A society where all people think and act alike, is a society that will result in rebellion. It has been proven that “people pick to go against the group nine out of ten times.” (Derreby 157) That’s not to say that people don’t conform. The majority of people do the exact same thing when it comes to actions on social media; “I sincerely celebrated the good news, and deferred
to social media etiquette and clicked “like” on my friend’s post.” (Ali) Except the difference is when it’s on social media people can easily shut down or “log off” the sites where as if people were to try and run a world in which everyone had to be exactly identical they would have no way to “log off” when they were tired of conforming to their peers and desired to be an individual and display creativity.
People will choose to conform even if it is just for a little while in order to make someone happy. For example, when Gene the jaywalking junkie was in a new city he “sensed… mid-jaywalk” that they care what you do there. (Weingarten 1) So when he was confronted by a police officer about jaywalking he chose “to cross at the corner, with the light just [that] once” to avoid getting a ticket or possibly ending up going to jail since not crossing with the light is illegal. (Weingarten 2) People follow the majority within everyday life just to please others.
There is a lot more individualism now than there used to be. Most of the time people still choose to conform if it means avoiding a dispute. One topic many people choose to conform to is their preference of religion. Not many people have the desire to worship the same God or believe in the same things, so when a family names there child something that reflects their beliefs it is looked at to be strange. “[I have] a trisyllabic name with Arabic roots that means “esteemed,” and is used by certain Pakistani parents who want to guarantee that their American-born Muslim child experiences childhood mockery,” and since most parents have the same mindset; “I could never forgive myself for causing my child undue pain,” they don’t give their child any sort of religious name. (Ali) On the other hand, there are still those parents who believe that since they live and thrive in a world with a religious name so can their child, “So, we named our son “Ibrahim.”… The name is in fact a hopeful prayer — both for my son and the future of America. It’s inspired by a verse in the Quran: “O fire, be coolness and peace upon Ibrahim.”” (Ali) It is these parents that teach their children to be non-conformists and to go against the opinion of the majority if it means that they are simply standing up for what they believe in.
The reality of todays’ society is that all people get judged no matter what they choose to do, so it’s best for them to let their creativity run free in a world where individuality is crucial.