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Ian van der Merwe

Mr. Hernandez-Zamudio

UGS 2001

2 September 2017

How Ideas Have Shaped My Identity

People like identifying with things in order to explain who they are and how these things

effect their identity. This identification can often lead to misunderstandings if not explained

thoroughly, but when this association is well explained, it can offer insights into how people see

themselves and the world around them. The majority of what I identify with is not people or

things, but ideas. Although this seems to contradict what my pictures are, I want to start off by

saying that in two of my photos, there are other people with me, and I identify with the ideas

these people have helped me develop, and only identify with one of the people themselves. The

first picture is one of me, a picture I am not very proud of but still think represents a part of my

identity, which is my image. The second image is of me with a good friend of mine, Jonathan,

who changed my life by introducing me to and then pushing me towards atheism. My third

picture is of me and Annika Young, someone who has influenced my life close to as much as my

move to atheism has.

To begin with, I will elaborate on how I identify with my image. A large part of my

image has been and, to a lesser extent, continues to be the clothing I wear. When I was in the 7th

grade, I began to care about how I looked and this resulted in me adopting a sort of “wannabe

preppy” style, a style which I am not completely proud of. This later turned into a more casual

preppy style and eventually faded into how I dress now. Since the beginning of my interest in

fashion, I have cared about how I looked. I had a deep interest in Greek and Roman culture, so
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when I decided my body was not something the Greeks would have turned into a statue, I

decided to satisfy this want to look good by dressing well. Shorty after working on my style, I

moved onto how my body looked. The school I had been attending was a small school; the boys

in my grade had been there since kindergarten and had all played sports at the school for almost

as long. Because of this, I was the least fit guy in the changing room and it didn’t take me long to

realize it. At the time, I was a very skinny kid who had bad hair and, if I am to be honest,

questionable style. This led me to begin exercising and although I was skinny, I apparently

wasn’t skinny enough to have the same six-pack that many of the other guys at school had. All of

this was enough to make me focus on the clothing aspect of my image, and decide that if it were

really important for me to gain the same level of muscle mass as the other guys, I would just

have to work extra hard to get it.

The picture of me and my friend Jonathan doesn’t directly speak much to how it connects

with my identity. Around the time that I was learning about dressing well, I was introduced to

“Atheism,” a view that Jonathan held religiously at the time. One detail I didn’t include

previously was that the small school I was attending was a private Christian school. Everyone

there, except for Jonathan, was a Christian. As one can probably guess, I was Christian at the

time as well, and although I had always had my doubts, I suppose the reason that “god was

testing me” had been sufficient up until that point. After this exciting revelation, however, that

there was another answer out there, I quickly shifted views. My shift to atheism was not as

difficult as one may have expected it to be, as I lived in a devout Christian household and

attended a devout Christian school. After I finally gathered the courage to inform my parents of

this development in my views, they reacted calmly, but obviously not onboard. Nowadays the

most they bother me with is the occasional comment such as “I hope to see you in heaven,” but
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apart from that, it is all quiet on my parents’ part. My conversion to atheism had a huge influence

on my life, one which effects me to this day. I can only assume it will continue to affect me for a

long time. As time progressed, I became more and more anti-theistic, and even now I would do

away with religion in a heartbeat if given the opportunity. In the beginnings of my anti-religion

crusades, I focused on, what I have to admit is still one of my largest issues with religion, the

notion of faith. Faith, which is defined as “complete trust or confidence in someone or

something” is an idea which I detest even to this day. Although its definition doesn’t allude to

the fact about faith which I find most appalling, it is clear to anyone who has argued with a

religious person about their views that when all else fails, they can always fall back on faith. This

thought that they are not required to reason their faith to me baffles me, and is the part of faith

which I dislike the most. To me, this is the most gruesome attack on evidence anyone could

possibly muster. For someone to so blatantly ignore what may be a better solution because they

have complete trust in an idea is a level of arrogance, or possibly ignorance, which I can still, to

this day, barely handle.

Many of these views, however, pivoted when I met Annika. Although she has yet to be

able to talk me out of my disdain for religion, she has helped to show me another angle from

which to assault it. First some context: in my all-out hatred for religion, I began thinking about

areas in my life in which my religion influenced me. One such area I was able to find and link

almost completely back to the not only religion, but to the religion which had help me captive for

so long, was in the realm of morality. This was a massive change for me; the birth of the idea

that not only was absolute morality not a thing, but that it was something which was based

entirely on the so called “teachings” of the bible, a book I had been forced to read from the

moment I was able. After this realization, I experienced a complete withdrawal from the idea that
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morality existed. I can only assume that this did not have overwhelmingly positive effects on my

train of thought and on the conclusions I came up with afterwards. It wasn’t all bad though, in

this mindset, I was able to think about how I saw morality, and learn about others who thought

similarly and who found their own definitions as well. To return to the part of me which is

represented in the picture, one thing I lacked in this period of time was empathy as well as

general emotion, which as it so turns out, are cornerstones of ethics. Meeting Annika changed

this in a way which words can hardly explain. Within two weeks of meeting Annika, my entire

world had been turned upside down, and I was now not only experiencing new emotions, but I

was caring more about people in general. This is where my new angle from which to attack

religion comes into play. As my relationship with Annika grew, so did my understanding of

ethics, and through this I returned to that part of my life which I had begin to fade away from,

my raging atheism. For the past 6 months, my problem with religion has not been in its support

of ignorance and followers who follow blindly, but rather its support of systems made to oppress

and hurt people. In this, I revitalized my ambition to save people oppressed by religion, as well

as save those that are indoctrinated in oppressive religious communities. It became clear to me

that this was necessary in order to create any serious social change.

I hope that one can see how I identify with ideas brought up from these different pictures.

From my focus on being seen in a certain light with my image to me turning from what I had

been raised in to then turning again from what I had talked myself into thanks to someone who

has done more good in my life than anything else, I hope it is clear how these pictures and ideas

that they represent have influenced my identity.