It’s a ‘listening bar’, so they have someone manning the music and everyone else is either sitting on somewhat uncomfortable stools or standing and swaying to whatever sound fills the air. People talk and drink, with the knowledge that they are somewhere respectable. Bambi is not a place where you need to be on a guestlist, it’s just a place that makes you feel better than if you were sitting at the local pub. That ‘special’ feeling comes from the need to be different; I am aware that my coworker would not order a drink at Bambi, rather they would feel out of place and find solace somewhere like a local pub. I, like the others at Bambi, frequent many pubs: what make us ‘different’ is the pubs we go to embrace the creatives, the oddly dressed, and the liberal youth. If one of the people I describe were to visit a working-men’s club, it would be to enjoy a Guinness and a rollie whilst wearing an Arc’teryx hat. They would want to stand out and prove to others that they were unlike them.

I sipped on my martini at Bambi, which they made perfectly, but there was a level of upset in my head. The realisation hitting only when I looked up from the twist in my glass to notice how we were all mid-performance. There we were, a group of twenty- and thirty-somethings who were smiling the same way, pretending to enjoy the music, and clutching the stems of our glasses as if they were keeping us afloat.

I left soon after my drink finished. It becomes harder to enjoy yourself when you realise you’ve become just like everybody else. There is nothing special about you anymore, not when everyone else wears the same costume and reads the same script.

Individualism is divisive. I think it was Lammenais who claimed it destroyed duty, power and the law when people started to have a mess of opinions and interests. I also think it was Bourdieu who wrote about the ‘habitus’: how the deep unconscious ways we live in the world are formed by our cultural and social background. It is confusing because without the deeper knowledge of both claims, it feels that Lammenais believes we can be individuals but believes it is the wrong path; yet Bourdieu believes we can never be as we’re shaped by each other.

I’m not upset that I am not an ‘individual’ because I have my own thoughts, experiences and values which are different from those around me in my usual environments. What upsets me is that I cannot live their thoughts; I will never be able to understand why they are playing this game of similarities. Why weren't they horrified by their clones? My therapist tells me that it’s human to want to know how others think, though I don’t think I do a good job of articulating it to him or even to you now. I have this desperation to know why people are like me and why I am like them. I want to know where the wires cross and why that means we wear second-hand leather jackets: every jacket worn-in differently but still a leather jacket. I do it because it reminds me of all the Hedi Slimane creations I grew up admiring, but I also know that I go to places like Bambi because I want to be part of something. Does that make my desire for individuality redundant? Possibly. How can so many people want to be part of something and still want to remain different? Should you be different, you are alone in it (I think Nietzsche said this was a good thing) but London is not a city where you can be alone. Should you be part of something, you lose part of yourself: changing bits of yourself to conform which is not inherently bad, but it is sad.

There are many features that affect this morphing into one Being. Whether it be the similar clothing, interests, careers, or political views. There is a development that occurs in every young life where skins are shed and new ones gained. Take the example of a Bristol student: baggy jeans, cargos, smudged eyeliner, and light Communism are adopted to fit in and feel like a Bristol student. They begin to go to the clubs and pubs that are usually the busiest, with opinions on the “bad” clubs being formed by those around them, rather than stepping inside and judging for themselves. A shared devotion to a lifestyle and environment is formed. All of it is done with the belief they are becoming different to others; what is so often forgotten is that “others” are the people they left behind before moving to Bristol, not the people around them in the moment. The same occurs in these East London settings I speak of.

It is the Being that differs from other Beings, not the individuals who make up the Being; a community that is different from another. That is, fundamentally, what this Being is: it is a community. How sad it is that the desperate need to be different from one’s original community is what creates a new one. We are for the most part, blind to the cyclical structure of how we create something that we once hated. There will soon be someone in this community who will want something different and pioneer the birth of a new community; there is a great probability that we will all subsequently morph ourselves into something fitting for that Being.

Vogl highlights an idea that communities must care about each other – some deeper layer of trust – but do we have that? If you took away half the population of the smoking area, would I say more than, “It’s empty today”? Probably not; not once, would my mind run to what happened to all these people. Were they okay? Had they all died of a deadly virus that was sweeping East London? Perhaps someone else would care a little more, though through eyes of cynicism, I assume the questions would be, “Where did they go? Why aren’t we there?” A continued desperation to remain part of the community but no care for the community itself; I blame this on the need to be different. When a community splinters, one batch becomes the ‘different’ one (for example, the one to create a new Being) and as we chase the fantasy of individuality, we clamour to be part of that batch. What we fail to recognise is that to be left behind is to be part of the ‘different’ community and an opportunity to shape the community into something new yet in the same environments – the same way we see areas such as the East End take the Huguenots, the Jewish, the Bangladeshis, and now the hipsters.

My thoughts are clear when I think them but more muddled when I write them. At their core, I seem to flit around an idea that we crave individuality to be different. I also seem to believe that we are never to be individuals in the sense that we crave and are born to be part of communities, and we shall forever move from one community to another. At the end of writing, I find myself less upset by my realisation but more embarrassed that I am part of a community that fails to care for one another. I am not ‘different’ enough to cause the change to make us care; instead, I will wait for someone else to champion such a thing, then I will do what I can to contribute and when done, I will see how different my community is from others. I will feel smug and special. I will feel different, but I will know that I am no individual.