being mainstream versus being individual

Who is game enough to move out of the mainstream, to be branded a weirdo or a loner or some other racist or derogatory put-down? What if Jesus had remained mainstream and played the game of the scribes and elders? Or the Beatles? Or Van Gogh or Salvadore Dali? Or Mozart? Or Lenin? Would the world have been spared a lot of grief? What if Galileo had agreed the world was flat? Or Martin Luther agreed the Pope was infallible? What if the Estates General or the American colonies had not said enough is enough? What if Abraham Lincoln and Wilberforce had not thought that slavery was a big deal? What if Jessie Owens or Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi or the lady on the bus who didn't give up her seat for a white man had just accepted their lots in life? Or Nelson Mandela? Or if Ho Chi Minh thought it was ok for colonisers from Europe to own his country? What if my Bank Manager had not taken a risk with me in my Motel? Or if the University had thought I'd had one chance too many?
Am I living through the beginning of the end of the age of the mainstream? The age of mass communication made individualism invisible and unpopular because it was too hard to be individual when it looked as if the rest of the world was homogenous.