A society that breeds conformity is a dangerous thing in today's world for many reasons. While it leads you to feel accepted for who you are in a small group of people, it is only making you feel accepted for who it molds you to be. By conforming to a group, you are either changing who you are to fit in, or you are masking your true self by the veil of conformity. By conforming to a "socially accepted standard," you are not allowing yourself actually be yourself. Conformity is wrong, as it is only changing or masking who you really are on the inside to make you just like everyone else on the outside.
The pressure of conformity leads people to change who they are, or never let them get the opportunity to get to know who they really are in the first place. They change simply so that they can fit into a society or group of friends. This feeling of acceptance and unity is really only a byproduct of being exactly the same person as everyone else in society. It is impossible for you to be disliked by people who are your mirror images.At most high schools in the United States, it is possible to find examples of conformity. The students are influenced not by their own opinions, but by opinions fed to them by the media and by their peer group. As parodied in the movie Josie and the Pussycats, there seems to be national trends that phase in and phase out of society almost in unison. High school students seem to all listen to the same pop-music playing on Clear Channel stations, wear the same brand name clothing, drive the same cars, and act in the same manner. This does not go to say that all students in high school are conformists, as I will talk about later, but rather, there is conformity that seems to take over the easily molded minds of teenagers.
It is very easy to find examples of conformity of the masses in a high school situation; however it is also possible to find times when adults are pressured by the same force of conformity. The saying "keeping up with the Jones's" applies here, as it implies the general desire to have what your neighbor has. For example, if a neighbor installed a pool, you would have the desire to have a pool regardless of if you need it, or if you could even afford it. In this sense, conformity is dangerous--getting many people into debt and steering away from the idea of economy. While so many people are influenced by conformity, there is a select group that seems immune to it all--the nonconformists. One of my friends is a prime example of a nonconformist, or a person who does not conform to the accepted standards of a society. In high school, she associated herself with the "straight-edge" movement. It originated from Ian MacKay's song "Straight-Edge," which is "a punishing song excoriating those who sought strength in the weakness of drugs and drink" (Greenwald 10-11). Needless to say, she kept herself clean of all of society's pulls. She never drank, did drugs, and tended not to conform to any of society's demands. By seeing who she has made herself to be, there is not a doubt in my mind that she got there because of those 18 years of her life when she did not conform to society, and instead was herself. When I asked her about why she chose this generally less treaded path, she explained to me about her idea of the "crowd." She said that when someone follows the crowd, he or she is not being true to him or herself; he or she is denying themselves the essential individuality that each person has. Society has taught us to suppress this individual in ourselves, and replace it with the accepted way to talk, act, think, and in general: be.
Thoreau gave the famous metaphor comparing a person who lives in a society, but not of the society, to a person who hears a different beat in life, hence stepping "out" of beat. The idea that this individual who is stepping to his or her own beat is actually stepping out of beat is accurate, but in this sense, stepping out of beat is the right thing to be doing. The use of this metaphor is very easily understood and has stood the test of time. Even today, the idea of people stepping to their own beat is used commonly. Perhaps it is the use of the idea of music as a general theme that has allowed it to span across generations, unchanged in meaning, yet just as influential in nature.
Conformity is the driving force behind the stability of society's trends. I believe that the real crime in conformity is that society is teaching us to not be ourselves.
Greenwald, Andy. Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo. St. Marin's Griffin, New York. 2003.
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