Being Rare Or A Minority, The Healthiest
In a society in which being part of the mass does not allow the human being to advance rationally, emotionally and culturally, being part of a minority is not a symptom of social failure. On the contrary, being part of a minority makes you part of society as an individual in an autonomous and relevant way, something that people who are part of “the great herd” can hardly even consider.
When following the rules is to perpetuate injustice, maintaining traditions is cultivating the obsolete and socializing is running into a feeling of emptiness head-on, slowing down and changing direction is not crazy. Moreover, we could say that it is a sign of mental activity and in some cases of coherence between actions and thoughts.
Being part of a minority is not separating yourself from the lives of others, from the world. Being part of a minority and being selective with the people with whom you interact is to gain strength, perspective and determination, with the aim of promoting positive changes in the society in which you live.
Moscovici’s experiments on minorities
Moscovici, Lage and Naffechoux (1969) carried out an experiment that showed that under certain conditions it is possible for a minority to influence the criteria of the majority and this can be due to two main factors: the consistency over time of their opinions and by the union of the group around their approaches.
The task was to determine the color and light intensity of a series of slides that were actually all blue. In the consistent minority condition, the researcher’s accomplices answered “green” on all occasions, which made them totally consistent in their opinion. In the “non-consistency” condition, they answered “green” only 24 times. In the control condition the subjects were all naive.
When the behavior of the minority is consistent, the majority subjects answered “green” 8.42% of the time and 32% mentioned the color green at some point. This shows that the influence of the minority in the majority is clear when consistency and security in their position is perceived.
The history of minorities and “strangers”: the history of progress
What we enjoy today as a right or as a scientific advance was promoted by people they called witches, madmen, destabilizers of the social order or marginalized. Minorities are usually the origin of the new sap from which great changes are born and which regenerates, which goes ahead to heal a social cycle that is pointing to symptoms of decline.
From the field of science, art or activism for a true social conscience, the “strangers” of this world try to make us wake up and reflect before discarding their ideas and ignoring them. At the same time, they make us look around with enthusiasm, they make us believe in utopia and remind us that our power goes beyond that of following the inertia that marks the consensus.
it seeks to impose without a true scientific and social debate taking place, it seeks to subjugate the rest through imposition and never through reflection. they never gain the pulse of power apparently, because they never want to become part of it. Nobody sets them up as heroes, but society needs them.
Thus, it is important to know that if they call you strange or weird, you can hide the key to solve the ignorance that others demonstrate. Before blaming yourself and getting depressed because others don’t understand you, you have to do a great job of introspection with yourself and understand that defending your way of life is your way of being in the world and inspiring others.
Before feeling bad for belonging to a minority, ask yourself what would become of you to become the opposite. Sometimes the acceptance of the rest, supposes the end of ourselves.
