The Identitary References. The Language and the New Face of the Other

Being permanently caught between the rapid social changes and the social need of adaptation, the human being is sometimes the prisoner of a system that he/she doesn’t understand or control. The globalization imposes rules to which people can’t adapt, but respond as in a very stressing situation, changing or losing their system of values. These sorts of social changes transform the social context and implicitly the personal and collective identity references: community, family, social group, cultural tendencies, affiliations, values. That’s why we speak about identity references and not different identities of the same person. In the globalization process the local values are intensified, and because the national boundaries lose their signification, the cultural ones are enforced with the power to separate and to differentiate. The culture becomes the new face of the Other, even if at the first glimpse we may speak about a global culture. This concept can be applied on just some parts of the world and cultural areas, but the problems are global: migration, poverty, pollution, national and racial movements, separation tendencies, lack of confidence in the political power, intolerance. At the level of the human relations the implication is often reduced in such manner that if the bond is broken the people involved suffer less and are capable in a short while of creating a new bond. This is not only a tool of adaptation, but also a defence mechanism and it can be explained by the great number of established relations. However, all these mechanisms and processes create an overstimulating situation in which the human being is not feeling protected; thus, in order to keep his/her identity and mental health, he/she must accomplish his/her desires and identity needs. The possible solution is the return to the identity references, their revaluation and the redefinition of the self-identity.