"Most people are other people, in a different sense to how Wilde meant it: the vast majority of people are not me. The enormous size of this majority - billions to one - guarantees that there will be somebody better than me at anything I can think of. If I make a dress for the first time, I am wise to follow a pattern. If I cook a meal for the first time, I am wise to follow a recipe."
"When Wilde was writing, literary culture had reached the pinnacle of Romantic individualism. In that culture, it was obvious what's wrong with being other people: doing so is a betrayal of your true self. Each of us was thought to possess a unique, individual identity, sewn into the very fabric of our being. Walt Whitman celebrated 'the thought of Identity - yours for you, whoever you are, as mine for me,'"
Many people resemble others because the vast majority are not any single individual, so imitation offers practical advantages. Relying on patterns and recipes is sensible when encountering tasks for the first time. Romantic individualism prized unique, innate identity and condemned mimicry as betrayal of the self. Walt Whitman celebrated identity as being true to an inner purpose rather than conforming to external standards. Twentieth-century thought, exemplified by Jean-Paul Sartre, challenged innate identity by proposing that humans create themselves, which raises a logical problem about how an identity-less being could originate its own essence.
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