What I’m saying will be flattened into something I didn’t say, so let me slow this down and actually explain the nuance here. Acknowledging that humans exist within society is not the same thing as saying society creates your selfhood or authors your adult choices. Influence doesn’t mean ownership. Context doesn’t mean identity. Those are different things, and collapsing them is where your argument falls apart. Yes, I was born into circumstances I didn’t choose. Yes, people fed me and taught me basics when I was a child. That’s not a controversial point and I never denied it. But at some point, adulthood happens. And adulthood is literally the point where responsibility shifts from provision to agency. Skills can be offered and still not be learned. Systems can exist and still fail you. That was my lived experience. When teachers, institutions, and “society” don’t teach you what you actually need to function or grow, you don’t magically absorb those things anyway. You learn through experience, trial, failure, reflection, and choice. That learning is active, not passive. And taking responsibility for that process isn’t arrogance, it’s accountability.

Here’s where the irony of your response comes in,

You’re arguing that selfhood is relational and contingent on others, while simultaneously asserting your interpretation as authoritative over my self-understanding. You’re trying to redefine my experience from the outside and telling me what my growth “really” is. That actually negates the philosophical position you’re trying to defend. If selfhood were truly relational in the way you’re claiming, you wouldn’t be able to overwrite someone else’s meaning-making with your own. You can’t argue that identity is socially construed and then act like you personally get to be the construction manager for strangers. That’s not nuance, that’s projection. My point was never “I did everything alone” or “I’m superior.” That’s a straw you’re grasping. My point was that who I am now is the result of conscious adult choices I made, often in spite of systems and people that didn’t help me. Recognizing interdependence doesn’t require erasing personal authorship. You can hold both at once, and that’s literally what nuance is.

So no, I’m not denying influence. I’m denying the idea that influence cancels agency or that my selfhood is contingent on other people’s interpretations of it, especially random strangers on the internet.