We are boring. Face it, people. Yeah, we all have our quirks and kinks. But we choose to live in ways that, for most part, are indistinguishable. Go to work. Like an ant. Go to the Gap. Like a khaki-loving ant.
Don't try to tell me otherwise. Don't try to sell me on the human race being a blizzard of beautifully distinct snowflakes. I know what life is like around the water cooler -- a staid pool of sameness. We employ armies of human relations officers to enforce the sameness. But worse, we self-enforce. There are vast universities that specialize in turning out Same-bots, with the enthusiastic cooperation of the Same-bots. I know people who are geniuses at determinedly remaining middle of the road.
Defenders of conformity will say that sameness allows us to build norms, laws, civilizations. These things are important, especially for bohos like me who depend on other peoples' know how and hard work to build the basics. But civilization is no excuse for our kind of mass conformity. Iconoclasts from Albert Einstein to Marilyn Monroe have managed to stab through the heart of the status quo while showing a healthy respect for property rights and traffic lights.
Why are we so boring? The people we worship aren't boring. Jesus and Mohammed, tremendously interesting! Picasso, provocative! Why don't we strive to be that way? Why aren't we passionate about making our individual selves tremendously interesting?
I can't pretend to totally not understand the mediocre middle. Too many nights, I go for the remote instead of revolution. But I'm trying.