“In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.” --Fashion pioneer Coco Chanel Once again, what seems to be correct at first glance winds up having devastating and evil consequences when thought through fully. Although this seems like a definition (similarity is replaceability, difference is irreplaceability), what she’s really saying is that the key to being a valuable human being is to be different and therefore irreplaceable.
Coco seems to think that human beings are essentially similar until they differentiate themselves somehow with their eccentricities. But this is a false starting point and a fabulous recipe for neurotic insecurity! “Am I different enough to be a real person yet?” How about starting with the idea that each individual is so totally unique in their nature that it must be a sinful paradigm to think of them as being ever replaceable at all. Ask a parent whether his children are replaceable. It’s not that they are so different or unique from a social scientist’s point of view. (That may be a telling indictment of social science, by the way). It’s that they are so unique from his point of view since they are HIS children. Nobody is replaceable, therefore it’s not necessary to strive toward irreplaceability and the differences that seem to make it so. Stop trying so hard to be different. You already are.
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