How do we know who we are? If you have to ask yourself that question then you are further away from the truth than you think. Descartes said, "I think therefore I am."" Basically if you are thinking then you have a glimmer of who you are. The word I explains it all. We never talk about ourselves in the third person. We refer to ourselves as I or me, in the first person. Thus we should know something about ourselves. Unfortunately not may people think like this and are lead to believe that they do not know anything about themselves. Others think that they know everything there is to know about themselves. Lang's Model of the inner and outer self suggests that we know less about the real [inner] self than the shell [outer] self that we represent. Where do we look? Try inside yourself. Yet, there may not be a self. We may be a part of a collective consciousness like the Borg on Star Trek, where we don't think for ourselves but just do what we are told. An even better example for the idea of mass mentality is that of the armed forces. I have no disrespect for the armed forces, but they don't focus on the self. "You will get yourself killed and the rest of the unit."" When we are first born do we have knowledge of self? Or does this idea manifest at puberty? If we were never introduced to the idea, can there ever be? The skeptic inside of me says that you can be an individual, but highly doubtful without education on the idea of the self. A couple of examples from the readings that have to deal with self-.
identity come from Sartre in The Flies. At the beginning Orestes does not know who he is but after the thought process and education of identity by his tutor he realizes who he is and what he has to do to obtain his identity. The Flies also displays the idea of mass mentality with control of faith. The king of Argon falsely, like the church, imprisons his people with fetters of faith controlling everything about them.