Western society and happiness (serious stuff)

[STM1993]

From what I gather from @Memento 's post:
* We are indoctrinated by society into conforming towards a specific behavior.
* People lose their creativity(and also consequently become unhappy) as a result of this conformity.
* Being willing to be different means being happy?
* Some advice on self-reflection.

Regarding conformity, I'd like to point out that conformity is born as a result of human nature; a desire to work in a team, to be part of the tribe. Being different means being against the group is a "shortcut" instinct that is deeply ingrained in our heads. Even as children, people will take notice when you are different from the group, from something as simple as just looking like a different race/gender to having different thoughts or interests. What happens when people notice that you don't fit in with everyone else? You get ostracized, stigmatized, bullied - certainly not things that would make you happy either as Silverthorn has rightly pointed out. This is why we have the concept of a public "face" (as we call it in asian culture, I think it is also called a "mask" in western culture). In your own home, you're free to be yourself, but out there, you're expected to conform to certain societal standards so that people can actually work together as well as to protect yourself, even if the standards don't actually make sense in context.

At the same time, I don't agree with your blanket statement that you have to be different to be happy. There are people who fit within the societal standards or are perfectly happy to live within them as Marko pointed out. I get your point that people should take time to self-reflect and ask themselves what they really want - I greatly encourage that myself, but saying that everyone wants to be different and applying an individual philosophy to society at large is an extreme assumption on your part. Variety for the sake of variety does nothing but fracture what holds humans together while allowing genuinely toxic ideas to grow. Variety exists to allow flexibility and facilitate improvement, not an inherently desired end goal.

Regarding creativity, it boils down to the hypocrisy of society expecting people to be more creative while also demanding others to deliver on results. Being creative involves looking at a problem at a different angle and suggesting an alternative solution from there - this is something that is time-consuming since it requires research, taxing on resources be it mental or physical, and risky since it carries the possibility of mistakes or being ostracized as a weirdo as mentioned above. But here's the thing - nobody cares about the feelings of the random person who we're never going to meet or socialize with, especially when our monkey brains can only really care about a hundred people at most. We just want the product we bought to produce results, our investment into it better be worth it. People only want to latch onto success, not failure. Ideas are cheap; there are billions of people in the world and billions of ideas, only the people who make an idea a reality get any recognition. And not everyone is well-off enough(or have nothing left to lose) to be able to take the consequences of a gamble - we have obligations, not necessarily to society at large, but to the people we actually care about. When you are young, you aren't given as much responsibility and your mistakes don't hold as much consequence, especially since you have little to lose, but as you grow older, your obligations grow ever larger and you cannot afford such risks, especially if you are not in a position of power to make changes to the various societal systems in place. Even if you are one of the rare people who don't feel/have obligations to others, you still have the obligation to protect yourself and maintain your own standard of living.

In short, you want to be different? Sure, just don't expect people to catch you when you fall while they latch onto you if you succeed, and don't drag other people down with you.