"The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice or action."
- John Dewey -
Dewey speaks a relatively unacknowledged, yet truthful and insightful idea here. We are what we make of ourselves; we are not a superficial persona. Our self is built up by our actions and choices. If we grew up being someone like Dio or my little sister, then we would turn out rotten to the core. On the other hand, if we grew up sporting benevolence for the sake of benevolence, the we would end up as someone like a matron saint. In other words, mostly-a-jerk-forever-a-jerk. But then again, this is the simple outcome of if we thought is the same way we acted.People are not that simple though. We, as human beings, tend to animate an artificial self-image which we use to go about our day whenever we are put into social situations. Beginning our self-conscious days, we generated a persona to make us friends and to portray some image which we wanted others to see us as. As vain children (and maybe even now as vain adults), we fell victim to the immature tendency and belief-system of egocentricity. We were (and maybe still are) paranoid about our self-image and others' opinions of ourselves (when everyone else our age was just as self-absorbed as we were, save the few selfless or enlightened youths). This persona was not our true beliefs, but were our actions. This persona may not reflect our true selves if the persona is not a constant part of our lives, so its influence on developing the self may not be too much. In which case, Dewey's statement isn't so universal.
But there remains the possibility (or inevitability for some) that this persona is perpetuated for long enough to eventually become our anima, or true self. There are pitiful delusions made reality by some who pretend to act a certain way and have made that initially false persona their true self. They may, for example, feign ignorance or innocence for some nebulous and neurotic reason. Typically, this is to attract attention. But this false identity requires consistent effort and can be differentiated by the anima by the socially adept or experienced. What I mean by socially adept or experienced is that the socially adept are those who know human psychology or are learned (not necessarily schooled) in some social sense, and the socially experienced are those who partake or have partaken is this neurotic act of making the persona the anima.
Actions and internal thoughts and feelings also influence us as individuals and people, and our final self is always changing. Who we are is decided by not only our choices, but how we execute these choices.
