Brian: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t need to follow me, you don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re all individuals! The Crowd (in unison): Yes! We’re all individuals!
Conformity is the worst thing that can happen to any society. It causes a majority, which is usually the simple minded "average joes", to outcast the more thoughtful and open minded people. This in turn encourages mediocrity, and encourages people who could have otherwise done great things, to conform to societal norms so they can fit in, or at least not become outcasts. I personally think if we lived in a non conformists society, we'd be much more advanced in every way.
A NON-CONFORMIST WILL STRUGGLE DAILY IN THE CONFORMING WORLD AROUND THEM. THEY WILL CONSTANTLY QUESTION SOCIAL NORMS AND EXPECTATIONS. THE NON-CONFORMIST WILL SHOW DIRECT CONSEQUENCES FOR THEIR NON-CONFORMITY ON THE PHYSICAL PLANE. FOR INSTANCE, THEY MIGHT NOT HAVE THE NICE CAR, BIG HOUSE OR FRIDAY FRIENDS BECAUSE THEY DONT/WONT CONFORM TO THE STANDARD OPERATIONS WHICH ARE REQUIRED TO ATTAIN AND MAINTAIN THESE POSSESSIONS. NOT TO SAY NON-CONFORMISTS ARE HERMITS UNDER BRIDGES...BUT AT THE SAME TOKEN....NON-CONFORMISTS WILL PAY A PERSONAL PRICE SOCIALLY, FINANCIALLY, SEXUALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY BECAUSE THEIR NON-CONFORMITY SABOTAGES THEIR ABILITY TO COMPROMISE AND CONFORM TO OTHERS THOUGHTS, OPINIONS, APPROVAL, ACCEPTANCE, ETC AND ULTIMATELY SOCIETY. NON-CONFORMISTS VERY OFTEN WILL BE LABELED BY THE ORDINARY CONFORMISTS AROUND THEM AS, STRANGE, LOSER, WEIRD, DISTURBED, SCARY, BIZARRE, DIFFERENT, UNUSAL, STUBBORN, HARD-HEADED, CLUELESS, FUNNY, CRAZY. THIS IS BECAUSE IN THE CONFORMISTS MIND, YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE ONE OF THESE ABOVE TITLES TO HAVE THE MOTIVATION TO NON-CONFORM IN THE MIDST OF CONFORMITY WHICH RESULTS IN ACCEPTANCE, RESOURCES, SECURITY AND FELLOW COMPANY. IN TURN, IN THE NON-CONFORMISTS MIND, THEY BELIEVE THE CONFORMIST IS: A SELL OUT, FAKE, PHONY, COWARD, HYPOCRITE, SCARED, PATHETIC, FOLLOWER, SUCK-UP, INAUTHENTIC, ROBOT, SLAVE, BITCH, WORKER BEE, WEAKLING, LOST, BRAINWASHED. THEY BELIEVE THIS BECAUSE IN THE NON-CONFORMISTS MIND THEY SEE THE WORLD AS A PERSONAL THREAT TO THEIR OWN IDENTITY AND PERSONAL CHOICES IN ORDER TO CONTROL THEM AND MAKE THEM INTO SOMETHING THEY DONT AGREE WITH OR REPRESENT.
THE CONFORMISTS FAVORITE WORD IS: ACCEPTANCE. THE NON-CONFORMISTS FAVORITE WORD IS: AUTHENTIC.
I think you have side stepped the issue in this article, because whether you conform to real people, or imaginary people, either way you have made an ideological structure and you mentioned ADOLESCENCE and HEROES.
If you try to bunch together people into stereotypes of any type, then you fail in the way of the fact that people are subject to change, and change is the only certainty.
Now if I'm a suited professional, earn loads of money, drive a nice car and live in a nice home does that make me a 'conformist'?
Labels can in no way highlight the intricacies of life, and thoughts are simply fluid running this way and that. What may appear to be a 'conformist' on the surface, is a deeply complex creature with far too much going on under the hood to be accurately put into a category.
So anyway, any form of idolization, replace the family and friends you couldn't please and pick someone (I dunno, Einstein?) and you are merely conforming to a mental idol.
Now I'm a nerd, you could say I'm a 'non-conformist'. Or confirming to the nerd archetype.
Putting yourself on a scale on conformity/non-conformity, you will realise that all the time you are somewhere in between, fluctuating constantly. So thereby this process becomes obsolete. Nowadays non-conforming seems to be wearing DIFFERENT clothes, listening to DIFFERENT obscure bands, turning to a DIFFERENT sexuality, etc etc. It's nothing more than an almost narcissistic ego boost venture constantly comparing, comparing, comparing. See, never mind details of their personal lives, but you only have to look at people who brought about real change, and their lives came and went, and in the end they achived relatiely little. E.g. equal rights for women, for black people, liberation of one country/region.
Just something to think about, my 2 cents. Thanks for the article.
"Conformists didn’t, they never chose or thought, they just do"
Funny, I think it's the other way around, like people with Asperger's who just don't "get" the social nuances necessary to follow a majority. They just do what feels comfortable for them, which just happens to fall outside of the norm. Even their best attempts to conform fail, often causing a lot of stress and frustration for themselves and others. They would like to fit in a little better, if only to avoid being constantly disciplined at work or school for being ill mannered or even disruptive. It's interesting how "conformists" may tout the seeming "non comformists" (the ones who make deliberate efforts to stand out) as being brave, but the truth is the real non-conformists suffer for being incable of social versatility.
Just because a non-conformist is conformist in some areas, does not default their non-conformist title. If there was a hypothetically a "non-conformist" who was non-conformist in all areas, then intersection between conformist norms and the non conformist actions is the null set. SO this non-conformist is the compliment of society. Thus the non-conformist is conforming to the opposite of society, not be who they really are. Thus non-conformist are only individuals and true non-conformist if they are non-conformist in some areas.
General Stanley McChrystal comments in Rolling Stone magazine are another good example of (attempted) status manipulation.Apparently, an allied superpower, having made next to no progress in a third world country after nearly a decade of occupation is, whilst not good, not unacceptable either (witness his replacement), whereas for even a high ranking, well regarded General like McChrystal to refer to the Vice-President as a nobody and the President as being uneasy when meeting high ranking Generals is completely unacceptable.McChrystal attempted to 'downgrade' the status of the P and VP to below his own. He was never going to get away with that. However, it does make one wonder about the current political leadership in the US that someone in McChrystal's position deemed it appropriate to do that (albeit 'off the record').
This was honest and good. I wish more people tried practicing what they preached and examining the results for problems or pain *before* they tried to preached it.
Isn't an overwhelming awareness of one's placement on the Conformity Scale in itself self-devouring? Nonconformity, truly expressed, must lack self-awareness or it becomes just another tiresome affectation.
indeed true. the funny thing is i only dress smart at punk gigs because i can't afford to have a whole set of clothes to wear only once every few months.
i'd dress scruffy all the time if i could get away with it, but due to my need to fit in with mainstream society so i can hold onto my job and appear respectable at all times for the sake of getting a better one i dress at least smart-casual all the time.
this thread interests me particularly, i was a member of the anti-roads movement for many years and avoided voicing my concerns over the reactive and counter-productive nature of most of the activities of the group due to my need to keep in with the group as it was my primary source of friendship, housing and food. even though today i'm walking the straight path and going to college to try and get a decent career, many of my friends remain in the movement repeating the same damn mistakes time and time again, wasting vast amounts of time and energy for the sake of being seen to oppose something, and to be part of a group. and i hold my tongue, because i don't like to piss on anyone's bonfire.
Nowadays i have to hold my tongue over other things, things that piss me off at college for instance, because i don't want to rile the faculty in my first year.
i think people conform because they feel they need to. people can get away with being bold and non-conformist because there's thousands out there like them doing it in the same manner, who provide a social network that can provide them with work and housing and social contact
To me, it seems trivially true both that everyone "conforms to something" (if you eat and breathe, you're one of those air-breathing-food-eaters), and that everyone "nonconforms to something" (because no two people are exactly identical).
So actually describing a given person as belonging to either category (is your team the shirts or the skins?) seems not terribly productive. More useful is to examine specific qualities (tastes, philosophies, etc), and scale the degree to which a person conforms, then ask to what extent their non/conforming is conscious decision, made precisely for its own sake. (Sometimes, people consciously conform — they think, "I will do X, in opposition to my preference against it, only because everyone else does it, which will incur other good things". These comments have some great examples of that.)
If a person literally did everything in their power to nonconform to all social pressures whatsoever, she would by definition be universally regarded as a jerk or something equally unsavory. Like Andy Samberg.
Thinking about this reminds me of a review of a book called something like "The 7 Things You Can't Say in America", which pointed out that there are of course hundreds of things you "can't say" which the books' authors aren't going to publish just because you can't say them, like "I genuinely believe in the importance and moral value of raping and eating people."
More than anything, that's what annoys me about people who proudly declare themselves "politically incorrect", and say "I don't give a shit whether anything I say "offends" people." Really? You'd go to your friends and loved ones and say "Eat roadkill!" because that's just how you roll? There's nothing I could say to you that would get your blood boiling?
Obviously, we can and should discuss the boundaries of social behavior, and whether any boundaries whatsoever should even exist. But let's not act like any of us have shed ourselves of all mores and taboos (things which, in fact, rationalists can be very good at recognizing about themselves :)
Hehe, I've always made my act of non-conformity a blatant declaration of supreme conformity. People want to talk to you when you say you're a massive conformist: they want to lecture you about what's wrong with that, and about free thinking. It's just so interesting to them. Of course, it also makes them critical of their own opinions when an open-minded person like myself argues that conformity improves one's lifestyle drastically by removing conflict and enhancing one's social status.
In the end, though, there's no such thing as "conformity" or "non-conformity". Someone who was prone to brainwashing by the powers that be as a youngster won't just listen to anything they hear, and at the same time non-conformists will always follow some mundane trend at some point in their lives, or will (much to my chagrin) criticize conformists for no sound reason. All we have is culture and counter-culture. Where one fits into this spectrum is the real key, not one's inherent bias towards rejecting or accepting proposed hypotheses. (I couldn't figure out a way to put the word "variance" into that one. ;_;)
I recall Katja Grace's "Strategic Noncomformance offers reproductive advantage for men" social science article link, which tickled me as one of the more subsversive journal article titles I've seen.
I intuit most "non-conformist" subcultures are sorting of people with similar brain chemistry states building an aesthetic from shared preferences, rather than the grand strategic persistence enhancement coordination games I tend to look for in social interactions. I suspect the strategy arises from populations having to handle status maximizing from relatively rigid cognitive starting points across a distribution of types for their subcomponent agents.
Beyond that I do think stoners, preppies (and 25%stoner-75%preppies, etc.) do sort and compete, (and agents form pageants that compete against other pageant teams with other agent pageant combinations) like one would expect persisting algorithms to do in a zero sum status and limited fuel environment.
Person with Aspergers tries to be different.
NT starts going crazy because he's not conforming to the rest of the group.
Conformity is the worst thing that can happen to any society. It causes a majority, which is usually the simple minded "average joes", to outcast the more thoughtful and open minded people. This in turn encourages mediocrity, and encourages people who could have otherwise done great things, to conform to societal norms so they can fit in, or at least not become outcasts. I personally think if we lived in a non conformists society, we'd be much more advanced in every way.
A NON-CONFORMIST WILL STRUGGLE DAILY IN THE CONFORMING WORLD AROUND THEM. THEY WILL CONSTANTLY QUESTION SOCIAL NORMS AND EXPECTATIONS. THE NON-CONFORMIST WILL SHOW DIRECT CONSEQUENCES FOR THEIR NON-CONFORMITY ON THE PHYSICAL PLANE. FOR INSTANCE, THEY MIGHT NOT HAVE THE NICE CAR, BIG HOUSE OR FRIDAY FRIENDS BECAUSE THEY DONT/WONT CONFORM TO THE STANDARD OPERATIONS WHICH ARE REQUIRED TO ATTAIN AND MAINTAIN THESE POSSESSIONS. NOT TO SAY NON-CONFORMISTS ARE HERMITS UNDER BRIDGES...BUT AT THE SAME TOKEN....NON-CONFORMISTS WILL PAY A PERSONAL PRICE SOCIALLY, FINANCIALLY, SEXUALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY BECAUSE THEIR NON-CONFORMITY SABOTAGES THEIR ABILITY TO COMPROMISE AND CONFORM TO OTHERS THOUGHTS, OPINIONS, APPROVAL, ACCEPTANCE, ETC AND ULTIMATELY SOCIETY. NON-CONFORMISTS VERY OFTEN WILL BE LABELED BY THE ORDINARY CONFORMISTS AROUND THEM AS, STRANGE, LOSER, WEIRD, DISTURBED, SCARY, BIZARRE, DIFFERENT, UNUSAL, STUBBORN, HARD-HEADED, CLUELESS, FUNNY, CRAZY. THIS IS BECAUSE IN THE CONFORMISTS MIND, YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE ONE OF THESE ABOVE TITLES TO HAVE THE MOTIVATION TO NON-CONFORM IN THE MIDST OF CONFORMITY WHICH RESULTS IN ACCEPTANCE, RESOURCES, SECURITY AND FELLOW COMPANY. IN TURN, IN THE NON-CONFORMISTS MIND, THEY BELIEVE THE CONFORMIST IS: A SELL OUT, FAKE, PHONY, COWARD, HYPOCRITE, SCARED, PATHETIC, FOLLOWER, SUCK-UP, INAUTHENTIC, ROBOT, SLAVE, BITCH, WORKER BEE, WEAKLING, LOST, BRAINWASHED. THEY BELIEVE THIS BECAUSE IN THE NON-CONFORMISTS MIND THEY SEE THE WORLD AS A PERSONAL THREAT TO THEIR OWN IDENTITY AND PERSONAL CHOICES IN ORDER TO CONTROL THEM AND MAKE THEM INTO SOMETHING THEY DONT AGREE WITH OR REPRESENT.
THE CONFORMISTS FAVORITE WORD IS: ACCEPTANCE. THE NON-CONFORMISTS FAVORITE WORD IS: AUTHENTIC.
I think you have side stepped the issue in this article, because whether you conform to real people, or imaginary people, either way you have made an ideological structure and you mentioned ADOLESCENCE and HEROES.
If you try to bunch together people into stereotypes of any type, then you fail in the way of the fact that people are subject to change, and change is the only certainty.
Now if I'm a suited professional, earn loads of money, drive a nice car and live in a nice home does that make me a 'conformist'?
Labels can in no way highlight the intricacies of life, and thoughts are simply fluid running this way and that. What may appear to be a 'conformist' on the surface, is a deeply complex creature with far too much going on under the hood to be accurately put into a category.
So anyway, any form of idolization, replace the family and friends you couldn't please and pick someone (I dunno, Einstein?) and you are merely conforming to a mental idol.
Now I'm a nerd, you could say I'm a 'non-conformist'. Or confirming to the nerd archetype.
Putting yourself on a scale on conformity/non-conformity, you will realise that all the time you are somewhere in between, fluctuating constantly. So thereby this process becomes obsolete. Nowadays non-conforming seems to be wearing DIFFERENT clothes, listening to DIFFERENT obscure bands, turning to a DIFFERENT sexuality, etc etc. It's nothing more than an almost narcissistic ego boost venture constantly comparing, comparing, comparing. See, never mind details of their personal lives, but you only have to look at people who brought about real change, and their lives came and went, and in the end they achived relatiely little. E.g. equal rights for women, for black people, liberation of one country/region.
Just something to think about, my 2 cents. Thanks for the article.
"Conformists didn’t, they never chose or thought, they just do"
Funny, I think it's the other way around, like people with Asperger's who just don't "get" the social nuances necessary to follow a majority. They just do what feels comfortable for them, which just happens to fall outside of the norm. Even their best attempts to conform fail, often causing a lot of stress and frustration for themselves and others. They would like to fit in a little better, if only to avoid being constantly disciplined at work or school for being ill mannered or even disruptive. It's interesting how "conformists" may tout the seeming "non comformists" (the ones who make deliberate efforts to stand out) as being brave, but the truth is the real non-conformists suffer for being incable of social versatility.
Just because a non-conformist is conformist in some areas, does not default their non-conformist title. If there was a hypothetically a "non-conformist" who was non-conformist in all areas, then intersection between conformist norms and the non conformist actions is the null set. SO this non-conformist is the compliment of society. Thus the non-conformist is conforming to the opposite of society, not be who they really are. Thus non-conformist are only individuals and true non-conformist if they are non-conformist in some areas.
General Stanley McChrystal comments in Rolling Stone magazine are another good example of (attempted) status manipulation.Apparently, an allied superpower, having made next to no progress in a third world country after nearly a decade of occupation is, whilst not good, not unacceptable either (witness his replacement), whereas for even a high ranking, well regarded General like McChrystal to refer to the Vice-President as a nobody and the President as being uneasy when meeting high ranking Generals is completely unacceptable.McChrystal attempted to 'downgrade' the status of the P and VP to below his own. He was never going to get away with that. However, it does make one wonder about the current political leadership in the US that someone in McChrystal's position deemed it appropriate to do that (albeit 'off the record').
This was honest and good. I wish more people tried practicing what they preached and examining the results for problems or pain *before* they tried to preached it.
obsessive self-analysis is the road to madness my friend
This topic is so typical.
Isn't an overwhelming awareness of one's placement on the Conformity Scale in itself self-devouring? Nonconformity, truly expressed, must lack self-awareness or it becomes just another tiresome affectation.
indeed true. the funny thing is i only dress smart at punk gigs because i can't afford to have a whole set of clothes to wear only once every few months.
i'd dress scruffy all the time if i could get away with it, but due to my need to fit in with mainstream society so i can hold onto my job and appear respectable at all times for the sake of getting a better one i dress at least smart-casual all the time.
this thread interests me particularly, i was a member of the anti-roads movement for many years and avoided voicing my concerns over the reactive and counter-productive nature of most of the activities of the group due to my need to keep in with the group as it was my primary source of friendship, housing and food. even though today i'm walking the straight path and going to college to try and get a decent career, many of my friends remain in the movement repeating the same damn mistakes time and time again, wasting vast amounts of time and energy for the sake of being seen to oppose something, and to be part of a group. and i hold my tongue, because i don't like to piss on anyone's bonfire.
Nowadays i have to hold my tongue over other things, things that piss me off at college for instance, because i don't want to rile the faculty in my first year.
i think people conform because they feel they need to. people can get away with being bold and non-conformist because there's thousands out there like them doing it in the same manner, who provide a social network that can provide them with work and housing and social contact
To me, it seems trivially true both that everyone "conforms to something" (if you eat and breathe, you're one of those air-breathing-food-eaters), and that everyone "nonconforms to something" (because no two people are exactly identical).
So actually describing a given person as belonging to either category (is your team the shirts or the skins?) seems not terribly productive. More useful is to examine specific qualities (tastes, philosophies, etc), and scale the degree to which a person conforms, then ask to what extent their non/conforming is conscious decision, made precisely for its own sake. (Sometimes, people consciously conform — they think, "I will do X, in opposition to my preference against it, only because everyone else does it, which will incur other good things". These comments have some great examples of that.)
If a person literally did everything in their power to nonconform to all social pressures whatsoever, she would by definition be universally regarded as a jerk or something equally unsavory. Like Andy Samberg.
Thinking about this reminds me of a review of a book called something like "The 7 Things You Can't Say in America", which pointed out that there are of course hundreds of things you "can't say" which the books' authors aren't going to publish just because you can't say them, like "I genuinely believe in the importance and moral value of raping and eating people."
More than anything, that's what annoys me about people who proudly declare themselves "politically incorrect", and say "I don't give a shit whether anything I say "offends" people." Really? You'd go to your friends and loved ones and say "Eat roadkill!" because that's just how you roll? There's nothing I could say to you that would get your blood boiling?
Obviously, we can and should discuss the boundaries of social behavior, and whether any boundaries whatsoever should even exist. But let's not act like any of us have shed ourselves of all mores and taboos (things which, in fact, rationalists can be very good at recognizing about themselves :)
Um, uncalled-for rant over.
Hehe, I've always made my act of non-conformity a blatant declaration of supreme conformity. People want to talk to you when you say you're a massive conformist: they want to lecture you about what's wrong with that, and about free thinking. It's just so interesting to them. Of course, it also makes them critical of their own opinions when an open-minded person like myself argues that conformity improves one's lifestyle drastically by removing conflict and enhancing one's social status.
In the end, though, there's no such thing as "conformity" or "non-conformity". Someone who was prone to brainwashing by the powers that be as a youngster won't just listen to anything they hear, and at the same time non-conformists will always follow some mundane trend at some point in their lives, or will (much to my chagrin) criticize conformists for no sound reason. All we have is culture and counter-culture. Where one fits into this spectrum is the real key, not one's inherent bias towards rejecting or accepting proposed hypotheses. (I couldn't figure out a way to put the word "variance" into that one. ;_;)
"Who on this blog repeatedly warned that Bayesian Induction may be seriously incomplete as a model of normative rationality"
flagged as an invitation to exceed the word count limit in the OB comments section.
What do the experts say?
I recall Katja Grace's "Strategic Noncomformance offers reproductive advantage for men" social science article link, which tickled me as one of the more subsversive journal article titles I've seen.
I intuit most "non-conformist" subcultures are sorting of people with similar brain chemistry states building an aesthetic from shared preferences, rather than the grand strategic persistence enhancement coordination games I tend to look for in social interactions. I suspect the strategy arises from populations having to handle status maximizing from relatively rigid cognitive starting points across a distribution of types for their subcomponent agents.
Beyond that I do think stoners, preppies (and 25%stoner-75%preppies, etc.) do sort and compete, (and agents form pageants that compete against other pageant teams with other agent pageant combinations) like one would expect persisting algorithms to do in a zero sum status and limited fuel environment.