It is doing something better than other people that makes us unique. Yet a surprising number of people still see individuality as a surface thing. They wear bright clothes, dye their hair strange colors and decorate their skin with tattoos (文身) to make some kind of social statement.
The whole purpose of individuality is excellence. The people who comprehend the simple principle of being unique through performance make our entire political and economic system work. Those who invent, who improve, who know more about a subject than other people do, and who take something that doesn't work and make it work—these people are the very soul of capitalism.
Charles Kettering didn't like the idea of cranking a car to make it start, so he invented the electric starter. Henry Ford figured out the assembly-line technique and made it possible to mass-produce automobiles. Lewis Waterman saw no need to go on dipping a pen into an inkwell, so he put the ink into the pen. George Westinghouse told the world how to stop a train, and Elisha Otis, inventor of the elevator, indirectly created the city skyline. These people understood that individualism means working at the top of one's capacity.
Fortunately, enough Americans have been inspired to do something with their uniqueness that we have developed in less than three centuries from a frontier outpost into not only a country of freedom but a country strong enough to protect that freedom. These people prized the notions of individuality and excellence above all things and thus kept the great machine functioning. The ones with the purple hair and the horrorable jewelry are just along for the ride, trying to be "different" and not knowing how to go about it.
The student who earns A's on his report card has grasped the idea and has found the real meaning of individuality. So has the youngster who has designed his own spaceship, who paints pictures of the world around him, or who can name all the states and their capitals. According to the author unique individuals are persons who______.
