes through the prisms, they take it in and alter it. It can be reflected out of the coloured panels, and it can be refracted, or have other colours of light mix with it. Without light from other prisms, a prism will only get neutral light, meaning it can only shine its own spectrum of colours. It will not shine as wide a range of colours as a prism from another. The prisms represent humanity, the light represents our influence, and how we keep passing it on. The coloured panels represent our own thought. This is how I view the way of things being passed on. It is not making us impure, only allowing us to shine a wider ray. While having only a single dominant colour shine through a prism will make the bland character you talk about, if we get a wide range, we can refract and pass it on in our own way.
We are shaped from the influences around us. Although you make good points above in the post, we all make our own decisions. We are all our own person and make our own choices. No matter what.
i usually follow orders from people blindly but my faith is agaisn't my parents so i wont walk the same path they did... they will probably become sad because of that....
I do believe we are our own person. Yes, we do go by hat we are told but at a certain point of life -whether you by 15 or 50- you have to make your OWN decisions. Society, parents, school, peers all influence or being but I can't say they make the person we are. We choose who we are don't we? Physically, we are made up from other people but I don't believe that has anything to do with being our own since I believe a person is what's inside. We all have our personalities, strengths, and such and for sure those couldn't have been decided by Society. While we live, we gather these things on our own.
I believe that people are the sum of their past experiences and memories. Things like genes will definitely have an influence, but in the end we choose what we do, who we want to be and what we do with our lives. As I said before, we are as much our own person as we want to be. As there is with most things, there is no common ground with all of humanity on this issue, some people are completely their own person while others allow others to make the decisions for them.
I agree with this statement. I also think that during childhood, parents do try and mold their children to be what they want them to be. However, later in life you may be influenced by different thnigs or may take things differently than everyone else. So yes, you're being influenced but it was also your choice I suppose. But I do think we are all our own person. If you can find someone who is exactly like me, then I'll reconsider that everyone isn't their own person.
