"Alternative" identity shopping

My observation that we try and buy a sense of identity is not a terribly profound one.

Where it gets really interesting is when we try to rise above this either by not entering into the marketplace at all or by going to alternative marketplaces.

The first option is mostly an illusion. We can always enter a Trappist monastery, assuming they would have us, but otherwise any identity at all we pursue in a western nation we will pursue by purchasing things.

It's odd that we complain about this because most people who have lived had no choice about their identity. That we can form an identity is a tremendous freedom and something we should rejoice in. Instead we complain and protest.

Or we adopt the strategy of pursuing an alternative identity, like alternative music aficionado. It's an odd choice because alternative music isn't better than popular music. Typically, it's worse and the alternative music of my youth—bands such as The Violent Femmes, Television and Killing Joke for example—is now mostly deservedly forgotten. Neither the musicians nor the music they played was memorable or accomplished. It's only virtue was what it was not and that is a foolish reason to choose to be a fan of something. There are few better examples of pure vanity than seeking to embrace an alternative lifestyle.

And it's odder still to set off to get to some place that is supposed to be remote from the larger culture only to find that an entire industry already exists to serve you when you get there. And that is the case with alternative anything you can think of.

Which makes me wonder if it would really be so bad to pick a popular icon—say Don Draper, at least as he appears in the first season—and buy that identity. I mean, why not? Morally it would be no different from being "alternative". You'd have to see a set of values in him that you thought worth pursuing but—unlike the wine nerd or the alternative music fan—you wouldn't be doing it just to make yourself stand out as different.