Herd Mentality Research Paper

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I am nowhere near grown up yet. My ideas about the world are forever fluid as I intend to keep an open yet a skeptical mind to all that comes my way, however there is one thing that I am feeling more and more sure about. I believe that societal limits and negative “chatter” that helps us to police each other greatly damages people’s potential for success on the individual level and the success of humanity as a whole. In the past, I found myself falling into belief that going along with predominant culture was an easier way to achieve success and happiness and that going above and beyond was unnecessary. I’ve felt the pressures that society places on young people, as we all have, and I have to say that something isn’t right. This is not a novel …show more content…

the drive to excel in school and be one who stands out of the crowd instead of fading into it did not approach until my last few years of my high school career. In my single digits and my pre-teen years I was lucky to not to have been submerged in pink as some girls are, and my favorite things were frogs and dirt. Pressures to “dress like a girl” and to live up to all that society’s vision saw for me was annoying and near-damaging. I am proudly a girl, and I am proudly everything else I am, so why should I have to try to be so? The fact that I dodged that bullet and maintained my individuality as best I could is one of my finer achievements. However I’ve seen all over that so many others are not allowed to be themselves because of these pressures. We are all children with so much to offer and so much individual spirit and talent, and then as we get older some of us are told we are abnormal or wrong for being who we are. In this we all lose. These dimmed spirits lose confidence, the critic misses out on the value of his victim, and society loses what may have been a strong unique perspective. You cannot be self-actualized without being

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