Question

What is identity? Why is identity so important? What makes up one's identity? Is it the same for each individual? Is it different? Moreover, what makes up your own identity?

Answer 1

Identity can be defined as the distinguishing quality, belief, expression,looks, etc. which makes looking or pointing at them easy. It could be defined for an individual or a group.

The importance of it lies in the fact for easy identification among the crowd.

For example, if I am in a class of 20 students. My teacher wishes to call me for taking me to the Principal's office. Now, if I don't have a name (identity), my teacher has to go through the trouble of either reaching out to me physically or making weird sounds hoping I would look towards her and then I would go with her.

So, identification is required for easy recognition of any individual or group as a whole.

One's identity could be made up of many things like his/her character, beliefs, dress-up, looks, race, religion, region,school or college one goes too, company one works for, etc. The sole purpose being able to point out among a bunch of individuals or a group among groups of people.

It should be different for every individual. But many a times it may seem to be the same. Like there are English speaking people living in US and also in UK. Collectively they are referred to as western cultural group.

My identity could constitute many a thing like I am an Englishman, so I am a white person, a male, 25 years of age named Bryan Adams living in Columbus, OH, United States. I am a postgraduate with specialization in Structural Engineering from MIT. I am Catholic Christian. I am recently working with Apple Inc. (All the details are just for reference, any of them is not true). You can add more things which make you different from others.