 |
Today at 03:58:18 AM |
|
If you haven't lived your entire life with an isolated tribe deep in the Amazon (no way you can be that lucky!), you've undoubtedly heard the phrase "Every individual is unique." You might even have used this phrase yourself in many situations, when consulting others or yourself. Most of the time, it probably served as a convenient conclusion.
But are we truly unique? In what ways is an individual unique? (Here, I'm limiting the scope of the term "individual" to humans only.) Is it even sensible to indoctrinate this idea to future generations, as has been done to us, making it one of the fundamental principles guiding our perceptions and actions?
You could argue that every element is unique in some way from others, and the same can be said for flora and fauna. However, when you examine things within a set, there are more similarities than rare differences.
In my opinion, the same goes for Homo sapiens. Differences become even rarer when you further narrow it down to specific cultures and communities. Nearly everything that matters for societal cohesion has most individuals making the same choices. Even when there is variance (e.g., someone choosing spirituality over chasing wealth, homosexuality vs. heterosexuality), it still doesn't qualify as uniqueness because of the limited number of choices and the sheer number of individuals already following that path. Even sexual fantasies have well-established categories, which shows that few deviate from established structures even when given complete mental freedom of choice. You could argue that we don't truly have free will (determinism), but then any pursuit of knowledge becomes less worthwhile.
What I've come to understand is that very few individuals are truly unique and different. The rest of us are just mindlessly reinforcing existing structures, even if it means vehemently opposing those who are unique.
Please don't derail this discussion by asking "What do you mean by unique?" By unique, I don't mean absolutely unique, something that pops into existence out of nothing or has nothing to do with existing possibilities. I'm using unique in the sense of coming up with new choices, like Satoshi did.
|
