Hit 'like' to Conform
By: Lorenz Köhler
An unexamined life is not a life worth living
If we stop and reflect, we realise we’re all under some serious pressure to conform to society. As ridiculous as it may sound to some, it’s the harsh and often unexamined truth of our ‘reality’. Many base their life decisions on celebrity lifestyles and look up to them as ‘trend-setters’ while wasting time and energy trying to keep up with the Kardashians… and for what? Being inspired by the desire to be like everyone else can cost you YOUR identity and make you forfeit your soul to the mainstream culture.
We purchase the latest phones, televisions and vehicles, yearning to make fashion statements with branded clothing released to the masses by multi-millionaire corporations. We starve ourselves in order to fit into what society deems as the ideal shape to be… we mutilate our minds, bodies and wallets just to fit in. Do we really need to or do we merely fear being left out by the rest? Are we afraid of being judged for not conforming to social norms?
This isn’t something to be taken lightly and it all forms the basis of living in a fear-driven lifestyle in which thoughts and actions are primarily informed by fear. Death, loneliness, poverty, pain, rejection, ill health and loss of freedom are some of the many fears we endure on a daily basis… but the biggest fear of them all would be the fear of our own identities. Going hand-in-hand with developing an ego, this fear arises from ones lack of divinity and low sense of self-belief… and means basically not taking up the responsibility of controlling our own lives.
Are we the architects of our own downfall or are we being set up to live a specific way? We are cultivated from birth in a sense that the economic elite profit from the uneducated masses chasing the ‘dream’. Through our cultural and religious beliefs, we’re ‘taught’ that we cannot do this and we cannot do that and that we are supposed to live in a specific way that confines us to the extent that the Media can profit and exploit the masses. Our realities and way of life are shaped through forms of propaganda and television programming that lead us into believing that is the way life should be lived. The whole ‘go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, support your family, work ‘til retirement and die without having a life with meaning or substance’ narrative. Television moulds our minds into believing that some are destined for great things while others are simply here to live mediocre lives. The information we receive from television latches onto what we already know in terms of cultural and moral beliefs and thus subtly creates a social reality.
Television lifestyles becomes the norm to individuals and eventually wider cultures as a whole. The Media misleads us in so many ways and not everything you read is the truth. In fact, some say that there is no such thing as ‘truth’: it’s merely an aspiration for us human beings… or a stick.
This lifestyle creates a false sense of fear, idealism and sheep-like conformity in which the mainstream can thrive. Masses conform to society and effectively lose their voice. You know people tend to keep their opinions to themselves when they feel that their opinion differs from the majority of the crowd? We all have that ‘sixth sense’ that allows us to know general opinion… and when you fear being isolated from the rest, what better way is there to avoid being judged than simply keeping your mouth shut? Sounds crazy, but we’re all guilty of it some time or another. We fear to be different, we fear to stand out from the rest simply because we know what’s ‘socially acceptable’ and what’s frowned upon and we fear being the individual isolated from the rest.
Small, big, real or imagined… we face every type of fear but in reality all fear is unreal. Fear is not part of our true nature as human beings, yet most are too ingrained in our fear-based culture to realise that. We constantly create stress and fears by worrying about the future and the past... we’re so consumed by worry that we forget to just live in the moment. We try to keep ourselves busy, we try to progress in our lives and impress others enough to remove angst, but doing so is merely a distraction. There might be temporary relief before terror remains but we fool ourselves every single day into believing that our lifestyles can remove our ingrained fear.
What we need to do in order to progress as a society and as individuals is celebrate the uniqueness with which we’ve been blessed. None of us are truly alike and, when you are yourself, you bring something new into this world.
We need to realise that most of the celebrities or wealthy people that we strive to emulate are heading for destruction: what you see on the outside is not necessarily reciprocated on the inside. They might groan under tonnes of debt or live with an unhappy family while posing as something that they’re not. Do not chase happiness: accept that there’s something better out there for you and the truth will set you free.
As a society, we cannot be blamed for what we’ve become… but those who have awakened to our ‘reality’ and do nothing about it are the real failures. We can be better than this…
