In Western society, over the past 300 years, we’ve really promoted the idea of the individual and individual accomplishments. The personal stories of those who are successful have become a new sort of myth in our society. Standing out, being different and standing out from the crowd are the modern watchwords for personal success. However, as someone who has always stood out in a crowd from childhood, I’ve seen what it is like on the outside and it has given me a new appreciation of conformity and fitting in with the group. It is important to society and to ourselves that we fit into the group.
Community vs Individual
Humans are best working together. It’s our evolutionary edge. Between working as a group to create a plan and execute on it and persistence, these things have allowed us to rise to the top of the food chain. Human working together as a group is incredibly important. We are social creatures and being alone too long has an adverse affect on our ability to speak and can cause a sort of insanity. Anyone who lives in remote parts of Alaska knows the trepidation with which you approach someone who has been on there own for too long. Prisoners in solitary confinement are often never the same.
The felt sense of group participation is also vital to our social development. Our ability to be accepted by our peers and to fit in socially is crucial to our survival. In another day and time, not being able to get help from other humans or rely on them for the common defense was a death sentence. In the early colonial days of the United States, being expelled from the colony and forced out of the fenced communities was a sort of death sentences. Native Americans and animals could soon prey on the lone European settler. There is a reason that humans form clans, villages, towns, and cities. Humans excel when they are around each other. However, being able to do this requires a certain amount of following the rules of the group. It requires conformity. Some of these rules are implicit and some of them are explicit. An
The dangers of standing out from the group are very real, the chief among these is expulsion from the group which activates the survival mechanisms in our heads that prioritizes our desire to stay within the group. In these ways, we have to sacrifice our individual powers and individuals wants and needs for the sake of the group. Conformity is a way we fit in socially but it requires individual sacrifice. When it works well, the benefits we get from the group should be greater than the loss of our individual wants/needs/desires. At a fundamental level, among humans, we have to have a common agreement not to hurt or kill each other intentionally, to help each other as much as we are able, and behave in a way that benefits a group or partnership. If those 3 legs are not in place than a group of humans will have a very hard time accomplishing a shared goal.
Humans often will ostracize someone who does not conform to the group for the simple reason that they cannot trust them to hold to the basic agreement. This can happen for a variety of reasons like personality, ability, or agreebleness.
Society and Diversity
To expand this idea of conformity to the level of society, societies work best when there are shared values and principles. A society decides together how things will go and how things are done. Societies also need a common direction. When a society loses its common direction, it will often simply collapse because there is no common purpose or even a shared value. Some of the fiercest political battles can break out when one group is trying to change the direction of society and another group is trying to stay on the same course or take the society in a different direction. Indeed, this is a struggle happening in the UK over Brexit and in the US over almost every social policy imaginable.
At the heart of each of these is a discussion over shared values and principles. Also at the heart of these discussions is the increasingly volume of voices of people from different ethnic and culture background to others. Brexit was triggered by immigration fears. A few too many polish construction workers had arrived to work within the EU. In Germany, the government allowed too many Syrian refugees to arrive and it has sent the political systems into turmoil. Back here in the United States, the political voices of people of color and those of the LGBT community have grown more visible and louder. The plight of minorities in the United States has come front and center often to the detriment of the dominant group which has suffered economic privation and seen that privation laid bare since the economic recession.
What does this have to do with conformity? The dominant group does not often want to consider the needs and wants of people outside of their group because that group does not conform to their idea of what a “good person” looks or sounds like(i.e. one who abides by the rules of the group and is trustworthy). The dominant group wants to know why they would pay for others to have when they do not have themselves. They want to know why they have to see these people in public when the rule, at least in the past, has been that they are better not seen nor heard from and should simply be grateful for being allowed to continue living in the country. Hence the latest slogan, “Send her back.” This phrase encapsulates a much bigger idea: “If she cannot abide by our rules and how we think and view the world, then expel her from the group because we can’t trust her.”
Society’s with diverse populations often find it difficult to find a common destiny and common principles and values because different backgrounds abound. Humans are more alike than they are different but having common ground on which to communicate and set a path forward is essential to a society continuing to exist. It is not impossible but it does demands a different set of skills. It demands a set of rules that everyone can follow and a way for everyone to find a way to conform. When we conform to common rules we are stronger. In the past, those who were able to conform were privileged and those unable to simply were not. The standards were often set so that they could never conform to the common rules of society. How can one simply not be gay or be white? This was impossible and people were shut out. A new society, a diverse society has to create rules that everyone can follow and find a way to conform.
The Breakdown of Conformity
Another aspect of society that has been lost is the idea of people working together as a group. We’ve forgotten to participate in society and in common spaces. This is a direct result of neoliberal philosophy taken the extreme. Since 1980 the power of the individual has been taken the extreme and the current climate of income inequality is the result. Rather than prioritizes the needs of everyone, like having good wages, well-funded services, and the like, we have prioritized the individual fortunes of a small group of people. By allowing a small group of people and companies to become extremely wealthy, the commons (greater society) has suffered.
This has also become true culturally. We don’t have common TV shows, songs of the summer, or common cultural experiences that we can use to create common ground with other people. Everyone has been balkanized into their own little world of their own media. You can bring up TV shows that you watch and others might have never heard of them because we have so many options and culture has become so personal that often, there are vast swaths of cultural experience that never reach some people. They simply aren’t aware of them at all.
This lack of common societal experience is what happens when the individual is more important than the greater whole. There is no need to conform to common rules and standards if there is no benefit to be gained. If there is no social credit to be gotten in conformity than individuals will not make the sacrifice and they will do whatever they want, including violence. Society works best when society works for everyone. Society works when we can come to shared goals, places, and experiences and experience the exhilaration of being in a group and sharing something together that we have all experienced. At that moment, we are all one. Modern society has lost that sense of being one.
Standing Out From the Crowd
Modern advice in so many ways advises us to stand out from the crowd. To do things differently. We hold up those who think differently and do things in a different way. Modern society highlights our differences while de-emphasizing the ways in which we are the same. We have created new myths around how those that get ahead are those that stand out from the crowd. I have stood out from the crowd all my life. I’ve not often had that experience of being in a group and having a shared experience and the thrill of being in that place and time where a shared experience is taking place. This is an important part of being human. Standing out from the crowd might be good to make money at a passion project or even stand out in a career but the ability to conform to the rules of a group and fully participate within that group is often just as valuable. Being a contributing member of society and contributing to an overall project or goal is just as laudable. Somehow that has been lost.
It is a terrible sacrifice to always stand out from the crowd. People might not trust you or think differently about you. Others might find someone like that intimidating or be unable to find common ground. Also, people who stand out too much can cause others, out of a primal fear, to fear anyone like that. Being normal and being apart of the group is and ok thing to do. It is necessary because it is how humans function. If everyone is standing out from the crowd, soon there is no crowd at all.
Final Thoughts
Conformity is important. It is what makes us human and it is long past time that we remember that and find new ways to create new groups and a new society around these shared rules. Let’s find ways that we join groups and follow those new rules. Let’s find ways to come together as a group of humans and achieve goals. Let’s find ways to participate in common culture and ways to enjoy things together as a whole. It is just as important as we want to achieve individually. We can’t survive without society and society won’t survive with us. Conformity is important. Find a new way to practice it in your own life.
Discover more from The Cameron Journal
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
