THE SELF,

Module 3
SOCIETY, USELF
AND
CULTURE
The little boy named TARZAN
was left in the middle of the
forest. Growing up, he never had
an interaction with any other
TARZAN
human being but apes and other STORY
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.
GET
• Human persons will not develop as human persons without
PROM OTED
intervention.
in• the off ic
This story, e was supposed to be based on real life,
which
challenges the long-standing notion of human persons being
special and being a particular kind of being in the spectrum
of living entities.
 • GET
We may be gifted with intellect and the capacity to
PROM OTED
rationalize things but at the end of the day, our growth and
indevelopment
the off ic ande consequently, our selves are truly products
of our interaction with external reality.
The self, in contemporary literature and
even more common sense, is commonly
defined by the following characteristics:
separate
self-contained WHAT
independent IS THE
consistent
SELF?
unitary
private
  the self is distinct from other
selves
 the self is always unique and as
SEPARA its own identity
TE  one cannot be another person
 even twins are distinct from
each other
  in itself it can exist
SELF-  its distinctness allows it to be
self-contained with its own
CONTAINE thoughts, characteristics, and

D& volition
 it does not require any other self
INDEPEND for it to exist

ENT
  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,
CONSISTE described and measured

NT  a particular self’s traits, characteristics,

tendencies and potentialities are more or
less the same
  it is the center of all experiences and
thoughts that run through a certain person
 it is like the chief command post in an

UNITAR individual where all processes, emotions,

Y and thoughts converge

  each person sorts out information,
feelings and emotions, and thought
processes within the self

PRIVA  this whole process is never accessible to

anyone but the self

TE  the self is isolated from the external world

 it lives within its own world
 concerned about understanding the
vibrant relationship between the
self and external reality SOCIAL
 merged view of “the person” and CONSTRU
“their social context” where the C-TIONIST
boundaries of one cannot easily be
PERSPECTI
separated from the boundaries of
VE
the other
 the self should not be seen as a static entity that stays constant
through and through
 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
E xample:

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 girlfriend. Apart from being a
husband, Jon is also blessed with two
doting kids, a son and a daughter.
E xample:

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.
E xample:

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.
E xample:

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.
We ourselves play different roles, USELF
act in different ways depending on
our circumstances. Are we WHAT
conscious of our shifting selves?
 The self is capable of changing IS
THE
and fitting itself into any
circumstances it finds itself in.

SELF?
 Remaining the same person and USELF
turning chameleon by adapting to
one’s context seems paradoxical
(untrue). However, the French
WHAT
Anthropologist Marcel Mauss has
an explanation for this
IS
phenomenon.
Every self has two faces: Moi and
THE
Personne SELF?
 a person’s sense of who he

Moi is, his body and his basic

identity, his biological
givenness a person’s basic
identity
 composed of the social concepts of
what it means to be who he is has
much to do with what it means to live

Personne 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, 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 professional look.
 Another day, he has to be 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 moi – that
part of him that is stable and static all throughout.
“This dynamics and capacity
for different personne can be
illustrated better cross-
c u l t u r a l l y. ”
An overseas Filipino worker (OFW) adjusting to life

EXAMPL
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

ES
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
g u y, o r o n t h e p a r t o f t h e l a w -
abiding Filipino (first example).
 “The self simply changed
according to the circumstances
and contexts.”
 In the Philippines,
Filipinos tend to consider
their territory as a part of
who they are. This includes
EXAMP LE 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
EXAMP LE 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
EXAMP LE 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
EXAMP LE love is denoted by the
: phrase, “Mahal kita”. This
is the Filipino translation
of “I love you”.
 The Filipino brand of this
articulation of love, unlike
in English, does not
EXAMP LE specify the subject and the
: object of love; there is no
specification of who loves
and who is loved.
 In Filipino, the word can mean
both “love” and “expensive”.
In our language, love is
EXAMP LE 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.
 Filipino Language is also “gender-
NOTES
neutral”. In English, Spanish, and other
languages, the distinction is clear between There is no
a third person male and third person specification of
gender. Our language
female pronoun. does not specify
between male and
ENGLISH SPANISH FILIPINO female. We both call
he and she el and ella siya it “siya”.
 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
The Self and mother turn out to be terribly different
when given up for adoption?
The More than his givenness (personalities,
tendencies & propensities), one is
Development believed to be in active participation in
THE SHAPING OF THE SELF.
of the Social
Men and women in their growth and
Wo r l d 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”.
 The way that human persons develop is NOTES
with the use of language acquisition and
interaction with others. The way that we
G. H.
process information is normally a form of M E AD &
an internal dialogue in our head. Those who L . S.
deliberate about moral dilemmas undergo VGOT SKY
this internal dialog.
“Should I do this or

that?” But if I do

this, it will be like

Example:
this”. Don’t I want

the other option?

 The 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.
 They 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.
 This takes place as a child assumes the
“other” through language and role-play.
• A child conceptualizes his notion

For
of “self” through this.
EXAMPLE:

Mead
Little children are fond of playing role-
play with their toys. 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 “I” from
the rest.
a child internalizes real-life
dialogs that he has had with
others, with his family, his

Lev
primary caregiver, or his
playmates.
• They apply this to their
mental and practical
problems along with the Vgotsky
social and cultural infusions
brought about by the said
dialogs.
 Children eventually become

Exa mple : what they watch. Children can

easily adapt ways of cartoon
characters they are exposed to.
 While every child is born
with certain givenness,
disposition coming from
his parents’ genes and
SELF IN general condition of life,
FAMILIES the impact of one’s family
is still deemed as a given
in understanding
 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.

THE S ELF. 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.
• In trying to achieve the goal of EXAMPLE
becoming a fully realized human, a
child enters a system of Kids reared in
relationships, most important of
a respectful
which is the family.
• By imitating the language of its environment
primary agents of rearing its becomes
family, babies learn the language.
The same is true for ways of respectful as
behaving. well.
 Internalizing
behavior may Table manners or ways of speaking to
elders are things that are possible to
either be teach and are consciously learned by
kids. Some behaviors and attitudes
may be indirectly taught through
conscious or rewards and punishments.

unconscious.
 Others, such as Those who develop and
sexual behavior or eventually grow to become adult who
still did not learn simple matters like
how to confront basic manners of conduct failed in
emotions are learned internalizing due to parental or
familial failure to initiate them into
through subtle the world.
means, like the tone
of the voice or
intonation of the
 Without a family, biologically &
models. sociologically, a person may not even survive
or become a human person.
“GENDER AND
THE SELF”
 is one of those loci of the self that is

Gender subject to alteration, change and

development.
In the past years, people have fought hard for the right to express, validate,
and assert their gender expression.

People have fought hard for the right to express, validate and assert their
gender expression. Many conservatives may frown upon this and insist on the
biological.

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.
 “I am nothing but a miserable crushed
worm, whom no one wants, whom no one
Anecdote
loves, useless creature with morning
sickness, and a big belly, two rotten teeth, S o n i a To l s t o y,
and a bad temper, a battered sense of the wife of the
integrity, and a love which nobody wants famous Russian
and which nearly drives me insane.” novelist Leo
To l s t o y, w r o t e
A few years later, she wrote, “It makes me when she was
laugh to read over this diary. It’s so full of twenty-one
contradictions, and one would think that I
was such an unhappy woman. Yet is there a
happier woman than I?”
 “This illustrates that our
gender partly determines how
we see ourselves in the world.
Society forces a particular
identity unto us depending on
our sex and/or gender”
 “This is dangerous and
detrimental in the goal of truly
f i n d i n g o n e ’s s e l f , s e l f -
determination, and growth of
the self. Gender has to be
personally discovered and
asserted and not dictated by
c u l t u r e a n d t h e s o c i e t y. ”
 EXAMPL
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 in.

ES
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.
• a feminist, argues that
because mothers take the role of
taking care of children, there is a
tendency for girls to imitate the Nancy
same and reproduce the same
Chodoro
kind of mentality of women as
care providers in the family. w
 The way the 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 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

Exampl by initiating young boys into manhood.

 The gendered self is shaped within a

e particular context of time and space. The
sense of self that is being taught makes
sure that an individual fit in a particular
environment.
SUN M ON TUE WED THU FRI SAT

FINAL
1 2 3 4 5 TERM
EXAM AND
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
QUIZZES
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
SCHEDULE
LON G Q UIZ- 3 r d
Week of MA Y
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
EX A M - 4 T h Week of
MA Y
27 28 29 30
PROJECT - F I L M 3 r d
Week of MA Y
THANK Prepared by:

YOU AND CHERRY ANN S.

FABILLARAN
SEE YOU
AROUND!