Environmental Forces and The Individual - Assignment Example

ENVIRONMENTAL FORCES AND THE INDIVIDUAL Environmental forces and the formation of Individual Identity The formation of the identity of an individual is dependent, apart from the intrinsic nature of his or her own self, on that of the social factors that are a part of the society that surrounds him or her. Various factors, such as class, gender, race and the increasing use of technology makes people the way they are. Societies have different ways of forming people. But today, these four factors are crucial in understanding the way societies around the world function and form the lives of those that live within it.

Race plays a major role in shaping today’s world and the people who live in it. Commentators like Marc Aronson have pointed to how a multicultural environment can bring about positive as well as negative effects in a society as a result of the intermixing of these races (Aronson, 2007). These lead to the development of various stereotypes that lead to prejudiced treatments of men and women of a particular community. In most cases, this sparks off discontent against the dominant group in a community and this leads to enmities being built up.

As a result of the historical mistrust that has been built up due to various forces of colonialism, ethnicities today are intolerant of each other. This makes the individuals in a community devoid of fellow-feeling and hotbeds of hatred and violence, even though they are not directly responsible for it. Class, as we know, has sparked off some of the most violent revolutions that we have seen in the world. The consciousness of being a part of a greater collective, characterized by the relative ENVIRONMENTAL FORCES AND THE INDIVIDUAL presence or absence of wealth is one of the most important determinants of one’s character.

Class-relations determine all aspects of one’s life, including the relationships that one builds during one’s lifetime. The presence of the devices and amenities that we have today depends on the manner in which the organization of class is done in the modern world. We see the discrimination between people of the same community on the basis of class, highlighting to us how important a social force it is. Unlike class, gender discrimination does not help in the formation of a single united group of dissidents, since the oppressors usually form a part of the same family as the oppressed, making gender one of the most important forces that determine the world and its functioning.

Raewyn Connell attributes this to an inability to rise above the gender stereotypes that are a part of local cultures. People remain chained to the roles that are a part of their own culture, in the belief that it is ‘natural’ and unchangeable (Connell, 2009). This leads to the oppressed and the oppressors internalizing the brutal systems of patriarchy that are imposed upon them. To a great extent, gender differences have been smoothed over through the intervention of technology, which allows a certain kind of parity, because it creates a world that is run by mental skills and not brute force.

Technology allows people to communicate with each other in ways that were unthinkable till the recent past. Social networking sites have created a revolution in the field of communication and people today have two realities embedded within the same person, the real self ENVIRONMENTAL FOR