Argument: Identity
Identity is a trick work in our society today with what it truly means to people. People can claim that it is race, or religion, others claim socioeconomics and so on. What is most prevalent in early life however, is social cliques. A clique is simply a type of person. Almost everywhere has the jocks, the nerds, and the goths. As insignificant as they seem, these identifies will define your entire life.
Identify is who a person is, what they are to themselves and what they are to society. Social cliques are groups of people that share common ideals, hobbies, or anything that would connect them in some way. These social cliques can, and do, clash when confronting each other. In a stereotypical way, a jock, person who is muscular and plays sports, will often beat up a nerd, someone who is into math and science, or who beat up a geek, a person fluent in technology. Social cliques have a ranking system to them on who talks with whom and where everybody falls in, usually jocks or popular people are at the top while geeks and nerds are towards the bottom.
Social cliques can be hard to notice for some, usually at the top ranking. If one were to ask a popular clique that there were cliques, they might say no everyone is the same. Yet, they do not realize that they never see anyone that can be counted as a nerd or geek talking to them as they are not on the same ranking. This idea that there is no social cliques and everyone is equal is the equivalent of saying the earth is flat, or that there is no global warming. Social automatically classifies people into cliques by appearance, by speech, and by intelligence. Stereotypically, nerds and geeks are higher intelligence, but dress in different clothes than the jocks, who are usually thought of as less bright. Popular kids are usually very attractive and dress in nicer clothes to compliment their physic. From these societal renderings, people are assumed to be like the clique associated and it is hard to shift from clique to clique without pretending to be a different person. This impacts the way people will see you throughout your life, everywhere from personal interactions, to your job. A once popular yet still attractive girl for the most part does not go for a geek or nerd either because society deems it strange and unfit, or because she simply does not know who he is.
Very rarely in social clique made by the person themselves. The person is defined into a social clique by their characteristics, not by their choosing. Some people manage to live a lie, in which they fake who they are to join a clique they usually would not be placed into. It is nearly impossible for people to change their clique once they have entered one since it is imprinted onto others’ minds that the person is like that clique. Once again, the person is stuck into a clique that generally defines what happens in their life.
People can say that social cliques do not exist, and in today’s society social cliques are evolving into different structures and changing. Nevertheless, social cliques are a part of human nature, defined in our need to find patterns and group things in our lives. Other people may define identity from race or religion. However, in many places there is only one race, or there is only one religion practiced. These places, everyone would be defined as the same and identity would not occur as everyone is only one thing. Social cliques though, occur everywhere you have groups of people. No two have the exact same interest and opinions and so they go towards different paths in life. Schools are most prominent in the display of social cliques as they hold the most diversity of people that is easily shown. In schools you have the academical and you have the sports people, with a variety of groups between from goth, to geek, to neutral, to no specific social clique. This occurs less in a work place as many people from the same cliques gravitate towards similar jobs in the future and similar lifestyles, because of shared interest and activities.
Social cliques are everywhere there are people and define how we are identified by society. Although one may think they are not in a social clique, they are powerless to having others not define them into one. From these social cliques, people’s’ lives are determined as to what jobs they work and to whom they marry. Above any other classification, cliques form in every group of people, and do not need race or religion to form them, hence making them the best at how society defines an individual.