The Desire to be Different - Human Nature?

I can't help noticing similarities between the American Beatnik of the fifties to sixties and French flâneur of the nineteenth century.  Both types of people reacted against to the type of modernization that resulted in conformity.

Beatniks - They were the beginning of the 1960's counterculture.  Beatniks did not see any reason to conform and criticized mainstream values, especially materialism.  In context, the fifties was a period of conformity and stability.  Socializing, purchasing, and ultimately modernizing, revolved around the family home.  This resulted in materialism, such as "Keeping up with the Joneses", as well as extreme conformity (i.e. tract homes).  The Beatniks were rebels against such values and promoted rising above those values.

Flâneurs - They were the urban explorers (literal translation is "stroller").  Flâneurs looked for individualism in the crowds that wore mass-produced, factory-made clothing.  Before modernization brought conformity, there had been more discerning social identities.  A major event that exemplified this loss of difference was the modernization of Paris in the nineteenth century.  A new city space, and uniform standard of dress leveled social identities.  The flâneur's goal was to recognize details that revealed the individual.  In this way, they were rebels against conformity.

Is the desire to be different part of human nature?  Or is it more natural to conform?

I used info about the Beatniks from the documentary we watched in class.  If you're interested in learning more about the flâneurs (quite irrelevant to U.S. History but a very interesting movement), I recommend reading The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund White.