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| Sunday, 15 January 2006 |
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Individuality
dissin' the system - by rikki Have you not noticed that individuality is much scorned these days? Have you not noticed that the average person, following in the footsteps of the masses, blasphemes the few lone individuals out there? Have you also not noticed that it is these individuals who rise up the ranks, make huge breakthroughs in their respective fields, in their characteristically quirky ways and end up with the grudging respect of the masses? Individuality is what makes us special, unique. It is what separates us from the other persons in our world. Individuality is what makes us the person we are. Nevertheless one witnesses the majority of people out there content, no ecstatic to pursue the common. It is as though the average person wishes to hide behind masses of others, afraid of saying or doing things differently. Is it even possible for so many of the people out there to be that insecure? Teenagers are always trying to be 'it' by keeping up with the current 'in' thing in an attempt to be 'cool'. Teenagers may have a hormone problem, but they most certainly are not without brains. Do you not realise that the only person who is 'cool' is the person who first came up with the 'in' thing and that there is no way you could be 'it' by being one of the dozens, hundreds or thousands of people following in the very same path in zombie-like fashion? From colouring your hair to piercing your eyebrow to wearing a particular brand or type of clothing, it can never make you look 'cool' if you only end up looking like everyone else out there. You can never be 'it' if you keep on doing what everyone else is doing. The person who is 'it' invents the 'in' thing and is never a follower of the current trend. This essentially is what makes him/her 'cool'. In other words it is a person unafraid of his/her individuality who makes his/her self conspicuous in a crowd, makes themselves recognized and receives the loving or begrudged respect of the commoners. Even if the 'commoner' does not appreciate your particular brand of 'coolness', they nevertheless respect you from afar, wish they had your guts to do what they want to do in their life. (The rock/metal music lovers see much of this with their dark, splattered t-shirts, long hair, loud music and loud lifestyle. Their all-black 'cool' attire lost its uniqueness when the zombie masses out there stole it. And of course the brain-washed commoner out there wishes inside that he could be just like a metal head, even if he is not ready to admit it to himself.) Even in Sri Lankan schools, out-of-the-box thinking is heavily discouraged. Solving a mathematics or physics problem in an easier and more intelligent means than what is thought by the by-the-text book teacher to presenting a creative piece of writing not found in the syllabus to trying to mix a couple of chemicals in the lab that is still not to be learnt to coming up with a novel means of resolving a business problem; they are all not tolerated with, considered blasphemy almost, desecrated and unappreciated. (The instructor is not always better than the student. There is always a student who is better and is of more intellectual prowess than his teacher). Nevertheless it is out-of-the-box, creative, different ideas that receive recognition in the international world. The advertisement industry will not survive if it cannot recruit people with quirky ideas leading to marketing campaigns failing big time. (No wonder most of the cheap advertisements on local television are nauseating.) It is strange thinking patterns that lead to novel discoveries being made in the world of science, that age-old problems are solved in mathematics, that the cure for AIDS will be found. It was fresh thinking that got Steve Jobs to where he is now, from Apple's curvaceous i-Macs to its tiny i-pods. It is quirkiness that made Bill Gates the richest man in the world, taking over all your pcs all over the world. Just think what if Hitler had got his way, that everyone in the world was blond, blue-eyed and German? Just think how very boring it all would have been. There would have been no Einstein, no theory of relativity and no future physicists debating over the speed of light and the building of a time machine. Individuality is what makes us successful as human beings. It makes us
reach our stars, brings us contentment. For if you are afraid of who you
are, of thinking for yourself, acting the way you wish to; if you do not
believe in yourself, your uniqueness, your individuality, then what reason
is there for you to have even a name? You would simply be like one of the
nameless mass produced cars just right out of the line-up. |
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