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Non-Conformity or the Herd?
We’re constantly told what shows to watch and which books to read. Movies use background music to inform who are the good, bad and ugly guys and to set over all mood, comfort level and character development.
Carefully crafted, ideological-leaning messaging delivered by Internet, radio, television, social media, tech, politics inform as to what ideas and messages are good, and which are to be discouraged, suppressed, expunged, or altered.
We are free to choose, but celebrities and public figures and those who resist the ideological flow are publically punished and risk loss of income and livelyhood. If one is forced through public pressure are we truly free to choose our heart or free to choose the prescribed right way?
Turns out most people are conformists. It’s a herd thing, psychology of the crowd. People generally go along for the good of the community because it’s easier to get along than resist. As a result, if space aliens were to land on Earth today they would assume humans are a big, senseless, easily manipulated crowd of useful idiots.
The good news is, we can resist the siren song of conformity. We can regain access to our own brains, thoughts and ideas. It takes effort and a willingness to resist vitriole, ridicule and social ostracization.
Resist the Call of the Crowd
Here are 21 quotes on conformity and nonconformity that we lifted from Fee, the Foundation for Economic Education, and added Table Topics questions.
Feel free to borrow, alter, enhance.
Quote: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” – Rudyard Kipling, 1935
Question: What is the price of Go Along to Get Along? Does it have a price?
Quote: “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” – President John F. Kennedy, 1961 address to the United Nations
Question 1: How does conformity limit your personal freedom, inspiration, and independence?
Question 2: In what ways do standards set by authority figures affect creativity and originality?
Quote: “I don’t give a damn what others say. It’s okay to color outside the lines.” – Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), musician
Question: Do you color outside the lines?
Quote: “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841)
Question: Is it the true hallmark of greatness to live the life of an individual within society?
“Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.” – Graham Greene (1904-1991), author
Question: What heresies have you committed against your social crowd’s current trend?
“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
Question 1: All That Glitters Is Not Gold
Question 2: Explorers may not be physically prepared, but they are mentally and spiritually.
Quote: “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841)
Question: Have you experienced the world whip for not going with the flow.
Quote: “The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity.” – Dr. Robert Anthony, The Ultimate Secret to Total Self-Confidence
Question: If you sink into conformity you don’t risk the danger of social ostracization and isolation, How can a society reverse this trend or is conformity inevitable?
Quote: “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).” – Mark Twain, notebook (1904)
Question: Is it time for you to reform, or pause and reflect?
Quote: “All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.” – Adlai Stevenson, Address at Princeton, 1954
Question: What is an unpopular position you recently held that resulted in progress?
Quote: “Go your own way. Question everything. Accept nothing. Accept no dogma, no cant. There are too many people walking around thinking they’re sacred cows, and they’re only half right.” – Rosie DiManno (b. 1956), Canadian journalist
Question: Describe a sacred cow who exists in your life, job, sphere of influence
Quote: “I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.” – Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944), author
Question: Have you begrudgingly gone along to get along and regretted the decision or are you glad you did?
Quote: “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” – Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Question: What were the fashions you used to laugh about and how did you conform to your peers?
Quote: “It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations―past and present―are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia.” – Eric Hoffer (1898-1983), moral philosopher
Question:
Quote: “Perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.” – Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
Question: Grotesque is used to describe the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting. Isn’t this too high a price to pay for individuality?
Quote: “If I decide to be an idiot, then I’ll be an idiot on my own accord.” – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Question: Have you ever chosen to be an idiot on your own accord?
Quote: “It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.” – James Baldwin (1924-1987), author
Question: The Internet only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007…2023? Is Mr. Baldwin’s statement still true?
Quote: “Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.” – Voltaire (1724-1788)
Question: Is humanity doomed to follow the crowd for our ultimate survival? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201705/the-science-behind-why-people-follow-the-crowd
Quote: “Only a very small number of people are truly evil. But a very large number of people are conformists. To prevent evil on a mass scale it’s more important for us to ward against our own instinct to conform with the crowd than it is to worry about anything else.” – Claire Lehman, founding editor of Quillette
Question: Intense pressure to conform to socital norms discourages independent inquiry. Do you feel it?
Quote: “Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Question: When have you taken the road less traveled?
Quote: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Question:
