Born in the wrong era? No. There is no wrong era.

doing what everyone else is doing is merely uniformity.
thinking like how everyone else thinks is unity.
in either, diversity can exist.
hence they are not necessarily shallow in themselves.

doing BECAUSE everyone else does. that's conformity. and that is the most shallow of all.

remaining distinct could simply mean being sure of why i do what i do.
i may do what others do, doing so because of a personal conviction. their reasons may be different from mine, although a similar action is manifested, but we remain distinct because of differing motivations.

some people may even share the same motivation or the same rationale as myself. that just means that we are united in our thinking.
we remain distinct still.
united distinctively...meaning that our distinction has united us.

we may share the same thinknig but display it through different means. that's ok. it's our beliefs that are united and we will be able to look past the different practices to see the similar convictions that we share.

now if in our distinct unity, we do the same actions, we are uniformly united in our distinction. another way of putting it is that in our smilar beliefs, a consistent behaviour has emerged that is a logical out-working of our starting conviction.

in that way, i still have a mind of my own, in the sense that it is one that is not swayed by the opinion of a majority. it may be provoked to the consideration of other factors which may lead to a change in stand, but it is the thinking that changes the stand, and not a mindless following of the practice of the group.

sometimes we do things simply to be different.
we like things that few people like so we can be unique.
when something becomes popular, we don't like it anymore because liking it means we are no longer counter-culture. we become part of the 'majority' and we may feel that we've lost our sense of individuality.
well, the thinknig behind this is not the issue at hand, but rather, in my opinion...from a more pragmatic
point of view...it's quite silly to behave this way.
i mean, so what if you're doing what everyone else does? you retain your individuality as long as you're not doing so BECAUSE everyone else does.
so...my point is..it's ok to like what others like or do what others do because doing so doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have a mind of your own.

umm...not sure if all this makes sense...
but anyway it's time to sleep so maybe i'll tweak this some other time.