they do not want to be excluded."
The speaker claims that most cultures encourage conformity at the expense of individuality,
and as a result most people conform for fear of being excluded. While I find the second prong
of this dual claim well supported overall by empirical evidence, I take exception with the first
prong; aside from the cultures created by certain oppressive political regimes, no culture need
"encourage" its members to conform to prevailing ways of thought and behavior; in fact, all the
evidence shows that cultures attempt to do just the opposite.
As a threshold matter, it is necessary to distinguish between conformity that an oppressive
ruling state imposes on its own culture and conformity in a free democratic society. In the
former case, people are not only encouraged but actually coerced into suppressing individual
personality; and indeed these people are afraid to think and behave differently--but not for fear
of being excluded but rather for fear of punishment and persecution by the state. The modern
Communist and Fascist regimes are fitting examples. With respect to free democratic societies,
it might be tempting to dismiss the speaker’s dual claim out of hand. After all, true democratic
states are predicated on individual freedoms---of choice, speech, expression, religion, and so
forth. Ostensibly, these freedoms serve to promote individuality, even non-conformity, in our
personas, our lifestyles, and our opinions and attitudes.
Yet, one look at any democratic society reveals a high degree of conformity among its
members. Every society has its own bundle of values, customs, and mores which most of its
members share. Admittedly, within any culture springs up various subcultures which try to
distinguish themselves by their own distinct values, customs, and mores. In the U.S., for
instance, African-Americans have developed a distinct dialect, known as Ebonics, and a
distinct body language and attitude which affords them a strong sub-cultural identity of their
own. Yet, the undeniable fact is that humans, given the actual freedom to either conform or not
conform, choose to think and behave in ways similar to most people in their social
group---however we define that group.
Nor is there much empirical evidence of any cultural agenda, either overt or covert, to
encourage conformity in thought and behavior among the members of any culture. To the
contrary, the predominant message in most cultures is that people should cultivate their
individuality. Consider, for example, the enduring and nearly ubiquitous icon of the ragged
individualist, who charts his or her own course, bucks the trend, and achieves notoriety
through individual creativity, imagination, invention, or entrepreneurship. Even our systems ofhigher education seem to encourage individualism by promoting and cultivating critical and
independent thought among its students.
Yet, all the support for forging one’s one unique persona, career, lifestyle, opinions, and
even belief system, turns out to be hype. In the final analysis, most people choose to conform.
And understandably so; after all, it is human nature to distrust, and even shun, others who are
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too different from us. Thus to embrace rugged individualism is to risk becoming an outcast, the
natural consequence of which is to lLmit one’s socioeconomic and career opportunities. This
prospect suffices to quell our yearning to be different; thus the speaker is correct that most of
us resign ourselves to conformity for fear of being left behind by our peers. Admittedly, few
cultures are without rugged individualists----the exceptional artists, inventors, explorers, social
reformers, and entrepreneurs who embrace their autonomy of thought and behavior, then test
their limits. And paradoxically, it is the achievements of these notable non-conformists that are
responsible for most cultural evolution and progress. Yet such notables are few and far
between in what is otherwise a world of insecure, even fearful, cultural conformists.
To sum up, the speaker is correct that most people choose to conform rather than behave
and think in ways that run contrary to their culture’s norms, and that fear of being exduded lies
at the heart of this choice. Yet, no culture need encourage conformity; most humans recognize
that there is safety of numbers, and as a result freely choose conformity over the risks, and
potential rewards, of non-conformity.
Issue 11
"There are two types of laws: just and unjust. Every individual in a society has a responsibility
to obey just laws and, even more importantly, to disobey and resist unjust laws."
According to this statement, each person has a duty to not only obey just laws but also disobeyunjust ones. In my view this statement is too extreme, in two respects. First, it wrongly
categorizes any law as either just or unjust; and secondly, it recommends an ineffective and
potentially harmful means of legal reform.
First, whether a law is just or unjust is rarely a straightforward issue. The fairness of any law
depends on one’s personal value system. This is especially true when it comes to personal
freedoms. Consider, for example, the controversial issue of abortion. Individuals with particular
religious beliefs tend to view laws allowing mothers an abortion choice as unjust, while
individuals with other value systems might view such laws as just.
The fairness of a law also depends on one’s personal interest, or stake, in the legal issue at
hand. After all, in a democratic society the chief function of laws is to strike a balance among
competing interests. Consider, for example, a law that regulates the toxic effluents a certain
factory can emit into a nearby river. Such laws are designed chiefly to protect public health. But
complying with the regulation might be costly for the company; the factory might be forced to
lay off employees or shut down altogether, or increase the price of its products to compensate
for the cost of compliance. At stake are the respective interests of the company’s owners,
employees, and customers, as well as the opposing interests of the region’s residents whose
health and safety are impacted. In short, the fairness of the law is subjective, depending
largely on how one’s personal interests are affected by it.
The second fundamental problem with the statement is that disobeying unjust laws often has
the opposite affect of what was intended or hoped for. Most anyone would argue, for instance,
that our federal system of income taxation is unfair in one respect or another. Yet the end result
of widespread disobedience, in this case tax evasion, is to perpetuate the system. Free-riders
only compel the government to maintain tax rates at high levels in order to ensure adequate
revenue for the various programs in its budget.
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Yet another fundamental problem with the statement is that by justifying a violation of one
sort of law we find ourselves on a slippery slope toward sanctioning all types of illegal behavior,
including egregious criminal conduct. Returning to the abortion example mentioned above, a
person strongly opposed to the freedom-of-choice position might maintain that the illegal
blocking of access to an abortion clinic amounts to justifiable disobedience. However, it is a
precariously short leap from this sort of civil disobedience to physical confrontations with clinic
workers, then to the infliction of property damage, then to the bombing of the clinic and
potential murder.
In sum, because the inherent function of our laws is to balance competing interests,
reasonable people with different priorities will always disagree about the fairness of specific