The key to successful non-conformity is to find your tribe later. If you look at people who’ve done this now, they seem like conformists, because they do what their peer-group does. But they’ve fit their peer-group to their personality, rather than trying to fit their personality to their peer-group. They’ve had to move through local minima of non-conformity.
Here are some examples of where I’ve made what have at the time been socially brave choices that have paid off big. This is exactly all about asking “what is the best thing I could be doing”, not “what is the thing to do”.
Decided to accept and admit to my bisexuality. This was very uncomfortable at first, and I never did really find a “home” in gay communities, as they conformed around a lot of norms that didn’t suit me well. What accepting my sexuality really bought me is a critical stance on masculinity. Rejecting the normal definition of “what it means to be a man” has been hugely liberating. Being queer has a nice signalling perk on this, too. It’s much harder to be straight and get away with this. If you’re queer people shrug and put you in that “third sex” category of neither masculine nor feminine.
Decided not to pursue any of the “typical” careers. I was getting top marks in English and History in high school, and all the other kids with that academic profile were going into law. I chose to just do an arts degree in linguistics, with an eye on academia. This turned out to be a very important decision, as I’m very happy with my academic career in computational linguistics. When I meet people, they’re amazed at how “lucky” I am to have found something so niche that fits me so well. Well, it isn’t luck at all: I decided what everyone else was doing was not for me, and had to suck it up when people called me a fool for leaving all that near-certain law money on the table.
Decided the “school” of linguistics I’d trained in all through my undergraduate was completely wrong, requiring me to abandon my existing professional network and relearn almost everything. It was kind of a scientific crisis of faith. But I think I’m happier now than I would’ve been if I hadn’t.
Decided to become vegetarian. This benefited me by reducing my cognitive dissonance between the empirical facts of the meat industry and my need to feel that I was making the world a better place, and wouldn’t do something I had believed caused great harm just because it was normal. Now I have a network of vegetarian friends (not that I abandoned my old one, mind), so it doesn’t feel like lonely dissent. And I did only “convert” after meeting a rationalist vegetarian friend. But the non-conformity pain was still there when I did it. I had to deal with feeling like a weirdo, which is unpleasant.
Hired a domestic cleaner. Domestic help is fairly socially unacceptable in my champagne socialist slice of Australia. How bourgeois! Well, yes—we are totally bourgeois. Champagne socialists are very uncomfortable about this. This exchange of goods for services is very high utility for me, though.
So I disagree that “non-conformists” are worse off, for this definition of “non-conformist”. People willing to make socially brave choices stand to gain a lot; people who are completely craven in the face of any social opprobrium wind up trapped in circumstances that don’t suit them well.
So I disagree that “non-conformists” are worse off, for this definition of “non-conformist”. People willing to make socially brave choices stand to gain a lot; people who are completely craven in the face of any social opprobrium wind up trapped in circumstances that don’t suit them well.
We clearly disagree on the definition of “nonconformity.” If you use this word for any instance of resisting social pressure, then clearly you are right, but it also means that everyone is a nonconformist except people who live their entire lives as silent, frightened, and obedient doormats for others. Any success in life is practically impossible if you don’t stand up for yourself when it’s smart to do so, and if you don’t exploit some opportunities opened by the hypocritical distinctions between the nominal and real rules of social interactions and institutions. But I wouldn’t call any of that “nonconformity,” a term which I reserve for opposition to truly serious and universally accepted rules and respectable beliefs. Of course, it makes little sense to argue over definitions, so I guess we can leave it at that.
If it makes any difference to you, my definition of “nonconformist” was someone who exhibits some social courage. For example, someone who decides to leave college to pursue plans of his own. Many people don’t stand up for themselves even a little. Or acknowledge to themselves that they don’t desire what other people expect for them. I have a hard time with this myself, which is why I don’t take this ability for granted. That’s all I meant by “nonconformist.” Don’t take the terminology too seriously
None of these are non conformity: All of them are fashionable signals of officially approved affluent pseudo-nonconformity. For example, the vast majority of people who claim to vegetarians, are not, but claim to vegetarians for the status.
And it simply absurd to suggest that Australian champagne socialists disapprove of hiring domestic help They are always one upping each other on how little housework they do.
Almost everything’s fashionable to someone, somewhere. You can start with a certain in-group and non-conform by deciding to eat meat. You can non-conform out of the gay community by deciding you’re actually straight.
The issue of conformity arose in this thread from SarahC’s comment:
Honestly, I think the cluster of tech-savvy, young, smart-but-nonconformist types is really winning at the goal of being productive while happy. Not everybody makes it; but I’ve seen a lot of people have lives more satisfying than their parents ever could. People who’ve broken the conventional wisdom that you have to put up with a lot of bullshit because “that’s life.” Mainly, because instead of asking “What is the Thing To Do?” they’ve got the hang of asking “What is the best thing I could be doing?”
I think this really applies to me. My assessment of my life is that I’m much happier because of these moments where I’ve exercised even a little bit of courage in the face of social pressure. It wasn’t a huge amount of courage, but it was non-zero—which is more than many people are willing to do. I do believe that being utterly craven in the face of social opprobrium is a common failure mode, and it’s an area where rationality pays dividends.
For example, the vast majority of people who claim to vegetarians, are not, but claim to vegetarians for the status.
Got a cite for that? Vegetarianism might be a questionable indicator of nonconformity, but I’d be much more willing to believe that vegetarianism’s become common enough in a broad spectrum of subcultures to be disqualified as such than that a vast, or even a simple, majority of professed vegetarians aren’t actual vegetarians. Perhaps modulo some wiggle room for culturally mandated meat-eating, like Thanksgiving turkeys in the US.
Now that I think about it, actually, it’s a non sequitur either way. The hypocrisy/sincere profession ratio of a feature doesn’t tell us much of anything about how acceptable it is in the mainstream: I’d expect many more people to claim to have Mafia ties than do in fact, but membership in a criminal fraternity is almost by definition nonconformist!
By the most naive rational appraisal, eating n% less meat than usual is fully n% as good—say, for suffering animals—as being a pure vegetarian. However, the social consequences of being a pure vegetarian seem to be entirely different than those of simply eating less meat. (I agree with sam0345 that those social consequences are largely positive.) It’s interesting to think about why.
Also, a question about the “not vegetarians” thing. I’ll grant you ahead of time that a great many vegetarians/vegans aren’t doing it for any particularly rational reason. E.g., they think it’s healthier (it’s not), they think meat’s gross (subjective—but they’re wrong anyway :p), they exaggerate the environmental case, etc. But I have a hard time believing they actually fail to eat little to no meat.
What are you counting as “failing to be vegetarian”? If they eat meat once a month? Once a week? Once a day? I’d say that someone that eats meat once a day is not vegetarian. But I’d also say it’s reasonable for someone who eats meat even once a week to call themselves vegetarian. Are you claiming that there are lots of people who call themselves vegetarian but eat almost as much meat as “normal” people?
Even if vegetarianism were entirely status neutral, you need to communicate to people what you want to be eating. If you tell everyone “okay, I eat meat once a week”, then chances are high two people per week are going to say “great, here’s some meat”. So you won’t even be able to maintain this very liberal ratio.
I sometimes eat certain types of seafood, such as oysters or prawns, because I don’t believe this is actually cruel. An oyster is not a pig. It doesn’t have much of a nervous system to speak of. So why should I avoid eating them, just to meet someone’s definition?
Similarly, if someone can’t live healthily on a strictly vegetarian diet, but needs to eat some meat, why do they need to snap back to “no special diet” status? If they still think the meat industry is largely cruel, they can probably meet their health requirements by eating only a little meat. Why should this person not call themselves a vegetarian?
I personally eat very little meat. I don’t consider myself to be vegetarian.
I have never met a self-professed vegetarian that I’ve seen to eat meat. Not that this means there aren’t any… but my experience suggest to me that meat-eating vegetarians are not “the majority”
I can, however, conceive that some vegans might say that non-vegan vegetarians are not “really” vegetarian.
I am also aware of a certain movement, sprung from the vegetarian community, to spruik the “eat less meat” philosophy.
One of these may be where sam0345 is hearing about non-vegetarian vegetarians...
I don’t follow? Even if vegetarianism is highly negative starus, the word’s useful as a way to communicate your pre-commitments. Again, imagine the person who eats meat once a week attending several events per week where they will be expected to eat meat. If they don’t call themselves vegetarian, they won’t be able to keep their commitment. This says nothing about how much status they are gaining or losing, or how much they are ‘conforming’.
The key to successful non-conformity is to find your tribe later. If you look at people who’ve done this now, they seem like conformists, because they do what their peer-group does. But they’ve fit their peer-group to their personality, rather than trying to fit their personality to their peer-group. They’ve had to move through local minima of non-conformity.
Here are some examples of where I’ve made what have at the time been socially brave choices that have paid off big. This is exactly all about asking “what is the best thing I could be doing”, not “what is the thing to do”.
Decided to accept and admit to my bisexuality. This was very uncomfortable at first, and I never did really find a “home” in gay communities, as they conformed around a lot of norms that didn’t suit me well. What accepting my sexuality really bought me is a critical stance on masculinity. Rejecting the normal definition of “what it means to be a man” has been hugely liberating. Being queer has a nice signalling perk on this, too. It’s much harder to be straight and get away with this. If you’re queer people shrug and put you in that “third sex” category of neither masculine nor feminine.
Decided not to pursue any of the “typical” careers. I was getting top marks in English and History in high school, and all the other kids with that academic profile were going into law. I chose to just do an arts degree in linguistics, with an eye on academia. This turned out to be a very important decision, as I’m very happy with my academic career in computational linguistics. When I meet people, they’re amazed at how “lucky” I am to have found something so niche that fits me so well. Well, it isn’t luck at all: I decided what everyone else was doing was not for me, and had to suck it up when people called me a fool for leaving all that near-certain law money on the table.
Decided the “school” of linguistics I’d trained in all through my undergraduate was completely wrong, requiring me to abandon my existing professional network and relearn almost everything. It was kind of a scientific crisis of faith. But I think I’m happier now than I would’ve been if I hadn’t.
Decided to become vegetarian. This benefited me by reducing my cognitive dissonance between the empirical facts of the meat industry and my need to feel that I was making the world a better place, and wouldn’t do something I had believed caused great harm just because it was normal. Now I have a network of vegetarian friends (not that I abandoned my old one, mind), so it doesn’t feel like lonely dissent. And I did only “convert” after meeting a rationalist vegetarian friend. But the non-conformity pain was still there when I did it. I had to deal with feeling like a weirdo, which is unpleasant.
Hired a domestic cleaner. Domestic help is fairly socially unacceptable in my champagne socialist slice of Australia. How bourgeois! Well, yes—we are totally bourgeois. Champagne socialists are very uncomfortable about this. This exchange of goods for services is very high utility for me, though.
So I disagree that “non-conformists” are worse off, for this definition of “non-conformist”. People willing to make socially brave choices stand to gain a lot; people who are completely craven in the face of any social opprobrium wind up trapped in circumstances that don’t suit them well.
We clearly disagree on the definition of “nonconformity.” If you use this word for any instance of resisting social pressure, then clearly you are right, but it also means that everyone is a nonconformist except people who live their entire lives as silent, frightened, and obedient doormats for others. Any success in life is practically impossible if you don’t stand up for yourself when it’s smart to do so, and if you don’t exploit some opportunities opened by the hypocritical distinctions between the nominal and real rules of social interactions and institutions. But I wouldn’t call any of that “nonconformity,” a term which I reserve for opposition to truly serious and universally accepted rules and respectable beliefs. Of course, it makes little sense to argue over definitions, so I guess we can leave it at that.
Thanks for the clarification. I tend to call what you call non-conformists “sole dissenters”. I’ve never done this.
If it makes any difference to you, my definition of “nonconformist” was someone who exhibits some social courage. For example, someone who decides to leave college to pursue plans of his own. Many people don’t stand up for themselves even a little. Or acknowledge to themselves that they don’t desire what other people expect for them. I have a hard time with this myself, which is why I don’t take this ability for granted. That’s all I meant by “nonconformist.” Don’t take the terminology too seriously
None of these are non conformity: All of them are fashionable signals of officially approved affluent pseudo-nonconformity. For example, the vast majority of people who claim to vegetarians, are not, but claim to vegetarians for the status.
And it simply absurd to suggest that Australian champagne socialists disapprove of hiring domestic help They are always one upping each other on how little housework they do.
Almost everything’s fashionable to someone, somewhere. You can start with a certain in-group and non-conform by deciding to eat meat. You can non-conform out of the gay community by deciding you’re actually straight.
The issue of conformity arose in this thread from SarahC’s comment:
I think this really applies to me. My assessment of my life is that I’m much happier because of these moments where I’ve exercised even a little bit of courage in the face of social pressure. It wasn’t a huge amount of courage, but it was non-zero—which is more than many people are willing to do. I do believe that being utterly craven in the face of social opprobrium is a common failure mode, and it’s an area where rationality pays dividends.
Got a cite for that? Vegetarianism might be a questionable indicator of nonconformity, but I’d be much more willing to believe that vegetarianism’s become common enough in a broad spectrum of subcultures to be disqualified as such than that a vast, or even a simple, majority of professed vegetarians aren’t actual vegetarians. Perhaps modulo some wiggle room for culturally mandated meat-eating, like Thanksgiving turkeys in the US.
Now that I think about it, actually, it’s a non sequitur either way. The hypocrisy/sincere profession ratio of a feature doesn’t tell us much of anything about how acceptable it is in the mainstream: I’d expect many more people to claim to have Mafia ties than do in fact, but membership in a criminal fraternity is almost by definition nonconformist!
Merely a personal observation. I do however have a cite for the proposition that vegan is conformity, and omnivory a sinful deviation.
Citing a source that aims for humor rather than accuracy is a lot more helpful if you’re aiming for flippancy rather than credibility.
By the most naive rational appraisal, eating n% less meat than usual is fully n% as good—say, for suffering animals—as being a pure vegetarian. However, the social consequences of being a pure vegetarian seem to be entirely different than those of simply eating less meat. (I agree with sam0345 that those social consequences are largely positive.) It’s interesting to think about why.
Also, a question about the “not vegetarians” thing. I’ll grant you ahead of time that a great many vegetarians/vegans aren’t doing it for any particularly rational reason. E.g., they think it’s healthier (it’s not), they think meat’s gross (subjective—but they’re wrong anyway :p), they exaggerate the environmental case, etc. But I have a hard time believing they actually fail to eat little to no meat.
What are you counting as “failing to be vegetarian”? If they eat meat once a month? Once a week? Once a day? I’d say that someone that eats meat once a day is not vegetarian. But I’d also say it’s reasonable for someone who eats meat even once a week to call themselves vegetarian. Are you claiming that there are lots of people who call themselves vegetarian but eat almost as much meat as “normal” people?
Even if vegetarianism were entirely status neutral, you need to communicate to people what you want to be eating. If you tell everyone “okay, I eat meat once a week”, then chances are high two people per week are going to say “great, here’s some meat”. So you won’t even be able to maintain this very liberal ratio.
I sometimes eat certain types of seafood, such as oysters or prawns, because I don’t believe this is actually cruel. An oyster is not a pig. It doesn’t have much of a nervous system to speak of. So why should I avoid eating them, just to meet someone’s definition?
Similarly, if someone can’t live healthily on a strictly vegetarian diet, but needs to eat some meat, why do they need to snap back to “no special diet” status? If they still think the meat industry is largely cruel, they can probably meet their health requirements by eating only a little meat. Why should this person not call themselves a vegetarian?
I personally eat very little meat. I don’t consider myself to be vegetarian.
I have never met a self-professed vegetarian that I’ve seen to eat meat. Not that this means there aren’t any… but my experience suggest to me that meat-eating vegetarians are not “the majority”
I can, however, conceive that some vegans might say that non-vegan vegetarians are not “really” vegetarian.
I am also aware of a certain movement, sprung from the vegetarian community, to spruik the “eat less meat” philosophy.
One of these may be where sam0345 is hearing about non-vegetarian vegetarians...
Of course this person can call himself a vegetarian. But that he is inclined to do so would indicate that vegetarianism is not non conformity.
I don’t follow? Even if vegetarianism is highly negative starus, the word’s useful as a way to communicate your pre-commitments. Again, imagine the person who eats meat once a week attending several events per week where they will be expected to eat meat. If they don’t call themselves vegetarian, they won’t be able to keep their commitment. This says nothing about how much status they are gaining or losing, or how much they are ‘conforming’.
Academics are lower-status than lawyers where you are?
It sure seemed that way when I was 17.