Free Essay

Conformity

In: Philosophy and Psychology

Submitted By josephje1
Words 695
Pages 3
Jeffrey Joseph
Adam Levy
Social Psychology
31 January 2014
Conformity: Do We Really Have A Choice? It’s Wednesday night. A Duke basketball game is on. I’m sitting on the couch, surrounded by my old roommates, watching the game. Dylan is the only one among us who is a Duke “fan”, but there is nothing else to do on a Wednesday night. The question came up. It always does. Someone asks Dylan, “Why are you a Duke fan? You don’t live anywhere near Duke.” Dylan, upon hearing the question, quickly and defensively answers, “uh…my family always liked them.” No one says anything and we continue to watch and give our critique on the game. I barely paid attention to his answer. I wasn’t interested. I already knew what he was going to say. How did I know what he was going to say? Did I just know him that well? Well, that’s a little bit of the reason, but mainly I knew because there is such a cliché response to that particular question that it is almost automatic. See, there’s this unwritten rule in society that you have to live physically near a sports team to be able to appreciate them and call yourself a true fan. I know, it makes no sense, but since when did society have to make sense? The point is that unless you live close to the team, it’s your alma mater, you or one of your relatives played or does play on the team, you lose all credibility as being a “true fan.” So, Dylan, not having met any of these criteria, took the cliché escape root…the only “get out of jail free” card. See, if you respond the way he did to that question, whoever asked you immediately surrenders the interrogation. It’s a soul crushing defeat for them. That punch to the groin. All the interrogator can do is sigh and say, “oh ok.” Why is this? Why does five simple words trump everything else? It’s simple, really. It’s because we all know the influence our family has on us. We all know that, to a certain extent, our family has shaped our beliefs on damn near everything. From politics to yes, sports teams, we’re almost living, breathing human billboards of the products our families create. So, this begs the question, “how do we really know when an idea or opinion is ours, or the product of someone else’s influence?” Our families are just one of the pieces to the entire truth that is conformity.
Conformity is a safety mechanism. We adopt ideas and behaviors of others for reasons as simple as we just want to make friends. Conformity to an extent is a very productive thing. We would not be able to function as an established society without it. If we were all left to our own devices, there would be utter chaos. Violence, deaths, lack of order, it would be a real-life rendition of “The Lord of the Flies”. But at what level is conformity no longer a safety valve? When does it actually become a hindrance to our society? You do not need to look far to see the very real dangers of conformity. Hitler is always the prime example of this, but I will offer a different example, the mass suicide of Jonestown. On November 18, 1978, 909 members of the Peoples Temple died. All but two of them from cyanide poisoning. It was during an event called “revolutionary suicide”. All those people lost their lives because of a product of conformity. They followed what they believed to be an authoritative figure to such a massive extent that they took their own lives. Until September 11, 2001, it was the single largest loss of American civilian life. Conformity is such a powerful concept that it causes us physical pain. And with the never-ending barrage of advertisements, propaganda, ideas, beliefs, rumors, codes, and laws that is “daily life”, you have to wonder, “how this is truly all affecting us?” There may never be a tangible way to measure this without seeing its results. And that, my friends, I find truly frightening.

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