Society

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Today's society is more and more dominated by increasing individualism, as opposed to (say) a hundred years ago [see time], when people were largely conformists, afraid to take even the smallest steps away from the common opinions, clothing, way of life and even language. Yet, if you take a look at the average high school [see school] today, you'll probably find that almost everybody dress the same way anyhow (school uniforms aside), so perhaps it's not that dominating after all :-)

People have always had a tendency and desire to flock together, primarily to increase the chance of survival (today perhaps just as much emotionally as physically), and I don't really think that's a bad thing. Sure, there's always a very fine line between adjusting to others (as you'll always will have to do in any lasting society) and being dominated by them. Society really is a good thing, in my opinion -- it's thanks to society that I [see me] can live a relatively comfortable life here writing [see writing] this on a computer instead of setting the words physically in stone, and it's thanks to society that I can buy food every day instead of having to go out hunting moose [see demoscene] in the woods [see nature]. As long as one can find the right balance between being yourself and being a part of the great social machine, I think society works out just nicely. In a 30-40 years, I guess we'll be on the way back to everybody being the same again anyhow. ;-)