Where are the individuals today?

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905

I was very busy now-a-days, I didn’t have time to do a thorough “retail therapy” lately. This Saturday I had a meeting in the morning in Town so I have decided to do my shopping in one of the big malls. I usually like to hang around places and just watch what other people do around me, how they act and react to certain things.

But this weekend something else caught my attention. I have realised how “uniform” people are. They have the same or very similar hair style, they dress the same way and most of all they all act and react the same way. I know nothing is new, there was always fashion and we all are humans so we have similar behaviour. It is all true but in the “old times” we had more “individuals” around. With the strong presence of the media and especially the commercials that we are “bombarded every minute in our lives we slowly but surely lose our own identities. And sadly it is much deeper than hair style or clothing...

Our thinking is also hugely influenced by the media. We actually do not want to think anymore. We became too lazy to form our own opinion or if some of us try to do it those are “stamped” as weird or stupid or even something worse. So the real “individuals” are close to extinction… It clearly should not be the case. In a way we all are unique and different. We all experience and/or explain things (or at least we should) a bit differently. We should be proud of our differences; this supposed to make the world exciting.

The problem is that this “uniform-ism” starts at early age and becomes part of our lives without even realising it. We want to have exactly the same things the others have, we say and do exactly the same things others do. Even those whom “would like to be” different too scared to express it. How many of us are “shocked” to see someone dressing “out of ordinary” or saying something that is not what the majority is saying.

I cannot really figure it out if we just became comfortable, too stupid to think for ourselves or we are insecure, afraid to be different. I am different and I “suffer” in a way because I cannot share my views very openly with others. Every now and again I meet someone who “speaks my language” but most of the time I go against walls. I usually am not very pushy to express my different feelings or views. I test the water before I try to swim but most of the time I do not find it “suitable”.

The problem that I see in the long run is that by being so uniform the human race is becoming more and more controllable without even realising it. Slowly but surely we are losing the values we represent or got used to represent. We accept obvious lies; we obey insane or even abusive rules/laws etc. We support bad/wrong ideas; we agree to comply with things that we do not feel right… where will it lead us?

Well I do not want to think about it but in the meantime I stay the way I am, I will do things and say things that I want to even if it is “out of the box” because I am who I am… luckily there are some people out there to whom I can relate to. They do not necessarily think in the same way I do but at least we can talk and share ideas. The really good thing about this "bad" situation is that one can find real friends and one will cherise those relationships for ever.