"The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain." Colin Wilson was a prominent philosopher and his quote has the view that sometimes you just have to let life take its course and there is nothing else you can do about it. I would agree with his views and I have witnessed how others handle certain situations. The one thing I had witnessed the most was that people tend to not try and fix something that has already taken place, I feel as humans we tend to try and forget what happens and learn to live with the situation. The definition of a conformist is a person who conforms to accepted behavior or established practices. My point being that not only do we experience it, but also in movies when a tragedy occurs the characaters of that movie have to learn how to cope with life. I have also …show more content…
I have moved more times then most people and in a way I feel that has helped me. I learned to just live with it and when that every 2 years was up I would always expect the "its time to move talk" I never tried to question or change anything in hopes that we weren't ever just gonna pack up and move once again. I learned to live with the fact that I wasn't going to stay in one place for the rest of my life and I learned to accept it. I feel that's what Wilson was trying to get at with his quote that lifes gonna throw you curve balls and that people are just going to have to deal with it there's no reason to mope about it it happened you can't change the fact that something happened you just learn to live with it. I compared to like a man losing his hand it happened you can't go back in time to prevent it from happening the damage is done and you just have to learn to live with the fact that you're hand was chopped
Conformist is defined by an individual that follows the rules of society. They maintain the “right” way to succeed and work hard to reach those goals. Albert is the greatest example of a conformist from the book. Albert is dedicated to researching the condom usage among prostitutes but does so in the right manner. After being turned down a time or two, she finally got the opportunity to advance her knowledge. Instead of choosing deviant acts in order to obtain the information she was looking for, her patience, motivation, and hard work paid off in the end.
It has been said that the grass is always greener on the other side. Being excited about the newness and challenges of a new place may not enable it to stay green for a lifetime, but the new place is a great place to spend the next four years. So even though I lived my whole high school life in one city where there were no actual problems, it still was time for me to move where there were new experiences.
...ther, and nearly kills an innocent woman. In a broader perspective, conformity can leave people walking aimlessly down the beaten path with no real direction except conformity, doomed to live yet another meaningless life in a society based on archaic principles.
In society, it's difficult to go against the norm. Individuals are compelled to act a specific way, or look a specific way in order to be accepted. For instance, teenagers may encounter pressure from their peers to partake in specific exercises that may not be moral, since they feel the need to fit in. This weight of conformity isn't just present in reality; it can be found in literature as well. The story "St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell depicts that in order to conform to society, individuals abandon their selflessness and compassion and become selfish and apathetic.
So far, conformity has been discussed in terms of group identification and social roles. However, individuals also tend to change prior beliefs to seek group acceptance. Asch (1951) investigated the effect of group pressure on conformity by asking participants to make a line judgment with seven confederates that gave the same obviously incorrect answer. Yet, 37% of participants conformed by giving the incorrect majority answer, whereas in the absence of group pressure, less than 1% of participants conformed (Asch, 1951). There are implications on normative influence as individuals, despite knowing the majority opinion was incorrect, may conform to avoid social punishment (Breckler et al., 2005). However, Turner and colleagues (1987) argued
Conformist personalities can be good, nebulous, and super dangerous for the world. Conformist personalities are a type of neuroticism personality. Neuroticism is characterized by fear, anxiety, bipolar disorder, manic episodes, holding disorder, jealousy, loneliness, severe depression, and
Many folks go their whole lives without having to move. For them it is easy; they know the same people, have loads of friends, and never have to move away from their families. As with me, I was in a different situation. I grew up my entire life, all eighteen years of it, in a small town called Yorktown, Virginia. In my attempt to reach out for a better life style, my girlfriend and I decided we were going to move to Shreveport, Louisiana. Through this course of action, I realized that not two places in this country are exactly alike. I struggled with things at first, but I found some comforts of home here as well.
The day I moved away, a lot of things were going through my young mind. As I took my last look at my home, I remembered all the fun times I had with my family and friends through out my life. Now I was moving 800 miles away from all of that with no insight on what lied ahead for me. As my family and I drove away from our Michigan home, I looked out the window wondering what Virginia would be, and what my friends were doing. A lot of things were going through my mind at the time. At the time my main worry was if I would make any friends, and how I would adjust to everything. During the whole drive down, my mother would often let me know that everything would be all right and I would like it. Trying to be strong and hold back my tears, I just shook my head no, wondering why we had to move so far away. Life would be different for me and I knew it would.
While trying to break the movie theater norm, it was difficult for me to pick movies with a different variety of people and movies that were a little older so less people would be attending them. I also had a little trouble when it came to answering the phone and waiting for the other person to talk first. The problem with this one was that I had to wait for people to actually call me, which doesn't happen that often in this day and age anymore. To conclude, these social norms forced people to be in uncomfortable situations and make a decision as to how they would react to it.
Conformity can be useful when in unfamiliar surroundings or activities. Several examples make their appearance everyday like dancing. Dancing is a fun activity, but when it’s unclear what kind of dancing to do. What happens then? It’s in everyone’s best interest to mimic the people who know what they’re doing to avoid embarrassment. In some way or another, everyone has done it throughout their life but it is really handy in the right
Colin Wilson says everyone is a conformist. Are we all conformists? “The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in rain.” Colin Wilson. Is the average man and woman a conformist, acting like cows until the cowboys come? Sitting in the rain, is sort of a deep and insightful action, in my opinion. According to the quote the average person is a stoic. What does the word stoic mean? A stoic is, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a person who accepts what happens without complaining or showing emotion or one apparently or professedly indifferent to pleasure or pain. So the average man is a stoic; someone who is indifferent to pleasure or pain. He really has a pessimistic view of the
Conformity is defined as a change in behavior or belief to accord with others. (Meyers 170) What other people do and say can gradually influence others to deviate from ones beliefs and conform to others. One of the most famous documented studies to better illustrate this was a procedure performed by social psychologist, Solomon Asch.
In every society, there is conformity and nonconformity, although we may not notice it. Conformity is when someone is doing the same thing as others because they do not want to be the only one doing differently. Example, if there was a whole class raising their hands would you want to be the only one with your hand down, no so you would raise it with the rest of the class to not look like you don't know anything. This is called social pressures it when a large group is doing something and you're the only one not then you want to be doing whatever that large group is doing.
Though conformity is a humane feeling, many examples of conformity going wrong can be found throughout history. For example, multiple Germans conformed to follow Nazism and prosecuted millions of innocent Jews. Southern whites conformed to segregate thousands of African-Americans. By looking at multiple sources of literature, one can see conformity becomes unacceptable when innocent people are hurt and/or killed and affects the way one thinks or acts.
Ever since our minds were old enough to comprehend three syllable words, we've been told to be original. Originality by definition means the ability to think independently or creatively. Such a simple task it seems but so many of us find it extremely difficult to fulfill. Staying true to yourself and embracing your individuality isn't a task or concept all will grasp. To be yourself means to embrace and acknowledge that no one else in this universe is just like you and that conforming to their standards will have to take a backseat to your happiness. Only the strong minded can do this and this revelation won't take a day or even a year, but it will embark you on a lifelong journey.