December 22, 2003
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I just had a thought… uhumph, this is what happens on four hours sleep. I got up at 7. I would have slept later but my dummy neighbor decides to work on his house at the stupidest times.
Mankind hasn’t physically changed in thousands of years. We haven’t evolved. If the next big change comes, and mankind can’t adapt… that is, if a cataclysmic change occurs and we can’t change to survive, we could technically be considered an evolutionary dead end. On the other hand, we’re perfect as we are because we fit our niche so well.
Funny how perfection equals stagnation and death. It is only in striving for perfection that we experience growth.
In other words, the journey is more important than the destination.
Anyway…
Many of us are obsessed with either being individuals or conformists. Conformists obviously want to be the same as everyone else so as to be accepted and non-obtrusive. Individuals vary in their degrees of nonconformity, but a true individual has no real desire to be conformist.
Now, going with the ideas of evolution, which group do you think is ideally suited to make the next leap in adaptation if there is such an evolutionary chasm to leap? The conformists are like the lemmings which still make their migratory leap from a cliff because there is no longer a landmass for them to migrate to. Individuals might have a little edge, but being individuals, they won’t necessarily band together for mutual benefit.
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Also along the lines of evolution… I was think of ideas in terms of biology. They seem to change and adapt to groups of people and times like living creatures. Perhaps if we ourselves all become extinct, our ideas might live on as evolutionary descendents of a sort. That is, if some other race arrives/evolves to take our place and discovers our words/cultural achievements before they turn to dust.
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I think they’ve stopped working next door for lunch. I’m going to go try to take a nap. I’ll probably wake up later, look at this entry, and want to smack myself.
Comments (6)
I’m not obsessed with being an individual or a conformist. It’s a tired, cliched thought, and if you need to STRIVE to be an individual, then you’re not gonna be a real one. The biggest irony of non-conformists is that they actually have no individuality because all they define themselves by is their opposition to the ‘conformists’. We’re all conformists in one way or another anyway - our very structures of thought and communication have been absorbed from our environment. It’s a stupid thing to focus on. Just BE.
Arrrg, tried to post but “server was too busy” and lost it all. Evil Xanga.
Aaaaaaaaaanywaaaaaaaay…
To paraphrase the post stolen by the Xanga gremlins…
Conformists are people who conform, enjoy conforming, strive to conform. Individuals don’t do that, but they don’t necessarily strive to go against that. Poeple who strive to be anti-conformists are posers who are in fact, conforming. They just have a different set of parameters to work with.
I am an individual. I am myself.
“Funny how perfection equals stagnation and death. It is only in striving for perfection that we experience growth. In other words, the journey is more important than the destination.”
YES. YES. This is what everyone is missing. So don’t smack yourself.
It is not commonly realized that perfection is an illusion created to keep us working towards the next level of greatness.
Evolution is so demented. I cannot get started on this topic, because I have work to do, but I could write essays about how destructive the patterns of the human animal have become, and how we are leaving behind every part of life worth living in a quest to do things more efficiently, for less money. It’s funny how when you put the emphasis on trying to have more free time in life, you end up not really living.
Will come back and probably comment again on the conformist/nonconformist topic. Eloquent post, dahling.
You seem like the type who learns so much from the mistakes of others. Which gives you a lot of material. The bond between conformists and non-conformists is fear: one is afraid to be seen as strange, and the other is afraid to be seen as a coward. To escape both traps, we must not care how others see us. True?
TimeVictim, your last statement is the code of a true individual. If fear of being a coward is all that differentiates between a conformist and non-conformist, then there is no such thing as a non-conformist. It is only in being ourselves without thought to the social norms and fads, whether mainstream or counter-culture that we can be termed an individual.
first of all, i really like your site. i have no idea who you are.
doesn’t it seem like the ideas of conformity and nonconformity only fit into a certain context? i mean, how far can it go in one race, one society, or just one planet? if you back off a little bit, sort of step out of the argument of whether you’re a conformist or not, it seems less important. and people try so hard, they’re so focused on what they want to be. i was/am like this. and i kept trying to be something that no one else was. but it’s very hard when most (if not all) of the things in my mind are from this world. (don’t get me wrong, i don’t believe in heaven or hell.)
anyway, i’m starting to realize that neither side is better, and neither one should rule your life. i think that 99% of what’s in our minds is not innate, and we may come up with a really nice rearrangement of those styles, or that information, or make some incredible nuclear physics discovery, but it’s all recycled. conformity and nonconformity are, by definition, created by society.
also, the other day my friend said to me, ‘it’s like we’ve evolved for a nonexistent environment.’ if we are still evolving, what for?