Unique, Just Like Everyone Else

by Allison Steinman, Mar 17, 2008

(contd.)

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They wrote poetry, listened to music and read books that were seen to be controversial and were a very unique crowd. Until the hippies of the 1960's “stole their thunder” so to speak. The Hippies were an energetic new crowd that while agreed with the Beats love for freedom was into a different and more popular kind of music. The final blow to the Beat Generation was the lack of media attention they received as people began to get on board with the anti war attitudes of the new counter culture.

In the "70"s is was the punks and in the "80"s it was the rockers, counter culture changes constantly, and while generally each counter culture was generally unique, the fact still remains that no matter what generation one was born in, each and every one of them has had a desire to rebel against what

is normal in their society and create for themselves a unique identity, and although women have made great leaps toward equality they are in some ways just as oppressed as they were in the past, and it has been proven that no generation has been able to escape some form of military unrest, so in essence, how can any generation set themselves completely apart from any one that came before?

It has been proven time and time again that society doesn't always look fondly upon those that go against what is normal. For example, the African American people were persecuted for years because of the colour of their skin. They were forced into segregation, and because Caucasians were seen to be the superior race, had to separate from them. This affected their leisure activities, the places they were allowed to live and where they could attend school. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation.)

Women were treated unequally because their gender was seen to be inferior. They were unable to vote or sit on Government and not even legally seen as people until 1918. (http://www.historyonthenet.com/Lessons/worksheets/20century/suffragettes.doc.) The last example is the homosexuals. They were first treated differently during World War II. The Homosexuals of this time period referred to over 100,000,000 males who supposedly threatened the masculinity of Germany. About 50,000 of them were put in prison and an unknown number were put in institutions or castrated. (http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/hsx/.)

It is human nature to want to fit in with the people one chooses to associate themselves with, and it is also human nature to place judgment upon others and to be afraid of the unknown. (Zeinfeld, 2006.) So why, if this is true, would anyone go out of their way to be unique? If humans cannot

embrace individualism, how then, can we claim it truly exists at all?

Human beings are proven social creatures. They exist all over the world in the presence of and in relationship with other human beings.

(Massoud, 2006.) How therefore can humans truly live without some kind of guidance from each other? (Massoud, 2006.) It is psychologically

unhealthy for a person to live isolated and separate from another person (Massoud, 2006.) Therefore it would not be possible to create a healthy

functioning society unless it is done collectively.

Human beings are rooted in their past and history repeats itself, it is human nature to want to feel connected to another and we are generally

fearful of things that are new and of things we don't understand. Therefore how is it we can claim the existence of individuality?

We need to put away the boxing gloves and start focusing more on working collectively, because the fight for individuality is a losing battle.

The Fight for Individuality

Allison Steinman

for: Michael Dale

April 6, 2006