Conformity and its Disadvantages
In our society today, the word “conformity” can now be considered a mainstream for many of us. During our conversations and social interactions, conformity to social norms are present and sometimes obvious enough to be clearly seen by others. In the light of this, one could not clearly say that conformity is beneficial or otherwise, but I would like to say that it can be both at times.
Beneficial. Conformity could be good in ways that keep our society intact. Intact in the sense that people know the good things to do in different situations and people know the things they have to avoid. In this case, conformity could be good.
But in another perspective, being harmful, conformity also erased individuality. Conformity just inhibits us to speak out the necessary things that could actually improve a situation or a decision. For instance, because of our tendency to follow the decisions of our peers in a certain group work, we would stop ourselves to question the leader even if we know that we are right. By stopping ourselves from questioning and arguing just because other group mates agree with the leader, the end result of the decision of the leader might lead to severe consequences, which we clearly want to avoid in the first place.
Being in a culture where strong family ties and communal relationships are given much focus, it is very hard for me not to notice how this conformity plays out in my school, home and the like. In school, my classmates love teasing people with insults and jokes. But I would want to say that I do not agree with them. Unfortunately for me, they would not stop because it is already a social norm for them to give insults like it is already a daily routine. And truly, saying “no” to conformity, which in my case is not to give insults and jokes, could actually make us a laughing stock. Just violating and being deviant to the established social norms could actually make people feel weird about us. Sad to say, this is one negative outcome of being deviant to social norms.
Conformity has been sort of a curse and also a blessing to my life. Curse, in the sense that I have to get through life being laughed at because of the social norms I chose to be deviant to. But blessing, in the sense that it helped me get along with my friends and others also. In this case, I could not say that conformity is totally bad because similar to life, it is not just black and white. Conformity has its gray areas that leave people to judge for themselves whether it is right or wrong.
