It’s fascinating to think how the context we are in shape us, what Philosophers call the Hermeneutic Circle. For example, if you are born in certain countries, there is a near 99% chance that one of your most fundamental ways of looking at yourself is that you would be muslim.

The movie Pulp Fiction was this sort of game changer when I was young. After seeing the movie my friends and I tried to mimic the dialogue and even imitate the actors’ mannerisms. This certainly led to some issue because there was a lot of problematic language in the film, like the N-word being used a lot, and so I can think of one time I used it imitating the movie that I regretted later.

It’s interesting to think of how our context fundamentally determines us. I am proud of my MA degree in Philosophy and worked hard to achieve it, but I know this wouldn’t even have been a possibility if I was born into poverty and disease in a third world country.