Close-up considerations
1. One can hardly be lonely at a party of entertainment, among laughing people.
2. You may tackle your loneliness by joining a club or society, by meeting people.
3. A self-confident person will never feel lonely.
4. Feeling of loneliness is incompatible with a full, rich and busy life.
5. Being always sociable, ready to share the information you have,
with other people, establishing contacts with them - is the main remedy for lonely feeling.
6. Feeling lonely is no cause for despair.
7. You’ll never be lonely if you don’t feel yourself a stranger in the world.
You will never be lonely if you don’t feel lonely.
Unit Six.
Open-up ideas
At school children are forced to wear a school uniform.
Everyone looks like everybody else.
Children refuse to conform to somebody but in fact they can’t stand out wearing jeans and sloppy sweaters.
Fashion means uniform for the majority.
Bowler hats and a pinstripe suit is a real uniform for all businessmen in the City of London.
Fashions help us to be noticeable.
Text for discussion
When I first went to University, I was determined to express my individuality. At school I had been forced to wear a school uniform, a dreary affair of grey trousers and dark-blue blazer, which I detested. Everybody looked like everybody else: the whole atmosphere was one of anonymous conformity. So when I arrived at University at the ripe old age of 19, I promised myself I was not going to conform if I could help it. The first thing I did was to go out and buy a pair of jeans and a sloppy sweater. The jeans were crisp and clean, so I soaked them overnight in the bath to make them look convincingly old and worn, creased and faded. At last, I thought, I am an individual, I am different, I am me. One day, I went into the Students Union, a sort of club where you can go and relax between lectures or tutorials, and amongst the dozens of students there, one man stood out. Immediately I noticed him and wondered how on earth he had managed to make himself so conspicuously different from the rest of us. The answer was shatteringly simple: he was wearing smart grey trousers and a neat dark-blue blazer! All the rest of us were wearing what was in effect the standard student uniform of jeans and sweaters.
The funny thing about it is this: instead of admiring him for his individuality, his refusal to conform, his courage, call it what you will, my companions and I laughed at him. We thought he was ridiculous to be wearing such clothes; we despised him for conforming, when in fact he was doing, whether by accident or design, just the opposite. That incident has left a lasting impression on me. I have come to the conclusion that to be fashionable is to conform, and that so far from expressing our individuality, we are constantly seeking ways to submerge it. When the miniskirt was ‘’in’’’, what girl would dare to wear an ankle-length dress? Once the miniskirt went out of fashion, which seemed to do overnight, any girl wearing one looked quite silly, as conspicuous as a dress suit in a discotheque.
There is a widespread belief that all businessmen in the City of London wear bowler hats and pinstripe trousers, and carry rolled umbrellas whatever the weather; it is a source of great amusement to foreign visitors. But what we would find really laughable would be the sight of a City businessman on a hot summer’s days going to work in shorts and a sports shirt.
I suspect that this whole business about our individuality is quite false. In spite of all our assertions to the contrary, we prefer not to be noticed, or at least not to be noticeable. Women, for example, will go to great lengths to find ‘’something different’’ to wear for a party, and their greatest nightmare is to arrive and find another woman wearing an identical dress. And yet the general style, the fashion, of what they are wearing is bound to be the same. However bravely we talk, we limit the expression of our individuality to small details, and on the whole do our best to merge into the crowd. Maybe that school uniform I wore for so many years was not so bad after all. Perhaps if I had changed the colour of the buttons...