Who Are You? Does Individuality Exist?

You. Hello, yes, you. Who are you? What does it mean to be you? What is it that makes you different from everyone else? Overall, what does it mean to be an individual?

As we approach adulthood there is an increasing social pressure to discover our own individual personalities. The media seems to have become infatuated with this ideology of self-discovery and realization. Youth culture has become especially obsessed with dividing itself into sub-cultures; Goths, rockers, emos, skaters, metallers, preps, nerds and of course the infamous chavs. But what really differentiates between these groups? We have become passionate about being different, but how far does the way we dress and speak dictate what we really are?

To a certain extent, the differences between us are obvious. We have different hair colours, different eyes, and different facial shapes to each other; there are many distinguishing features. No one person will ever look exactly like another. Our views and interpretations on life will also always be different; people seize upon beliefs and ideologies around which they will try to mould their character and everyone will have a different combination of ideas, and subsequently a different character. It is highly improbable that two people will arrive at college wearing exactly the same outfit and professing the same ideas.

On the other hand, no idea will ever be entirely created by one person. There is no such thing as originality because everything we ever say is just an amalgamation of everything we have ever read or heard. Any view we profess will have been professed before, and anything that we may like to imagine as being “new” will just be a rearrangement of something that has already been said or done.

Obviously this is a conclusion which a lot of us will find depressing; if we can’t be different, if we are really just the same as a load of other people, then what is the point in it all? If our lives are just a revision of someone else’s, then why bother? Superficially it may appear that if this in fact the case, than there may be no point in thinking any longer, for no innovative realization can be made. It is our human instinct, however, to be inquisitive and there is no shame in the fact that we are extremely repetitive, because, in our own minds, the ideas will be new, and our personal minds are quintessentially the world in which we live. To one person, there is no world as a whole, but a world as viewed by them.

However, if we all, in our own worlds within our minds, are thinking the same things, then clearly there is no such thing as an individual. Although some people may take longer to come upon different realisations, everything we learn will be or will have been learnt by another. Every one of us is human so every one of us will experience the same emotions; we all feel love, anger and remorse. We all experience loneliness and misery.

To ourselves, our own experiences will feel much more extreme and important than other peoples; humans are distinctively selfish, and so can believe that none other can feel love for someone, for example, in the same way as they do. And, while each individual emotive case may be slightly different to another, this is only true to the extent that different people may be involved; the scenario will have happened many a time before.

As our lives are built upon our experiences, then, and our experiences are not ours alone, how can there be such thing as an individual? While one person will have had a different combination of experiences from another, the generalized thoughts of the masses are the same. From this then, can we conclude that we are not merely one, but an accumulation of beings who are all, in essence, the same?

According to the evidence, this would apparently be the case. So why do we still cling to the idea of individuality? Why are some people seemingly much more focused and sure of themselves? Perhaps because they have achieved this thing called “self realisation”? With all due respect to those who truly believe in this common cliché, the term “self realisation” is essentially utter rubbish. If you have achieved self realisation, one would assume that you now understand all aspects of yourself and life around you, such is the “realisation”. You would assume that the views you have now are final because you have realised that they are what they are, and that they make you who you are. The fact is, however, that we can never be “self realized” because our self as it is will always change.

As Gelett Burgess said, “If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.” While we stay alive, we will undoubtedly encounter new situations, and the result of these will, whether you like it or not, change who you are. People who claim that their ideas will not, or have not changed are clearly extremely narrow minded, or in denial, for as the brilliant Muhammad Ali said, “The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”

From considering all above, then, it could definitely be concluded that, in reality, there is no such thing as individuality. If all our experiences will assimilate each others, then how can we ever assume to be different? It also seems foolish to believe in self realization, because who we are will never stay the same for more than an hour, something will always change. While we may shape and form our own minds from what we experience, the ultimate shape will never be realized because something will always happen next; there is no ultimate shape, no “realization”. If nothing happens next, because you do actually die, then you will have died unrealized. While humans will always be asking questions and searching for the truth, it can never be found.

This happens with every single person; every “individual” will not cease to be inquisitive about the lives we lead. And, considering the fact that we all essentially think the same things repeatedly, we are, to all intents and purposes, floundering about in the same goldfish bowl of confusion as each other. We are all confused goldfish. So why resent each other?

Why section ourselves into different cults and groups and scorn the way others live? The outcome of our lives will be the same anyway, so we may as well “love each other”, because really we are all the same. I know that, as I write this, it is not an individual comment; someone will have said it before. In that respect, my life, your life, the lives of all of us confused goldfish, is really just a recording that’s been left on repeat.

In the meantime, however, just because our ideas are the same dull, un-original ones that have always been there, it does not make them unworthy. The important thing is that they matter to us, to that little world we have made for ourselves within our own heads, and that, really, is how we cope. We cling to our individuality. It may not exist, but hey, that’s the great thing about humans. They have a lot of imagination, and that is how they survive.

We live not in the real world, perhaps, but in the world that our mind has created for itself. The clothes we wear or “persona” we create for ourselves is, in that respect, just a mask, something that we know is not real, but that we enjoy. Oh, forget it. Let’s all pretend we are individual anyway; after all, it’s much more fun.