Conformity

Don’t Be a Sheep, Think for Yourself — In today’s world, it’s easy to get caught up in the echo chamber of our own beliefs. With social media, we can follow people who share our views and opinions, and we can block or unfollow those who don’t. We can live in our own little bubbles, never having our…

How Non-Conformists Can Change the World As a non-conformist, you are likely used to feeling misunderstood and even ostracized by the world around you. But did you know that there is power in numbers? That if enough people stand up for what they believe in, they can change the course of history? In this piece, I…

Annoyed As I was reading Zero to One by Peter Thiel this morning, I was abruptly and uncomfortably caught by one particular sentence: “All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past”. No matter how many times I attempted to continue reading past that line, I was stopped in my…

Two of the most humiliating and infuriating moments of my life involved my shoulders. The first occurred when I was recently employed and called into the office. I was made to sit and watch a PowerPoint about the faculty dress code. No bare shoulders! At the time, I was wearing…

Cult eighties director extraordinaire John Carpenter’s They Live offers a lively take down on the mores of consumer culture and urban conformity without the eye roll sermonizing and tedious preaching that is endemic to many of its thematic peers. Eschewing more noble explication, Carpenter remains faithful to his singular vision…

Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions (2022) by Todd Rose is a highly interesting and very enjoyable read full of anecdotes and scientific tidbits. The book opens with a story set in the 1920s about a tight-knit village community in which everyone believes…