Individualism can be something so rare or so common depending on the environment you are in. When an individual is forced to think or act in a certain way, they have no choice but to accept the reality of what they are dealing with. Accepting everything you are subjected to, especially situations imposed by a government, is the basis of conformity. There is a tendency to want to fit in with the majority of society rather than have one's own identity. The frequent imitation and longing for earlier things in life is exemplified when Karen Armstrong discusses how “people would only settle in places where the sacred had once become manifest because they wanted to live as close as possible to the wellsprings of being” (30) . People always want something they can't have, so they simply try to imitate what that object does or who that person is. Perception, the creativity of what we observe, and the conformity we acquire are discussed in the essays “Immune to Reality” by Daniel Gilbert, “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran” and “Homo Religiosus” by Karen Armstrong. A student named Sanaz was "pressured by family and society, she wavered between her desire for independence and her need for approval" (Nafisi 249), which is an example of how society can force an individual to conform to things that doesn't want to do. Do we surrender to the reality of conformity or do we express unique forms of individual identity? Our realities allow for individual identities, but the complex, creative, and diverse perspectives we gain prevent us from having our own identities. Creativity plays an important role in how a person perceives the situations around him. We as individuals tend to try to create multiple perceptions or outcomes of events. Daniel Gilbert explains how “when we prepare the facts, we are equally unaware of why we are doing it, and this turns out to be a good thing, because