Sue Ardington-Reflecting on Identity (Edited by Anna)
Sue Ardington
October 12, 2006
Silk Roads Program
Hirsch Diamant and Char Simons
Reflecting on Identity
All the world is a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and entrances; Each in time plays many parts.” William Shakespeare
The World Café Forum held at The Evergreen State College in the Long House on the evening of October 11, 2006 focused
on the age old arguments related to identity and personality. Formation of identity is a fluid process. Genetics and environmental
influences combine to create and define personality. In childhood we move through a variety of stages, each of which shapes our
identity. Erik Erikson, developmental psychologist believed that each individual establishes a stable sense of self through an
ongoing process of identity formation. Later work in human developmental psychology by Daniel Levinson shows that identity
formation continues throughout adulthood to old age. Many psychologists believe that an identity crisis is an aspect of moving
from one developmental stage to the next, from one life experience to another. Within the space of a day we may put many
different faces forward. Some aspects of identity are biologically determined, in many others individually and collectively we
have a choice about how we are defined. World Café participants were challenging cultural stereotypes of identity for
individuals and community, charging one another to make choices leading to a world cultural identity inclusive of all individuals.
The Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, developed an identity forged from geographic, sociological, and spiritual circumstances.
Muhammad made choices about the kind of man he would be. He looked to Allah for insight and guidance, and he used an
innate and possibly extraordinary intuition as a compass. People looked up to Mohammad because he was a person of good
character, a leader worth following. Mohammad used his life experiences and the gifts of his biology to become one of the most
influential players on the global stage in his time, and his legacy enduring to our time. What would the world be like if we each
examined our life and committed to healthy practices with the same zeal and commitment as shown by Muhammad?
The three reading articles for the Silk Roads program titled Reinventing “America”, Call for a New National Identity by
Elizabeth Martinez, We The People by Ivan Illich with Jerry Brown, and Who Am We? By Sherry Turkle, reflect the urgent
twenty-first Century need for identity analysis individually and collectively in America. We are inundated with technological
distractions as horrifying as internet sex and children spending more than six hours a day playing video games where prey is
stalked and the prey is human. Time and space blur together in our technological age. We never were the “Dick and Jane”
society idealized in the 1960’s. We never will be. We have an identity formed from the frantic and the fast. We rarely stop our
motion on the treadmill of American life to ask the important questions of identity formation that shape us. Who are the best
people to influence our identity? Which life experiences enhance the face we put forward to one another and the world? Who
are our heroes? What are our valued educational experiences? Are we making wise choices for a healthy community? When
does technology help us, and when does it hurt us unalterably? The World Café participants challenge us en masse to examine
these questions and others as we participate on the stage of life by facing the national identity crisis that is upon us politically and
culturally.
Verdict: Paragraph on Muhammad possibly controversial, Reference to articles unknown to the reader in opening
of last paragraph, possible opening to section of transcriptions from forum?
