When uniqueness meets east - Part I
Disclaimer: In this post i have generalized, categorized a lot, it doesn't mean you h ave to be like what i have mentioned in the post. These are just some of the qualitative observation and a through scientific quantification is needed to generalize.
It has been nearly 3 weeks since i am back to India. People say that i have changed a lot in the past year. People are judgmental about it. They can't stand change. The are hesitant in accepting a person deviating from the group, flock or notion of "Collectivist". Change is a choice that is available by free will to every human being in the planet. The choices you make in life are available to you because of your freedom and decisions in life. Can you stick with the change admist social pressure? I experienced stark contrast in the way, i have lived in the past and the way i live now. I am an individualist now, i don't conform to a group just because i want to "Fit in". I have my own ideals, opinions, the way i view the world and choices. I am finding it difficult to sacrifice them to "Fit in" with student groups. I have a choice here, i can act as a hypocrite (sacrifice my ideals) and conform to the "collectivist" behavior. There are major differences in the way i view world and the way my friends view the world. I tend to be less judgmental about things, ofcourse that being said judgement is something that nobody can avoid in life. However, i believe that there are people with varying levels of judgements, people who are judgmental about evey aspect and people who are laidback, chilled out and care less about things like dressing, human behavior (Not extreme ones), religious orientations, etc. I prefer to stick to the second category. Although, i prefer second category i have to learn to live peacefully with people in first category.
To diminish the abstractness and give specificity. I am going to stick to a anonymous example. I was having an argument with one of my friend the other day. I wanted to share my part of the knowledge. Instead of creative exploration for a fact finding, things turned into a heated argument. It ended up in decided who is winning or loosing, i hate it when this happens. I feel that every argument should not be about winning or loosing, It could also be about creative exploration and knowledge sharing. I believe the mechanism of using arguments to find effective solutions switches away from the goal of sharing knowledge and end's up in winning/loosing. I believe that winning/loosing and right/wrong are all relative terms. This is probably one of the sharp contrasts i observed. My alter ego from the past would have worked for a amicable solution conforming to the group norms. Now i chose to argue, ended up being viewed as someone who lost an argument in a arrogant way. I observed, in arguments people from groups tended to take sides instead of neutral standpoints. Some of them are bound by social pressure of fitting in and social acceptance in case of support/rejection of the key members argument. In all these instances, i worry whether an individual's true opinion is lost and whether such occurances could lead to a person loosing his individuality and have a collectivist behavior. There are two questions from all these experiences,
Is the method of arguing about things the best way to enhance knowledge, who is to evaluate this method and is there any other methods?
Should i "fit in" or create a new and "open" social circle?
