I have touched on the Me-First Generation before in my opinion, and I am sorry if there are discrepancies between these two views or arguments, but I write everything in the moment and am not willing to loose my thought by taking time to interrupt the process to make sure everything agrees with anything written before.

    Back to the actually topic. This generation can be considered the me-first generation in my eyes, but exactly in what aspect. Does everyone want to be their own person and find themselves or do they want to fit in with the normal crowd and try to keep everyone else out? While some people claim to be searching for themselves and their individuality, I am getting the feeling that many people are actually going against their own claims and are just trying to make sure to fit in with what ever crowd or group they deem most important. This society proclaims itself to be one where the individual counts and people try to fight against the collective, and yet so many people strive to be part of something bigger than themselves because that is more important, and they may or may not realize that they are in fact loosing themselves in the process. I will admit my view is biased, because I do base most of my observations on people I know, and at least I hope some of them do not exemplify our generation as a whole.

    Throughout history there has been a cycle between the individual and collective-based society. During the 60s people gathered together to fight against the norm and strive for something better and more free. They did not want to be subjugating to their parents’ lives and wanted to rebel. In the late 80s and early 90s, teenagers gathered together in raves and did drugs (neither which I advocate) to feel as if they belonged to something bigger in the individual-based society. I do not think this society has truly fallen in the cycle yet.

    This is all hard for me to put into exact words. It just seems ironic that people who want to make it big or themselves still strive so badly to belong to some other group, while at the same time saying the exact opposite. In this view, certain people have their eye on a certain group and they strive to be accepted by it. So they try to fight their way and push anyone they need to aside, whether consciously or unconsciously, and try to get themselves there first, just like the child screaming “Me first! Me first!” when the ice cream comes out, and then they try to keep everyone else outside the group at bay so that no one else can encroach on the territory they just established, sometimes they even try to oust people out of the group if they feel like they may be a threat. They think they are making it big for themselves when they get into the group, but then they just become another person, without a face, without a true identity.

    I do not understand why people will push so hard to belong, when they can eventually find a place they can belong without trying, but then again, not everyone is not like me, a person who almost takes being called “weird” in some aspects as a compliment. I refuse to fight my way into a crowd, it does not seem worth it to put in so much time and effort to try to be one of the crowd. Do I want to be accepted? Yes, but by people that accept me for who I am, not ones that I have appease in one way or another.

    So even if this is a Me-First generation, do people really feel like they can do the best for themselves by associating with some larger group, or do they just crave to be accepted and are too scared to stand on their own? I have way too many thoughts to sort out right now to many any more sense of this in writing, if I even have made any sense of it so far. Take time to think about this, even if you totally disagree with me. We are human because we have that ability. Excuse me while I try to be an individual, even though there is no one else currently around.