While I agree national identity is important, but is that not super imposed upon the local identity. So why can there not be a European identity on top of this which I feel is important to me. Which is what this is all about really.

The flower excercies is great!

Even if you join a club/group/political party, follow a sport or become part of a tribe you are adopting the cloak of identity of that group whether you realise it or not.

Its good to be able to stand back and see this for what it is. I like the idea of the flower in the exercise. Not the first time I have come across it.

To be horribly nerdy – it’s like “tagging” in Web 2.0. You can tag yourself, and other people can tag you. The tags don’t give you all the information in a web-page, just one part (and it might be completely wrong).

I need to take a break from the internet, I think.

My identity are the things I identify with, which I relate to as part of my social background and surrounding, which in my case includes a European cosmopolitanism with German being my mother tongue, which influences my view on the world no matter if I want or not. As an academic I also feel connected to academic traditions such as critical thinking and the search for the truth, knowing that there is no such thing.

When it comes to my personality, I think I could only give a very subjective account, but the only advantage I have compared to others in this regard is that I know the full picture. For the rest, speaking about my personality myselft would be a rough guess at best and marketing at worst – I leave this to others.

In the end, identity has an influence on how I behave, and so identity definitely impacts my personality. So when others describe my personality, they might use things that I might describe as being part of my identity to talk about my personality – but they will never be able to talk about my identity, because only I feel I can define what this identity is.

you actually described it in the same way as I did to a friend! The last paragraph has been talken from my mind I tell ya! Thanks for the comment though!

its also not necessarily an absent identifier in friends. perhaps its the way you phrased the question, or perhaps you don’t project ‘irishness’ or talk about ireland with friends that much. its also an unlikely answer from a fellow irish person.

its also the medium:”i associate ‘male’ with you” would not be a useful answer in response to a question like that on facebook etc. i think people would be confused about fact and identity in a similar way even if nationality came up as something they associated with you. it seems an unlikely answer that someone would give even if it did come up.

I do though think that nationality can be an identifying characteristic in some friends, as can ‘national traits’. it really depends on the friend whether i would describe their nationality as a strong part of their identity ‘she’s so very proud/aware of being irish’ ‘he’s so serbian’. that would be tapping into national stereotypes more than their nationality though. i could see myself also describing someone who wasn’t german, as ‘so german’. or like what happens with you, ‘he happens to be spanish, but i think of him first as warm and giving’.