The other day one of my sons wanted to do something just because most of the other kids were doing it. I ceremoniously imparted to him wisdom that has been carefully passed down from generation to generation in our family. “Just because everyone else jumps off a bridge,” I said, “doesn’t mean you have to, does it?”
He looked at me like I pulled a vacuous, parental crutch out of my ear rather than making an intelligent comment. And of course he was right.
First, wanting to do something or wear something or join in something that most of the other kids are doing, wearing or joining is not as dangerous or life-threatening as jumping off a bridge. Second, how many of us really want our kids to be different than the rest?
Don’t answer that question before really thinking about it. Let’s be honest. How many of us really want our kids to be different?
If you have even half-objectively surveyed the surrounding offices or cubicles at work lately you know the answer, but you don’t want to admit it. Go ahead. Tell the truth. How much upward mobility do nonconformists enjoy at your place of business? What’s their employment expectancy?
They don’t spend enough time yucking it up on the golf course or posing at Starbucks. They’re not reverent or obsequious enough to grovel or flatter their way into the big promotions. They don’t worry enough about vanquishing the next guy (or gal) much less screwing over the easy marks.
Make no mistake. Conformity is a control mechanism that keeps the United Corporations of America sputtering along, unhealthy of course, but productive enough to keep the shareholders comfy. We may not he headed in the right direction, but our lemming-esque locomotion is a marvel of multi-media-induced coordination, social engineering and perpetual, material-assuaged surrender.
We pay lots of lip service to daring to be different and not caring what other people think, but when it comes right down to it, we‘re despicable hypocrites. If we don’t look the right way and say the right things, the wretchedly superficial social circles we covet entry into are inevitably closed to us. If we don’t go along to get along, vocational success eludes our grasp. If we don’t parrot the proper patriotic slogans and dimly accept all those maliciously crafted and incessantly repeated talking points, we’re deemed suspicious or subversive and dismissed by the hapless majority who believe they’re in the know. Heck, if we didn’t vote for Bush a few years back, we were practically traitors.
This is the world we live in. “Jumping off a bridge” used to be considered aberrant behavior, but now it’s the norm. Metaphorically speaking, we jump off bridges every day, because it’s exactly what everyone else is doing, it’s what’s expected of us and we don’t have the courage to deviate from the norm.
If you don’t want your kids jumping off bridges like everyone else, lead by example. Stop agreeing when you disagree. Stop acquiescing when you’re right and they’re wrong. Stop cowering before corrupt or illegitimate powers. Stop trusting news sources that bank on you being an ignorant, manipulable cretin. Stop giving credence to dissenting “authorities” propped up by gainful factions with ulterior motives. Stop simply believing what you want to believe and spend some time discerning what’s believable. Stop preferring short-term gratification to long-term health and sustenance. And stop letting yourself off easy.
We achieved the current catalogue of impending dooms as a reckless species, a careless people and as irresponsible individuals. To thwart our societal plunge, the buck has to stop with you, every one you know and every one you ever knew. Everyone everywhere.
Conformity is the currency of dilapidation. It compromises every aspect of our politics, our lifestyles, our worship and our wellbeing. If, as Einstein put it, insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” then conformity is at least a little psychotic if not outright insane.
Isn’t it time we acknowledged our psychosis and dealt with it?
Untuck your shirt. Defy instead of defer. Speak truth to panderers.
Until we stop jumping off bridges, our advice to our children is just effective reverse psychology. And the last thing we should be able to stomach is them ending up like us.