People like us

All our lives and in everything we do, big and small,  we keep searching for "people like us". People with whom we share commonalities, something we can relate to.  People with similar interests, similar views. Similar desires.  Similar backgrounds. Similar cultures.  Similar personalities.

It's everywhere.  Attend a large part or a/ gathering or a networking event and if you are the quiet introverted one,  you look for the ones who are similar. If you are a teetotaler there, you look for others who are similarly so. 

Or if you are at a new workplace, you look for those with a similar educational background. Or common past organizations. Or even common personalities.

Or if you are looking for a partner to spend the rest of your life with.  You look for something common,  either culturally, or in terms of thoughts, or in terms of interests or in terms of personalities.

So we are looking indeed, everywhere and in everything we do, for people like us. And at some level its understandable why. We love our own selves and most aspects of it and hence we want to find others who are like ourselves too. And yet we are also at some level insecure and needing validation for who we are. And having people like us, around us helps in validating ourselves. "People like us" can understand "us" better,  for shared experiences influence everyone's thoughts. These are the people we may feel most comfortable opening up to.

And yet for the people like us part,  at some level,  we need to know who the "us", that is the we, the self,are,  don't we? What parts of our identity matter most to us for instance? These are infact more harder to figure out. It's intuitively easier to figure out people who are similar to us than to figure out what is that "us", who are "we" in the first place . The latter is probably a never ending journey through life.

And it's possible sometimes the intuitions are wrong.. Its easy to see why that can happen sometimes.  In our eagerness to find similarities,  we could often times end up projecting our own images on others.  We could end up overfitting similarities.

And yet it's possible that even as we do all that I we could even end up learning more about ourselves.  One could end up being similar through sub conscious imitation even. 

And ultimately none of us have the answers to everything in this world.  We need other people to figure it out.  People like us, yet not us completely.  For, we also like the most unique parts of ourselves.

In that sense not only is it a completely rational thing to look for people like us, its almost a necessity at some level.  How do you know your personality suits a particular career? Have people like you chosen it is a good check.  How do you know you will like or feel part of a city or country you choose to live in?. Aside from the company ,that you get from people like you, the fact that people like you , on some axis or the other like it, makes it more likely you find people like you.

Sure you can do trial and error and figure out but that involves time. It's sometimes easier to explore what fits you best through "adjacencies", and after all , its not ,we who always have the right and a different answer, the "market" may have figured it out already and its both useful and even necessary to understand what it has figured out.  The market of people like us. And sometimes it's not just the people that are your friends,  the ones that are your peers, the ones your age. Sometimes, depending on the context ,its good to even look at the people who lived maybe a long time ago. ( this is probably the genesis of what people call "tradition")

At another level, finding " people like us" also makes us part of a social group . Could be anything.  In the olden days, it was probably a tribe, the fellow humans inhabiting a certain region or with a common claimed ancestor,  with whom one felt part of a group.  Today, that group,  can be on any axis of similarity, a nation , a culture,  a people of a certain social class , a fan base even,  a people who share similar views, and many more such "axis". We may not really even have a day to day connection with the social group, nor even could there be obvious benefits from being part of one.  Yet,  the feeling of being part of one maybe makes us feel a bit secure (or atleast a little less insecure).

And maybe finding people like us actually helps us in finding who we really are.  Even the most unique parts of us.  For, just as exploring the world is difficult and time consuming  so is figuring out what you truly are.  What is truly unique about you.  By finding people like us and letting them maybe consciously,  but for most part subconsciously and even invisibly shape us, we end up concentrating our energies on the most unique parts of ourselves. And that could help in figuring out and unleashing the most unique creative energies in ourselves.