In class we've been discussing how a person's identity can be determined without having the opportunity to meet him. We researched Mr. Bolos through interviews, information found on the internet, and artifacts from his life. It wasn't easy to figure out every detail of his life, but we were able to piece together a strong argument about what he likes to do, where he went to high school and college, where he's worked, and information about his family.
If you were to look through my pictures and belongings, you'd see many items that connect me to two different Covenant camps, lots of pictures of me and my friends, and many pieces of art. Learning about me would be pretty easy; you wouldn't have trouble finding out that I am Christian, love to spend time with my friends, and I am a good artist. However, what if you didn't have anything to start with in order to determine a stranger's identity?
This is the case with 28-year-old Bethany Storro. While walking into a Starbucks, she had a cup of acid thrown in her face by someone she'd never seen before (click here to see the AOL News story). Storro recently had surgery to remove some of the charred skin, and now she is working with police to find her attacker. All they have to go on is the information Storro remembers of her attacker; that she was African-American, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, with three earrings. All these are physical aspects; they don't give us a view into who the attacker really was. Storro could sense from her attacker a feeling of jealousy or rage, but this also gives us very little in the way of who she was, what her true identity is.
Walking down the hall of our high school, how are we determining the identities of the hundreds of others we see every day? I know I judge more than I mean to based on a person's mood, which is a very short snapshot of the person, or by his or her clothing or other belongings. But I'm really not getting a clear picture of who that person is, just a tiny idea about that person's identity. Should we be making judgments about others just by seeing them for a moment? What would give us a clearer picture of a person's entire identity?
Great questions, Liesel. We definately make judgements every day just from looking at someone, but should we? No, probabgly not. But I don't think we can help it. However, we have the self control and special ability to think before we say anything, and choose not to say things that are overly judgemental and rude before we know the person well enough.
ReplyDeleteAs for getting a clearer picture of the person's identity, that would be very hard, because even the person's parents may not know their child's entire identity, because we are away from home for half the day, most of the year. However, I think a video playing on the front of the person's chest would help me. The sound would be the person's favorite music, or the sound from the event that is showing. It would show events from the person's life, like if they are on a rowing team it would show workouts and a few races. The video should cycle through things the person does, so that we could learn a lot about the person just by walking down the hall and seeing different scenes from their life. But the engineering behind that would be hard...
As it turns out, this story was a hoax. Storro admitted that she had "inflicted the injuries and made up the attack story". What does it say about our society that we are that desperate to get attention?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/police-say-bethany-storro-admits-making-up-acid-attack-story/19637344