"Everyone Is Unique"

[Mahat]

"Everyone is unique" - yeah technically speaking this may be true. But what's really happening is that everyone is a distinct monad of a collective consciousness and unconsciousness. The conscious part is the emergent surface and historically contingent manifestation of the unconscious. Just how individually, our sub- and unconsciousness are the motors that undulates us and our consciousness is the externalized manifestation of those motors, that same mechanism is present within us as a collective. But to bring this conversation back to earth, the truly unique individuals have a certain je nai se quoi. It's not about bucking the status quo, being contrarian, or being weird for the sake of being weird. It's hard to explain in words hence the je nai se quoi comment. But it's how their distinct position in this world ingeniously intersects with the collective mind (which incorporates the conscious and unconscious. The term is used for brevity), and provides novel and interesting ways in which the collective mind manifests. So even the most seemingly off-collectively minded individual still replicates something fundamental in humanity - at the very least, people's need to create their own origin story and their desire to assert their own identity. But I would say most people lazily incorporate the most mundane, profane, and fleeting aspects of the collective mind which significantly occludes their own sense of uniqueness, and ultimately obscures their place in the world. Regardless, even the most superficial aspects of ourselves underlie something deeper.

I know this is a tangent, but memes are a great example of the collective mind being explicitly replicated. I can see different memes about different topics but ultimately they're all the same because a certain type of cultural mentality gets reproduced and replicated. So I can see two different memes, ones that I've never seen before, yet feel like I've seen them a million times.

[Animal]

Reminds me of this post on my blog.

[Animal]

Atelier More seriously, I do agree with your sentiment in its entirety. One problem we have now is that everyone and their mother is "an artist," everyone and their mother is "Special and unique" -- basically, it's popular to be unique. Those who say "I'm normal" are pushing against the grain, and therefore may be more unique than the horde of clones who are all claiming uniqueness. I could not, in good conscience, say that I'm normal - but due to the way people get their panties in a bunch about this, I prefer not to say "I'm unique." When I say that, I see it as a fact, a very obvious one - but my existence makes this implicit. Whatever I do, people will interpret it somehow and most will interpret it as unique. If some interpret it as normal, fine, whatever. Not my problem either way - my concern is being genuine, expressive, living up to my own standards. That said, it's pretty clear that most people don't.... think like me. One example I use is that since I was a kid I didn't watch tv or play games at all, and instead lived inside this major fantasy world, but still understood the difference between "the reality that others see" and the world of Erosian expression. These days, such a sentiment doesn't register because you have people saying "I identify as a cat!" and wearing cat costumes, only to receive attention and validation from the media. So it almost seems society lost the vocabulary to talk about anything that's real -- such as "What is art, really" or "what is the difference between the uniqueness everyone has - which renders the word meaningless --- and genuine deviation." Basically, words don't mean anything anymore. They are just coopted to suit people's itty bitty little feelings, and objective reality is left behind.

[BalalaikaBoy]

"Being unique is like being a lady. If you have to say you are, you aren't".
~Margaret Thatcher, 2020

[Animal]

But the left has coopted words and made them all meaningless. "Artist," "unique," "woman," "man," "racist" and so on have all been redefined with new meanings. That's why we have this problem. These things actually have been defined in the English language - you can find them in the dictionary.

[BalalaikaBoy]

the funny part is that now people barely respond to most actual hate crimes because they hear "racist" and just think of some shit like a white high school girl wearing a traditional Chinese dress to prom -_-

[Animal]

Yup, it undermines the meaning of REAL racism, which is very serious, but now they made a mockery of it.