Quiz June 26

Coulmas, 8-conclusion. Post your alternate quiz questions please.

1. What are the tri-partite constituents of Freud's model of personal identity?

2. What are the two most common strategies for dealing with guilt?

3. Who invented (discovered?) the identity crisis? What does it presuppose?

4. What vital part of every identity does not exist naturally?

5. What must be taken into accounmt. if identity formation involves acts of identifying with?

6. How many languages are spoken on earth, and why isn't it possible to be more precise?

7. What is Lavender language?

8. What is the analogy between racists and language purists?

DQ-post yours please.

• "Who is your hero?" How does your reply reflect your "ideal self"?
• Who are (were) your role models? Who do you admire in politics, sports, entertainment etc.? Have you outgrown any of them? Is it possible to live a good life without such figures to emulate or try to surpass? 
• Is it possible to sustain a stable identity that is not recognized by others? Must we discover ourselves only in the mirror of others' perceptions of us? Or in how we imagine others see us?
• Why do you think Tom Hanks talked to "Wilson" in Castaway?
• What cause, interest, enthusiasm, or aspiration do you most identify with?
• Is "identity crisis" a "persuasive notion"? 93
• How do you define "psychologically healthy person"? 94 Are you one?
• Is contemporary life well described by David Riesman's "lonely crowd"?
• Do you recognize the town/neighborhood/etc. you grew up in? Is that good or bad? 
• Do you consciously or unconsciously "present" yourself to the world? Or do you think you just ARE yourself? Are there some activities and interactions in which you feel MORE yourself? (I, for instance, feel most myself when walking, writing, and conversing with students...)
• COMMENT: “This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man"-Hamlet Act 1, Scene 3. Was Shakespeare right? What does it mean to be true to yourself? (If you've read the Existentialists, what do you think they'd say?)
• Do you think you understand the concepts of kapwa and amae? Do they have counterparts in western culture?
• What do you think of the ancient Greek chauvinism that led them to declare all non-Greek speakers barbarians? (Have you seen "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" Is the father character charming or obnoxious?)
• Is there really anything wrong with boldly going? 103
• What's your reaction to non-southerners who react to a southern accent/dialect with "disgust and derision"?
• Should schools try to correct working-class speech, AAVE, etc.?
• Do those of us in the "older stages of life" really have "in-group codes" of speech? Can you give examples?
• Is mimicry the highest form of flattery, or is it just mockery? 107 

...Unfortunately, we have nothing like the clear, detailed stages to measure ourselves against that babies and young children enjoy – and that might give us the encouragement we would need to note and foster stages of growth. Yet, every adult life contains the potential for new emotional skills, each in its own way as significant as a child mastering a quirk of language (in English, for instance, saying ‘I thought rather than I thinked’) or learning to ride a bicycle.

To develop emotionally involves a range of steps: learning to understand and sympathise with oneself; to take proper stock of one’s childhood influences; to communicate flaws and eccentricities to others in good time, to interpret others beyond what they have directly said to us, to recognise the hard edges of reality without being destroyed by them, to accept one’s needs for consolation and assistance, to achieve a necessary degree of confidence, to know how to despair without wholly giving up on existence… BoL...SoL video

TED: Lessons from the longest study on human development... Sam Harris: What happens when humans develop super intelligent AIs?... Mad Men finale...

9. What, with respect to identity, do masks symbolize?

10. What does "Faust" mean, and how is it appropriately ambiguous?

11. What must be in harmony, for a person to be whole?

12. Students of _____ unmasked _____.

13. What feature of identity is widely ignored by those who defend the genuineness of their national identity?

14. What do "identity apostles" most fear?

DQ - post yours please

• Can we effectively teach children to identify with wider spheres of humanity, and not just the local tribe/community/nation/etc. ?
• Which do you find more helpful in coming to terms with personal failure: psychiatrists or priests (or other spiritual leaders)? Would you ever entertain the possibility of consulting a "philosophical counselor" like Lou Marinoff ("The Socratic Shrink")?
• Is "identity crisis" a real phenomenon? Is it sometimes self-fulfilling, a result of too much brooding introspection? Does worrying too much about your identity reflect or invite an unhealthy form of narcissism?
• Reflecting on your own biography, do you relate to any or all of Erikson's 8 stages of development? 93
• Do you consider yourself a psychologically healthy person? What strategies do you employ to maintain your emotional health? Or do you believe that's beyond your control or influence? (Are you a genetic or environmental determinist?)
• Must we always identify an external threat, in order to feel solidarity with our chosen or inherited group(s)? Is it possible to identify with humanity as such, and to identify mortality, disease, ignorance, poverty (etc.) as its "external threats"?
• Are you feeling something like a crisis with respect to your American identity these days? 
• Have you ever subscribed to a "my country right or wrong" mindset?
• Do you agree that the happiest humans are those who've built the most stable, lasting, and loving relationships?
•  If you know "Mad Men": did Don Draper grow, by the end of the show? Did he discover "the real thing"?
• Will AI beings possess personal identities, in the future?
• Do you relate at all to the Jekyll/Hyde,Dorian Gray, or Metamorphosis scenarios?
• COMMENT: "Identity is the answer to everything." Identity Club, 1955. (122) Is the contemporary fixation on identity something new, or just more of an old phenomenon in our politics and culture?
• What do you think of Goober Pyle's approach to the persistence of personal identity through time?