Post by zee on Dec 7, 2017 19:35:52 GMT
What it means to have a self
Butt says that “what ‘having a self’ means is having a constructive relationship to the past and the future” (p. 137). Explain what you think this quotation means. Explain why you think he includes the word “constructive” in his description.\
Butt's definition of the self does not include a predisposition-ed identity but rather a constantly constructed identity through interactions with the society and environment. Experiences from the past and the adoption of socially constructed norms have constructed schemas in which the individual can use for having a sense of self and therefore aligns their future by the same objective experiences. The example used is to where an individual who has identified themselves as a criminal possibly because of their past experience of oppression and/or possibly by the violent norms created by the society in which they exist, and therefore future behavior of that individual is predicted to involve crimes. This use of past experiences to assimilate future behavior is what Butt means by having a "constructive" relationship to the past and the future and the definition for having a self.