The Age of Individuality....

I was thinking about our times. About how all of us seem to be confused, in some way or the other, about some or the other thing. Gone are the times when people would stick to the norms and not stray from it. I guess things were a lot easier for people back them, except for the revolutionaries and rebels of such times, but then again they were still the outliers of the lot. The goal was to agree with a perspective, not to question it because of the strong underpinning they possessed through patronage. 

Individuality has brought its own set of pros and cons. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder I'm told. If I think of it objectively, most people I see everyday are definitely beautiful. But then again, when I think of whether I personally think someone is beautiful or not, I fail to even acknowledge most of them as beautiful. In Joey's words, they are so far from the line that the line is a dot to me! :-P I hope I have put my point across, although in an odd way. Subjectively, each one has her/his own definition for beauty. We have come to a point where we accept this fact for starters. But, I strongly believe that such populations are still lurking as outliers. The mean is still same old same old! But according to a lot of predictive science through models and simulations, the kind of populations that shall prevail in the future are all set, belong to a certain type, and then what will happen? I think I have digressed enough. 

Why bother about a lot of such garbage? I was sitting in this journal club today. It is so difficult to collect information for statistics when there is a wide disparity in thought, culture and gender issues. Not to mention your own experiments with the truth (philosophically speaking), in other words, your own experiences and genetic makeup which also influence what you think or feel. How do you unify such data into one and bring out a pattern in it. Of course, you put through a lot of mathematical and other higher order computational procedures. But then you have twisted around too much, come up with the best possible theory, which in turn could be wrong from the core. But I'm told something is better than nothing at all. 

In the end I was humming "We don't need no education!"

I had this vague correlation to this movie, Monty Python: Life of Brian. I would say watch it. It was so much simpler to be like a community and follow one person, whether in your right minds or not. People always sought out for a leader or a god or an embodiment of god on earth. Individuality gave us, I feel, a religion of our own. Follow your own religion, have your own precepts and principles and other rules of the sort. But the difference being, back then, one such person emerged amongst thousands and made truck loads of money and now we make none. Of course, now such leaders are addressed differently, as being spiritual than godly.  So we are back to being in a mixed and confused time. Should we follow these spiritual babas or should we be on our own? Very Subjective again!

P.S. Sad post, but wanted to ramble on and on and trust me it was difficult NOT to write all that I thought. Spared ! Bottomline, Unity in Diversity doesn't seem to exist anymore, or did it ever?