exclusion principle

If there is one thing I hate more than anything else, it is pop culture. The craze of blending into the masses makes my insides bleed. The loss of individuality to a certain extent so as to become more "acceptable" and "hep" unsettles me. Dont get me wrong here. I am not one of those weird punks who advocate nudist parties or satan worship or anything. I understand perfectly that we are social animals (yeah, in fact some of us are what is referred to in the entertainment biz as "party animals"). Through an elaborate process of evolution, we have realised that sticking together and bouncing ideas off each other, is the best way forward. So while our simian counterparts still hang around in the jungles of Africa stark naked and trying to break twigs, we have leaped far ahead of them.

What I mean by pop culture is the seemingly arbitrary and sometimes selfishly motivated definitions of "cool" , "hip" and "happening". Assuming we have an understanding of these words................whats that you said............you dont?????. Come on. "Go get a life!" ( For the uninitiated, the last line was an example of "cool" things to say ). So, we go ahead and buy shirts with Reebok and Nike splattered all over them ( and hopefully the spellings are right and the swoosh is the right way), we listen to the latest death metal and somehow seamlessly empathize with whatever they are going on hollering about. Some of us even take to the bottle or the bong for the one reason that it is "cool".

So as I see it, humans are always trying to be a part of a larger social group and 0nce they identify which group that is (ranging from scientology proponents to psychology geeks.. .....(oops, maybe thats not the best pair to have chosen, but anyway)), they are even willing to undergo a behavioral mutation so as to be viewed as "one of them". But something makes me think that there are other, contradictory vibes within us. If we look closely, all through our lives we are trying to find a "niche" for ourselves. We are trying to separate ourselves from the larger group and prove ourselves smarter, richer, bigger, stronger, whatev...er (haha, cruel joke, huh!). I think it is this contradiction which is the primary cause of confusion; which gives rise to the need of "finding oneself", so to say. How do we place ourselves in this social setup so that, while we are not viewed as mediocres, we are also saved from the ignominy of being in a group that is too exclusive for our own likes.

P.S. Was reading this blog by somebody which talked about this guy who's basically an overachiever and ends up losing out on the social scene. With all due respect, I think the article was written with poor perspective and spoke disparagingly of the "loser" guy. Most guys of this kind are just lost because they are not able to find that right balance between excluding oneself from the group by way of his achievements and including yourself in a social group who will accept you as one of them. Why would the social group include him if he's interested in classical music and watches Discovery. In that case, is it his mistake or is it the group's mistake in not accepting a person as an element of diversity but trying to cast him in a mould.