Where Are My Glasses? : Clearing Up Society’s View of Conformity

| You hear the steady beat of boot against pavement, no not one boot… thousands. This distinct, thunderous sound fills the air before they approach. | |
|They turn the corner in perfect rows: identical, powerful and terrifying. They are perfectly synchronized as they shout “Hail Hitler” in unison. This is | |
|conformity at its worst, and when we think of the word conformity… this extreme pops into our minds almost immediately. Most of the time we overlook and | |
|downplay the conformity we show everyday. We also tend to accept the myth that everyone is unique. In reality, conformity is inescapable; the wise man not only| |
|sees this, but also understands how complex conformity really is. We look at conformity as the killer of the individual, and we don’t look to see how sometimes| |
|it is productive to conform. We often prefer to have things definite and easy to determine, but when it comes to conformity, it is never laid out so nicely. It| |
|is often hard to determine whether conforming is or is not the right choice. | |
|Conformity comes from the word conformite, meaning to shape. We are the clay and society is the potter, shaping and molding humans to its benefit. I often | |
|think of conformity as a fact of life, and in its most basic sense, it is. Many times conformity is a survival mechanism. Doing what is expected of you, saying| |
|the appropriate thing and using common sense are examples of conformity being a part of social survival. As a child we are taught that you don’t put the square| |
|block in the round hole, in fact, we may spend our whole lives trying to figure out how to better fit in and perform our role perfectly synchronized to others.| |
|Conformity can, in fact, be harmony when it is not forced. | |
|Conformity is a tool. The trait evolved many millennia ago when you ate the same food because you knew it wasn’t poisonous. Conformity is an effective survival| |
|mechanism. Back then it was ‘conform or die’. Now it’s: ‘conform or die a social death’. It’s almost an instinct. Conformity protects you when you’re exposed | |
|to new situations. We learn how to act by mimicking others, so not to humiliate ourselves. It's ironic how we think of conformity as a bad thing when we frown | |
|at the person with a different way of living. Many times we want people to conform because it’s what we expect. It makes us uncomfortable when someone doesn’t | |
|follow society’s unwritten rules. The individual is often outcast and called: strange, awkward, or insane. So then, why is it so common to look down on | |
|conformity? | |
|Conformity leads to sameness, which leads to boredom. A life without surprises, where there are no new ideas and everything is constant, that is the worst | |
|thing conformity can do. Suburbia, where each house is so identical that it would be easy to walk straight into your neighbor’s house without noticing, is a | |
|painful example of this monotony. Conformity has gone too far when we lose ourselves in that glazed-over daze. If it is easy for us to live our life by | |
|assuming that everything will always be the same, then we see the bitterness of conformity. When everything is unpredictable, we are quickly confused… but is | |
|that such a bad thing? Why do we shy away from change? Conformity doesn’t always lead to boredom though, it can help us become more efficient, leading us to | |
|different discoveries.