Do You Believe That Identity Can Be Influenced by Connection to Places?

Persuasive essay: Do you believe that identity can be influenced by connection to places?

By: Chamroeun Yuvady Keo

Who am I? It is probably the most perplexing, mysterious and alluring question. Most people cannot answer this question because no matter what their answer is, it will never be enough. Many people spend most of their time unravelling the question by unearthing all their historical backgrounds through their landscape. Hence, does that mean places define or shape who we are? I have a strong belief that identity can be influenced by connection to places because places influence our personality, appearance and practice of religion.

Places have a tremendous influence in human being’s personalities and behaviours. Some physiologists discovered that our mind was a blank slate (Tabula Rasa) when born; therefore, knowledge and understanding was ascertained through life experience. During human development, people often receive the influences from the surrounding environment rather than their family. For example, the story of Perfect Chinese Children (2008, p 105 by Vanessa Woods) written in the book called Growing up Asian in Australia (2008, Edited by Alice Pung) depicts the life of the Chinese girl who is living with her Chinese family in Australia. Despite of being born as Chinese and receiving Chinese genes, the way she behaves is more ‘Australian’ than a ‘Chinese’ girl. Vanessa Woods has quoted in her story that “As time goes by, it becomes clear that I am going the way of Australian children. The ones who don’t work hard, are loud and uncouth and, worst of all, talk back to their parents and hold chopsticks near the pointed ends, like peasants.’’ This story has demonstrated that places have a huge impact in influencing one self’s personality.

However, some people may think that personalities are determined more by genetic. There was a study by researchers, Jeff Craig and Richard Saffery of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, who examined the similarity in behaviours and personalities of twin pairs. They noticed that in the early years after birth, the twins shared the same personalities and the same dislikes and likes. This shows that personalities are determined more by genetic. Nevertheless, there is a recent study in Washington DC about the twins by Jim Lewis and Jim Springer (Life science, 2014) indicates that when another twins approached their teen years, they started to establish dissimilar qualities to establish their individual identities although the twins were born from the same mother womb, developed from a single egg and shared the same DNA.

Places also have a major impact on human’s appearance such as obesity. The increase in obesity is not caused by the change in the gene pool, but rather by education, health and climate. Firstly, if education system is inadequate in one country such as there is no lesson to show the side effect of obesity, then children will not understand and they will continue to consume large amount of junk food. For instance, according to UNESCO (2014) Sub Saharan Africa is considered as the country with inadequate education system and based on a recent study at Harvard University, Sub Saharan came third after Canada and America as the country with the highest obesity rates. Secondly, human’s perceptions in Australia are different from Asian countries. For example, in Asia, if a person gain weight, that person will be noticed and criticised. Therefore, people tends to be less obese in Asia. However, in Australia, people are less concerned about it, so the obesity rate is higher. The results of the global study into obesity rates, published in the medical journal The Lancet, (ABC News 2014) show almost a quarter of the Australian children and 63 percent of the adult population is overweight due to the consumption of junk food. While in South East Asia, there are only 14% overweight in both sexes and 3% for obesity (World Health Organization). Another factor that contributes to the cause of obesity is climate. In cold climate country, people are consuming more food to resist from cold temperature.  As a result, places have a huge impact in influencing obesity.