Eddie. 11/06

People love to be different in the same way – we have been told this more than once. I feel that the idea has ties to an inherant limit in the individual, and that limit manifests itself into the “cult of the new.” Allow me to discuss, in brief, my theory on why everybody is similarly deviant.

Consider the astounding number of people that have existed before the moment you read this text. Then combine that astronomical sum with the (hopefully) infinite number of people to come in the future. Is it not conceivable that true uniqueness in any sense is impossible? Sure, some may argue that our common sense already takes this into account when we speak of being “unique,” but it is important for this academic exploration to define that notion of a “limited unique” rather than to take it as the granted norm. Our restricted concept of uniqueness is the consequence of our limited social reach and not a given function of nature.

By a limited social reach, I refer to the amount of social engagement possible for an individual and also the greatest amount of social links he or she could maintain. Information technology has brought us magical leaps and bounds with those numbers, but still, for everyone there is a point of saturation. We can only talk to, and know, so many people in our lives, and that sum will always just be a small slice of the human world. We are all confined to the island of our social circle.

Thus, I will define “uniqueness” as being significantly deviant from the social norm within the limits of one’s social reach. Uniqueness is attainable or not depending on how far and wide the knowledge of one’s social circle spans. When a person invents or imports a new idea that is beyond the cloud of knowledge of the social island, the inventor or importer is crowned as “unique.” This is as close as a person can ever come to pure and absolute originality. But then what happens post-uniqueness?

It is not hard to see that the lone fact of being distinct and exceptional does not satisfy any practical or emotional needs. If anything, it is running away from the common instinct to fit in and gain the safety of the common society. But the deviation is, in fact, just the first step in attaining social accomplishment and esteem. The creator wants recognition. Such comes in the basic form of admiration for the person’s insight and elevates to bitter envy at the next level. At the top of the praise-ladder is when others choose to adopt the new ideas brought by the creator. Regardless if the followers are wise thinkers or just sheepish, imitation holds a definite connotation of functionality and competence. The creator has started a spark in a dark corner of the world and that spark has become a fire. So the purpose of being different is not so much as seeking absolute difference on the individual level, but rather to leave the cloud of social knowledge and find reassurance that the group is truly “different.”

Now imagine two separate patches of oil on a water surface. When one grows in size, it closes the gap between the two patches and as they collide, the edges bend and mesh with the other to form a long boarder line. As emo and goth cults grew in size, so did their exposure to the general population. When more people come into more contact with any exotic fad, the fad loses its exoticism and rarity. Individual followers become an example of that fad because the social circle is no longer naïve enough to fall for the illusion of the limited originality. Now they are merely different, and different in their own predictable way.