Individuality and Inner Struggle
Humans desire to have individuality. What is
individuality? It can be thought of as a combination of
qualities that distinguish one individual from another.
Wanting to be different from others is a part of the human
nature, but what is also a part of this nature is the
longing for social acceptance. Therefore, humans are always
searching for a way to fulfill both needs. Minou Fuglesang
and Georg Simmel use fashion and envy, along with culture,
in their writings to define the inner struggle of the
human's need to be an individual within a group.
In order to understand how exterior influences cause
inner struggle, one must understand what inner struggle is.
Inner struggle can be illustrated by Plato's example from
Phaedrus of the charioteer and his horses (31). In relation
to fashion, envy, and culture, the charioteer represents
humans and their wants. One could say that the two horses
represent two of the many different needs of human nature:
one horse, individuality and the other horse, conformity.
When all three come together, the horse of individuality and
the horse of conformity want to go in completely opposite
directions while the charioteer wants his horses to go
straight ahead, so the charioteer has an extremely difficult
time reining the horses. Like the charioteer, humans also
battle with two sides that want to go different ways.
Simmel argues that fashion is a tool used to express
one's individuality in order to be accepted by others.
Humans have two needs in society: "the need of union on the
one hand and the need of isolation on the other" (Simmel
301). They want to be seen as an individual, different from
everyone, but they also want to be part of a group for the
reassurance of their individuality. As Simmel states, " . .
. fashion represents . . . the tendency towards social
equalization with the desire for individual differentiation
and change" (296). Fashion is extremely fickle and
transient because "the very character of fashion demands
that it should be exercised at one time only by a portion of
the given group" (Simmel 302). This transient character-
istic guarantees that the upper class, the ones in society
who have enough means to follow fashion, remain in a group
by themselves because as soon as the lower classes begin to
imitate the upper class fashion, the upper class changes the
fashion.
Like Simmel, Fuglesang also holds that fashion is used
to unify and isolate. She states, "Women dress for each
other as well as for themselves" (109).
Eadith/Eddie meets h/er mother Eadie accidently, but s/he does not escape or expose h/erself to Eadie. S/he follows h/er mother into a church, and “She continued obsessed by the image of her mother in a church pew, black gloves clamped to the prayer-book” (403). S/he used to think that “She could not believe in heroes, or legendary actors, or brilliant courtesans, or flawless beauties, for being herself a muddled human being astray in the general confusion of life” (403). But now, in h/er eyes, Eadie is a saint and s/he is the penitent.
In life adversity plays a role in shaping an individual's identity. Overcoming adversity in life can give you new found strength and courage. Helping you become a better person later in life. In the photo Through The Door the child opening the door symbolizes trying to overcome something. The child can be trying to overcome adversity. The adversity seen in the photo is from the depressed theme. This theme of depression comes from how sad the child looks, and how disastrous his surroundings are. The fence around the child is poorly put together, and made of sticks.While the door the child is using is barely holding together, and the door is scraped together with spare pieces of wood. Giving the door a dangerous feel. With the poorly made stick fence, and the door put together with the sad child it gives off get a depressed theme.
Thoreau, Henry David, and Jeffrey S. Cramer. Walden : A Fully Annotated Edition. New Haven:
In Divergent by Veronica Roth many characters struggle to know who they really are and when they learn the answer it is often at a personal price. Beatrice Prior who later changes her name to Tris is the protagonist of the story and struggles the most to find out who she really is. She is a strong, caring and brave young woman who is forced to choose to either continue living with her family in a faction guided by selflessness or move to a new faction guided by bravery. She is almost unable to make her choice due to the fact that she got multiple results from her aptitude test, commonly referred to as divergent. Throughout the book she faces many challenges and adversities but each one helps her learn a little more about herself. By the end of the book Tris learns who she is and what she believes in but each time she learned more about herself she paid a great price.
Individuality is the quality or character of a particular person or thing that distinguishes them from others of the same kind, especially when strongly marked. According
Hypothesis: “We hypothesize that the performance of individual members in such situations is likely to be highest when the members hold both individualist and collectivist orientations toward their work” (Hollenbeck, Humphrey, Meyer, Wagner, 2012, pg. 947).
The beliefs of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Galileo on the Bible are similar in some aspects, but mostly different from one another. Martin Luther and John Calvin are somewhat similar in their belief that faith alone is the key to salvation. Galileo, however was a scientist, and his views on the Bible differ from those of Calvin and Luther. Since Galileo was not a theologian, most of his writing is not about God and the Bible, but it is about science. Though their writings are very different, Calvin, Luther, and Galileo all speak about the subject of human individualism. Their views of human individualism differ from one another, and arise from different circumstances. Each of these three men’s writings contain their beliefs on human individualism and how it relates to the individual’s relationship with God.
The idea of Individualism can be traced all the way back to England before America’s existence. As we know, individualism has been interpreted in many forms throughout history. The 19th century is no different, taking hold of its own idea of individualism, called transcendentalism. Transcendentalism suggests freedom should not be confined to those focused on money and superficial gains. Instead, people should depend on no one but themselves. This movement focused on “greater individualism against conformity” (Corbett et al.). Heavily influenced by the Romantic period, transcendentalism adopted the belief that reason was more important than logic as Benjamin Franklin has believed. Reason must also include unique emotion and spirit (Corbett et
In the recent weeks, I have noticed a trend in our cultural beliefs regarding groups outside of our own. As a nation, while the United States has a strongly individualistic nature from a personal perspective, there is also a strong collectivist belief regarding everyone outside of themselves and their groups. Rather than believing that each member of an external group is responsible for their decisions alone (myth of individualism), separating them from a collective (one bad apple), the consensus is generally geared opposite. For example, the belief that all immigrants want to steal American jobs, when one is not an immigrant, or that feminists are actually misandrists, when one is not a feminist. What I believe we have
The Atlantic Enlightenment and Revolution changed the world for the better forever. The world was full of corruption, lack of rights, and discrimination until these new ideas came into the world during the revolution. During the period of the enlightenment men, women, and slaves all fought for their freedom and rights.
Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to become individuals and stand out as unique beings. During the foundation of the colonies, individuals were focused on preserving their religious beliefs. As slavery became more predominant, the Civil War era fought to give black people their identity back. In the 1800s and 1900s, the individual initiative shifted from giving a group of people identity to individuals fighting for their own personal beliefs. In today’s society, individualism has been diminished by the collapse of the economy, forcing people to live with their parents for longer periods of time. As the economy continues to grow again individualism is making strides in a positive direction.
The Divided self was a book written in attempt for ordinary people like ourselves to understand the issues regarding mental health and the stigma around it. The book is separated into three parts. Laing expresses the fact that psychosis is not a medical condition but there is a self-divide between two personalities. Laing also states that how we exist in the world is based on the perceptions of others.
Fashion in the 21th century is a big business, as its production employs millions of people and generates billions of dollars in revenue. Fashion has for the past century been, and is still today, used as an indicator of social change and progress, as it changes with the social norms of the society and the political changes of the world (Finkelstein 3).
On chapter 4 on the textbook, the author explains, “culture provides a member of a society with a common bond, a sense that we see certain facets of society in similar ways. We are living together at all depends on the fact that members of a society share a certain amount of cultural knowledge (Ch4, 132). Individualism and collectivism contribute greatly to the dimension of culture. For example, how many members of the culture define themselves apart from their group memberships. In individualist cultures, people are expected to develop and display their individual personalities and to choose their own affiliations. In collectivist cultures, people are defined and act mostly as a member of a long-term group, such as the family, a religious group, an age cohort, a town, or a profession, among others. This dimension was found to move towards the individualist end of the spectrum with increasing
In conclusion, fashion will speak out a person’s social signal, people dress on designs that blend with their social class. Just as population, social activities and fashion are changing with time. Fashion has made clothing to be convinient, everything needs to be done with the least effort and spend the least time.