This question, seemingly simple to answer, can be a very profound one when viewed through the lens of a social scientist. To a social scientist, this question has to do with self-awareness which forms the bedrock of character formation.

If a person has self-aware­ness, it enables that indi­vidual to relate to his or her cultural setting which then informs the values which are important for his or her devel­opment as a person.

The environment that we grow in, goes a long way in influencing our personalities and therefore the values underpinning our characters. Character is very important in an individual’s life and it is that which really defines a person.

The difference between success and failure depends on the character developed over a certain period in a person’s life which gives him confidence and therefore the resilience to confront and overcome challenges.

The difference between an African and an African-Amer­ican is self-awareness which makes the African-American develop a self-belief that he or she can succeed in whatev­er he or she plans to do.

A typical African usually lacks self-awareness and has been so steeped in super­stition that right from the word go, believes that some witches are working against him or her.

Whereas the African-Amer­ican sees possibilities for success and works extra hard to realise his dreams, his Afri­can brother on the other side of the Atlantic, attributes any minor challenge to some spir­itual force out there, working to prevent him from making it in life.

A conversation with a 10-year-old African-American will amaze you about the self-awareness he or she pos­sesses compared to a typical 10-year-old on the continent.

The African-American child can tell you his or her career aspirations easily with time­lines but the typical African child will struggle to do same due to a lack of a system that offers assistance to children to identify their career aspi­rations.

A video I watched of an American child narrating her career aspirations with time­lines, was a delight to watch.

She outlined the edu­cational path she has to go through, the work she will apply for and for how long she will work there after complet­ing her University education and finally campaign for the office of the President of the United States of America.

At no point did she consid­er the influence of a certain evil power working against her dreams. Her self-aware­ness was at a very high level and this gave her the confi­dence to boldly narrate her career aspirations.

Answering the question, ‘who am I’ will enable a per­son to know what to believe, what to reject, what to live and what to hate. If I know I am a Ghanaian, homosexual­ity is not an issue, I will even have to contemplate because it is against everything Gha­naian.

Self-awareness would resolve a lot of our challeng­es as a people and therefore challenges confronting our nation, since the nation is the sum total of the actions and inactions of the populace.

The census revealed that the Christian population in this country is about 71 per cent and that of Muslims is about 19 per cent and other religions making the remain­ing 10 per cent.

This implies that our na­tion is a religious nation and to a large extent can be said to be a Christian nation.

Christianity abhors practic­es like corruption, cheating, bribery and all the vices that impedes a nation’s growth and so under normal condi­tions, corruption, bribery etc. should not be problems that should bedevil this country.

However, a glance at the annual Auditor General’s report tells a different story but none of the religions en­courages evil practices like corruption and bribery.

Therefore the prevalence of these evils can only be attributed to lack of self -awareness

By Laud Kissi-Mensah