"Just Another Brick in the Wall" is an intricate essay describing the way a human adapts to living in a society. It offers a new, quite scientific approach to the topic of being different. Contains advanced grammar.
By Sam Bucker, 1st grade
A befitting beginning to this essay would be my understanding of personal identity. It’s “the way someone acts and what they believe in, shaped by their unique set of strengths and weaknesses (this includes looks, temperament, empathy etc.), that are specific to one person”. Personal identity is what you can also call uniqueness. I believe everyone is unique (I’m not going to delve into the fact that the sheer size of the universe means that, statistically, somewhere in the universe, there must be exact copies of you, all your loved ones and everyone you ever knew. Let’s keep things simple.). So why is uniqueness important? Why does it matter? How does it affect our approach to social norms and group mentality?
To answer these questions, I must first refer to another definition, for clarity’s sake. Social norms (AKA societal standards) are what the majority of the collective treats as normal. Simple enough. Now, I’d like to present the two opposite viewpoints on the relationship between personal identity and social norms. On one hand, you have some people stating that, no matter what, humans are driven by whatever is best for their unique sense of self. However, others advance a theory suggesting the opposite – that humans are bound to act according to what’s best for their sense of group belonging. The first group claims that anyone who declares to find happiness in conformity fakes it, they lie to themselves. Thus, we should always state our true beliefs regardless of the consequences. These are the anarchists and Antifas. The Max Stirner and Unabomber types. The other group points to the collective mindset of the Chinese or the importance of the family unit in Latino countries. Group belonging is perceived as synonymous with life purpose. Here, a nice lie keeping everyone happy is better than a brutal truth that leads to conflict amongst members of the society.
I aim to prove these extreme opinions untrue and, in their place, put forward a simple, blunt view: people do what is best for themselves. Whether it’s conformity to the collective mentality or becoming the black sheep of society, depends entirely on the person – their personal identity. As I said, uniqueness is one’s set of strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, those whose strengths align with societal standards and can find themselves happy in conformity are the lucky ones.
Here’s an example: the woke collective starts considering a certain new pair of jeans fashionable; the people wearing them are cool. Now, let’s say you want to be with the cool kids, so you buy these jeans and start wearing them. You start being liked, create your own show-off handshakes and whatnot, until a problem arises. The jeans are super uncomfortable. You hate them and look to your old jeans that aren’t considered fashionable, yet fit you better. You think: “Are these handshakes really worth the general well-being of the lower half of my body?”. You come to the conclusion that no, they aren’t. So you throw the new jeans away, start wearing your old ones and stop being liked; you have been excluded due to the fact that you stood up to the norm. You become an outcast because of your uniqueness.
Now let’s take the opposite into consideration. You want to be liked, you buy the fashionable jeans, but this time, your perfectly formed body fits very snuggly into the material. So even if you don’t like the jeans, what’s the point of opposing the society? You’re going to throw them away so that you can… what? Be true to yourself? And lose all your friends? Your uniqueness is giving you the chance to be accepted by society and not ridiculed by it, so of course you’re going to conform.
That example was pretty materialist in its assumptions, but the same applies to beliefs and values. Sometimes, they are so incompatible with that of the society that you become the black sheep. You might stop caring and just do whatever is best for you ignoring how society views you. What comes to mind is the romanticized image of a pirate, adhering only to himself and stealing loot. Or the wild west cowboy, journeying from town to town, using others’ blindness to the reality in the face of their abstract conflicts, to steal gold for himself.
But there’s also a different type of standing out. A much more respectable form of individualism. One that puts aside ones self-benefit and personal gain for a noble purpose – to advance society. These people have great talent at their disposal or come from a privileged home, but instead of resting on their laurels and approving of the society’s shortcomings, they seek to fix them, alienating themselves from the society’s dominant institutions. These people are important and help make the world a better place, even if the change doesn’t happen in their lifetimes. After all, the world would be worse off without Buddha – a prince, starving himself in the woods to find enlightenment or Galileo, ruining his promising career by his opposition to the Church doctrine.
To conclude the essay, I’d like to share two personal stories that illustrate my arguments. I think of myself as a pretty weird guy. Social conduct and charm does not come to me naturally. But I had once wanted to be everyone’s friend, be like the cool kids. I was trying very hard to fit in and, for a while, it seemed to work. Making a clown of myself made people laugh and they befriended me. And yet, I hated it. I saw it as a chore rather than a source of enjoyment. So I stopped trying. I didn’t think it’s degrading and tiring myself worthwhile anymore. People stopped talking to me, but I felt much better.
For the second story, I transport you two years into the future, to a different school. There, I’m not the class clown anymore but the class nerd. They hated me because I would stand out by having my hand up in every class. I was made fun of, bullied… the whole package. So I decided I would stop. I would assimilate into the collective. Standing out wasn’t worth it. As a result, with time, I stopped being seen as the nerd and others took my spot. As unglamorous as it sounds, I was happier being just another brick in the wall.
So to sum up, the traits that come with uniqueness can be both a blessing and a curse. To say one should always adhere to personal tastes, or always adhere to their sense of belonging, would be nonsense. One must take a balanced approach between conformity and standing out, according to their own personal identity.