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Nov. 29, 2010 Sheep are animals that stick together in groups and blindly follow the dominant sheep in that group. The flock of sheep is led by the shepherd. Like sheep, people attach themselves to a group and follow the dominant trends of society. And who might the shepherd be in society? The media of course! These days we live in a society that is strongly influenced by the media, consisting of people who are particularly impressionable. People by nature want to be accepted. Young or old, rich or poor, being accepted by society is what we live for. It is the reason we choose to study, choose to work, choose to get married and choose to have a family. It is also the reason we choose to do all these things in that order. We conform to the media’s idealistic values and the behavioural patterns of society- like sheep! We eat ‘Non-fat’ products because fat is not accepted; we live in pretentious areas because we are unconsciously elitist snobs and send our children to well-known private schools to ‘improve’ their upbringing. Fashion changes with each season and so do our wardrobes. These are all the things that the media numbs us with in order to prevent us from thinking for ourselves. The problem with conforming is that there are consequences. It crushes creativity and one’s true self value which in the long run, results in a meaningless, mediocre life. Our relationships with people are superficial and based purely on image; conversations we have are not real but spoken merely to hear the sound of our own voices. Once we extract ourselves from a collective way of thinking, we begin to question everything in search of meaning. The only thing preventing us from thinking as individuals at this very moment is fear. It is easier to be a follower than to think for yourself because there is less chance of failure. Society persuades us to play it safe and be like everyone else because anything in contrast with compliance is considered deviant.
Picasso captured the beauty of a woman’s entire body with a single brush stroke, but was deemed crass and offensive to his society. If Picasso conformed to his society’s accepted way of thinking, he would never have left a legacy in art history that inspired so many other great artists. Picasso proved that greatness never came from conforming. We live in a world that is strange and mind-boggling, where anything is possible, but we cannot discover this magic if we follow and conform. If we continue to uphold these social malfunctions, we will accomplish nothing extraordinary, but exist as social sheep grazing of the scraps of the media and living our lives by default; as prisoners to society yet ironically holding ourselves hostage. Being true to one’s self and living a life of substance means not taking the road everyone else travels, but rather getting lost and finding our own way.
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