My friends and I were trying to organise some place to meet up. I wanted to go watch a movie while they wanted to go laser tag. I thought to myself; why do they like laser tag so much? I then imagined a world where everyone talked about the same topics, watched the same movies and everyone had similar personalities. The world seemed extremely monotonous. It was at this point when I realised that it's good to be different in a world of conformity. But, if you take a look at society in a broader sense, we are all working towards similar goals. We are all trying to conform to society as social pressure encourages people to be “normal”.
It's good to be different in a world of conformity. We live on a planet where conformity is highlighted as “normal” but how can you define the word normal? Is anyone in fact normal? Conformity and meeting social expectations can affect our looks, personalities and our lifestyle choices. As humans we are often quick to scrutinise, be intolerant of differences and we are often unforgiving. This speech will explain the dangers of conformity and why it's good to be unique in today's society.
We live in a world where we are told and made to feel wrong for not acting like everyone else. Our society isn’t tolerant of anyone who chooses something that isn’t considered normal, for example, in 2011, a young boy was constantly met with unpleasent and judgemental remarks for being gay. He was constantly humiliated in front of 10’s of people by his roommate who believed it was a “harmless joke”. But in October the same year, the boy was fed up and committed suicide. Someone did in fact lose their life for not conforming with society. As said by Patrick Rothfuss, “We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be”. Changing who we are in order to conform to society will eventually strip us of our individuality. The above demonstrates the constant and ongoing dangers of conforming to society and some consequences it has on individuality. It’s good to be different in a world of conformity.
We live in a world where everyone is expected to be “normal” and in doing so, we lose something more important than societal expectations, we lose what makes us who we are. As you all may know, even identical twins aren’t identical, so why pretend to be to be the same when none of us are even close? Being different allows you to be your true self and reduce the stress of pretending to be someone different. After you become yourself you won’t care about anyone else and peer pressure will not affect you. You will break free of the shackles of societies conformity.
Being different is being happy. From what I have explained, it can be said that conformity is a dangerous, and lethal in some senses. It will slowly but surely reduce our individuality. On the other hand, being different will strengthen our resistance to stress and peer pressure.