What Cultural Identities Are Common in Your Community?

What Cultural Identities Are Common in Your Community?

 

What cultural identities are common in your community?

Introduction

This essay covers the definition of cultural identity, human’s common cultural identities and the importance of cultural identity and a conclusion: your real value is to be yourself.

What is cultural identity?

Cultural identity is the identity or feeling of belonging to a group. It is part of a person’s self-conception and self-perception and is related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture. In this way, cultural identity is both characteristic of the individual but also of the culturally identical group of members sharing the same cultural identity. Cultural identity is similar to and overlaps with identity politics.【reference from:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_identity】.

How one’s common identities express in different situation?

Middleton, British dramatist said: “The world is a stage, and all kinds of roles were played.” “All roles are not identified by themselves, but given by the objective society.” picked from the Social Psychology. From these quotations we can see that a person can have variety of cultural identities based on different background, language, religion, age, gender, ethnicity and job, etc. Things will change under different circumstances. For examples: in your family, you are sister and brother, daughter and son, mother and father; but in the school, you may be classmates, roommates, colleagues, students and teachers; besides, in your own workplace, you can be colleagues, leaders and executives.  Perhaps it is not clear for some of us or rather not so understand. Let me make it simple. I am a Chinese from a national level; I am a classmates of the students from my class; I am a student of my teacher; what’s more, I am also my parents’ daughter and I am a sister of my brothers. The above said identities are a person’s common cultural identities, which represents that people plays different roles in different situation.

“A role that is associated with a particular location and patterns of behavior, in other words, every social role on behalf of a set standard of social behavior. You can also say the role but is social division, the functions of the individual, it is pointed out that the individual in social status and agency will contact position, also represents the identity of each person (From Social Psychology)”. One cannot live cut off from society. Therefore, in order to keep the society run normally and orderly, people in different identities have their own duties as well as rights, and they get lots of rules to keep. In this case, your identities decide your rights, altitude, status as well as duties. In our life, work, or even in the process of communication with others, what role you play can be located your place in your life. Like, you are the household head in your family and you have Voice and you get the power to make decision in some cases especially in some important issues. Such as your children’s education or your family’s investment, etc. But on the other hand, you also a common worker in your company and you even have no rights to take part in the board to discuss and make major decision. What you can do is obey the upper superior’s orders and do your work. Keep a clear head, play your role well, and fulfill your responsibilities. Don’t and never play your trick as it in your family when you are am employee in the company. Take a famous star singer, Zhang Ziyi as an example. She said: “In the red carpet when I was the identity of the star, the representative was a kind of image. But that’s just a piece of work for me, a kind of identity or a role, not my all. In such an environment, I must do star Zhang Ziyi should do things, in that moment I was portrayed as that image, I show the perfect attitude, cannot wear my life like this. From I set foot on the red carpet at the moment to the end, which is my working time.”

Why is the cultural identity important?

Cultural identity is important because it acts as a way to preserve history and provides individuals a place where they feel they belong.  Firstly, cultural identity is established when a group of people continually follows the same sets of social norms and behavior as those of earlier generations. Secondly, an individual’s cultural identity is influenced by the following factors: such as ancestry, social class, educational level, family, language; political opinions and profession, etc. Finally, people with a strong sense of culture identity tend to feel a sense of security and belonging, according to the Social Report. People with a strong and defined cultural identity typically show positive outcomes in terms of education and health. They are more inclined to have social networks to depend on for support, as well as to feel a sense of trust with people within those networks.

Sometimes, some people identify culturally with a variety of subcultures, and cultural identity itself can change over time as the beliefs and behavior of individuals and groups change. Acknowledging the breadth of cultural identity is crucial to any efforts to move beyond racism and to bring about reconciliation between cultural groups, as Racism. However, using cultural identity to build barriers between different subcultures can lead to intolerance and exclusion from society. 【reference from:http://www.ask.com/world-view/cultural-identity-important-5a81e50af716653d 】Please keep always from this kind of bad behavior and return the cultural identity a fair and clear development environment.

Your real value is to be yourself!

One should be self-realization before he/she realizes his/her own value, in other words, you have to know yourself totally if you want to achieve your value. Moreover, your value was decided by what role you play and how good you do. As a famous German poet Schiller said: “The real value is not in the stage of life, but in the role we play.” You can only through doing well your job at your position, create wealth to reflect your value. Hypothetically, suppose you are a scientist, you only need to concentrate on research, and strive to contribute to human science. To be yourself and to make full use of your professional knowledge is the best way to realize your own value.

 

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