The Conformists
When social acceptance is on the line, conformists will attempt to break you. They will publically demean you, deploy social mob-style pressure, and identify ways to hurt you both mentally and physically.
Conformity is the ideas, beliefs, and values that society creates and upholds for the masses to live by. These are externally based creations that we rarely know who/how they were built and usually seek to control. By contrast, Nonconformists reject society-built constructs that aim to mitigate their individuality and freedoms. They don’t do this to ‘be different”… That would make them mere rebels. Nonconformity is what happens when someone lives by their personal code of ethics, beliefs, principles, and values. The nonconformist desires to understand themselves without the influence of the crowd… whereas conformists adopt ideas based on needing to be accepted.
Throughout history and discussed regularly among philosophers, the fear of death is one of the most motivating factors used by conformists. The easiest way for conformists to feel “safe” is to deny the very thing they are most fearful of. Death.
The reality is that most of us will be forgotten within 50-100 years after our deaths. Yes, our legacy and impact could be lost within one tiny generation. This is a harrowing thought for people given how attached they are to the physical world. People will attempt to be remembered in two ways.
Through Personal Heroism
Through Cultural Heroism
You have been placed at the precipice of having to decide which camp to pitch your tent. While I fully believe we are living in one of the greatest times of all history, I also believe it is one of the most challenging. Each of us has to decide whether we fight for our individualism and pursuit of personal freedom or whether we ignore and pretend shit isn’t happening, and conform. I cannot blame anyone for which choice they make… but here is what I also know.
Those who choose conformity over freedom do not deserve the ladder. Those who pressure others to abandon their personal beliefs do not have beliefs they built themselves. It is easy to discard beliefs you didn’t build yourself, but it’s not easy to discard principles and identities that you constructed from the ground up. The belief systems of the conformists are based on adopted beliefs. As soon as their hot garbage is on fire they will happily jump to a different system to save themselves from an identity crisis and criticism. You read that correctly. Conformists build their beliefs on quicksand, given to them by society. This allows them to be accepted and ensures that can change their beliefs and move into a new sandcastle, for whatever reason they wish, and do so free from consequence.
There are no heroes in tales of conformity. Every story, movie, book, and the like are built on tales of nonconformity. This is fine when we believe it’s just a fairytale. However, anyone who dares step on the field of nonconformity is typically condemned in this time-space reality. And the reality of that is a reflection the conformist cannot bare. It reveals them. It outs them. It shows them how unstable their castles are and how cowardly they live.
So I understand why conformists push so viciously. It has to be hard to watch the nonconformist gobsmack thier belief systems… every day.
You have to choose. You will have to choose where and how to build your castles. Will you build with the beliefs society gives you... or will you build with your self-made principles? If we have learned nothing in the last year, we have certainly learned that no one is safe from the conformists. They will come for you. Don’t let one more day pass building your life on the unstable materials society hands you. If you choose your own materials, you won’t live with so much damn anxiety and you won’t have to keep rebuilding your life every time society tells you to.