Why should we tell the world who we are?

[Renoa]

I believe that most people have a wrong idea of who or what another person is. Think about Beethoven for example. A lot of people who knew him would say "oh, yeah, that deaf guy with the funny hair". But he would say he's a composer. A da*n good one!!
So I think we should tell others who we are...if anything else, because they don't know yet.
On the other hand, I wonder if that would ever help. I mean, most people don't listen anyway, or hear what they want to hear.
But I still *feel* it's important to go out there and tell the world who we are...
...What bugs me is that I can't really explain why.

Any help with that?

[jtracy]

Part of the problem, I think, is that we ourselves don't know who we are. We all have been told things about ourselves from other people that seemed wrong but on later reflection we were able to see it in ourselves.
The other thing is that if we don't tell other people who we think we are, then we don't have an opportunity to fine-tune our self-picture because other people won't tell us in what ways our self-picture is inaccurate.
I think people do care about who you think you are because it gives them something to compare themselves with, and also to gain a better understanding of what they like and dislike in a person which helps them understand themselves better. And "that deaf guy with the funny hair" is a lot less interesting person to get to know than "a composer and a darned good one".

[Xanafax]

Who we are is not the business of anyone else but ourselves.

Our self image must be cultivated through careful introspection not on the wishes of other people. Many people these days have an agenda to the tune of wanting you to be like them, to think what they think, to do what they do.

Our Government - New Labour - is like this. They carefully construct this view that they are morally superior and as such anyone who agrees with them is morally superior, anyone who dissents is immoral, or racist or whatever depending on the thing in question.

[SimonaRich]

Quite strange question. Every single person views you in a different way because they all had different experiences in their lives. The experiences they had formed beliefs, so they see you in a limited way, through what their beliefs let them see.

For example you may have had a great friend who was an artist. So whenever you meet some artist, you always have a pleasant memory of your friend therefore you view them in a more pleasant light than someone else might.

And if you had an artist friend who was always jealous and angry, you would view other artists through a more negative lens.

This is ofcourse very generalised, but I hope you understood what I tried to explain.

[magi13]

Not everybody is certain about who they are and everybody has a different view of each other with respect to themselves and with respect to what they think is the ideal person.

Maybe out of envy or spite people would tell the world who the others are but there are some cases where they say that not out of malice but out of awe or because they are inspired.

Since we can't really know how a person thinks, we can only make educated guesses. The best we can do is that if someone tells others about us but in a negative form we can always confront them or tell the others whether its true or not. There is also the option of actually doing nothing.

Know yourself. ^^,