Friday, June 3, 2016

Me...us

We all have the competing urges to be our individual selves and to belong. A healthy balance between the two is often hard to achieve in our culture. Belonging to a group says something about who we are; but the group itself can demand a rigid conformity that denies our individuality. The group can give comfort and support but can also make it difficult to take the individual risks necessary to grow as an individual.

Corporate culture and marketing is extremely skilled at wrapping identity, success, desire, style all in neat packages that confuse individuality with conformity, a strategy that works well on young people in the process of searching for personal identity and needing to belong as they move from adolescence and dependency to adulthood and personal responsibility. There are messages galore that individuality is defined by the superficial--clothes, hair, body adornments, shoes, lifestyle.

Where are the messages that individuality and identity are deeper things, measured by behavior, values, personal relationships? How can these essential messages be heard in the cacaphony of mass media?

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