How Society Forms Us as Who We Are

Interaction is a key concept for the success or failure of any group and Fay explores just how society and culture use mediation of interaction to mold us as participants in it. Fay uses the word mediate to describe the way that society modifies interaction as a means to make us who we are. I find that thinking of society as a mediator is a valid concept and can be understood fairly easily. Society installs laws, rules and regulations to organize how we are able to interact with things or other individuals. For example, society mediates the interaction between students and teachers by providing schools for teachers to teach and for students to learn.

Fay’s final translation of the word “make” is that of determine. When something is determined, it is to be definitively established by nature or kind. Fay does not agree that society has the capability to make us into who we are using this fashion. Society cannot determine who we are, that is to say that our feelings, beliefs, actions and thoughts are not just a part of the society that we happen to live in. Fay says that humans are not “just the product of a process.”

Fay makes clear argument for the denial of the solipsistic notion that it takes one to be one. Providing the counter example of the Rat man exhibits something that nearly everyone can relate to or at least comprehend. Fay also clearly defines what he is trying to show when he introduces the different definitions of “make” and how society makes us who we are. I agree that Fay’s conclusion is true and that the reasons he uses to support it are valid. Fay provides us with great reasons and valid conclusions for the argument presented in these chapters.