Orange's "I am Everyone" advert and an informal coalitions view of identity

Travelling on the London Underground yesterday, I caught sight of an ad by international communications company, Orange. 

Its message was both straightforward and profound:

"I am who I am because of Everyone."

"Google 'I am'", said the advert.  So, at the first opportunity, I did.  And a sponsored link took me to Orange's website. There I found a one-minute clip of the company's I am Everyone tv advert, based on the same theme.

It struck me how well this captures the informal coalitions view on the nature of 'who we are' and how our identities are formed.

In essence, our identities emerge from the everyday conversations and interactions that we have with others, and from the inner dialogue that is interwoven with these.

In the book, I talk of this in terms of a "personal frame of reference" that we each develop and seek to maintain. It is through this 'frame' that we view the world and navigate our way though life. Our personal frame of reference is:

"... continuously formed and reformed through our everyday interactions and experiences. In turn, this affects the way in which we continue to interact and make sense of our ongoing experiences. ... It also gives us our sense of identity, our perceived place in the world and so on.

In other words, identity is socially constructed and relational in nature. It does not exist separately from the roles that we each 'play' or from the diverse relationships that we are each part of."

This perspective is echoed by the complex responsive process view of organizational dynamics, as argued forcefully by Ralph Stacey and his colleagues at the University of Hertfordshire's Complexity and Management Centre, drawing here principally on the work of George Herbert Mead.

In his book, The Emergence of Leadership (p183 et seq), Associate Director of the College, Douglas Griffin, states:

"This conception of the self as emerging in the social process, which is the interaction of selves, is very different to the notion of the autonomous individual or, indeed, any notion of an innate self. Instead of being given by inheritance or given in any other way ... selves are formed in social interaction at the same time as they form this interaction. This paradox of 'forming and being formed by' is thus at the heart of the emergence of self and society ... Both the self and the social are the same process, with the only distinction being that the former is a private role play or silent conversation while the latter is a public 'game' and vocal communication."

So, as the folks at Orange say, I am who I am because of Everyone! 

Comments

[GDA9]

"I am who I am because of everyone" - What a bloody wrong concept of identity.

It shows that the person who made up the slogan can't place boundaries on his own identity - a sign of psychosis.

A person is who they are because of their personality traits, memories, ideas, the sense of self, consciousness, etc. NOT because of external factors or others' identities.

It doesn't take a philosophy professor to understand what identity is.

[Chris Rodgers]

Many thanks for your comments “GDA9”.

To try to do justice to the points you have made, I have decided to use your comment as the basis of a new post (http://informalcoalitions.typepad.com/informal_coalitions/2008/08/a-relational-vi.html ). In it, I’ve used the elements of identity that you listed in your comment to put more flesh on the 'relational' view of identity.

Given your passionate dismissal of this perspective, I’m not expecting that this will shift your own view!