The Virtues of Conformity

The idea of conformity has been pressing on my mind as of late, due to a recent conversation I had with a business executive. She had consented to let me train her and some of her peers ‘the Marine Way’ (and--self-aggrandizement warning--you can check it out here), and was nice enough to say that it was really good training.

I don’t know if she was being sincere, as we had engineered the event to make her cold, wet, tired, and hungry and then forced life-or-death decisions on her and finally berated her for the poor decisions she made, but well. Her professor for this part of the Executive MBA degree she was pursuing had offered it as part of his Ethics class, and she had, after all, volunteered.

And it was satisfying to see civilians who were cold, wet, tired and hungry (on a holiday weekend). For once.

But she seemed quite enthused about what happened to her. And as we spoke, she commented to the effect that she was surprised that an organization as rigid as the Marine Corps could produce independent-minded thinkers, or that individual Marines would seem so comfortable speaking their mind to each other (especially when rank was involved).

I answered her with my thoughts at the time. I told her that, in my experience Marines were more genuinely and truly themselves than people in other groups. That I thought the reason had to do precisely with the enforced conformity and rigidity, because those qualities suppress the individual’s ability to self-express on the superficial level. You know, with the brand of their clothes, or the style of their hair, or their hobbies. Once everyone looks the same, and falls under the same expectation, there’s a common language and experience and you immediately meet something closer to the real person when you meet a Marine.

She acted like she had received an epiphany, and told me that she often thought that many of her colleagues did just that--they self-defined with external things, such as their appearance, their tastes, their hobbies--and therefore those people were inauthentic.

Which is topsy-turvy.

I don’t disagree. I don’t mean to turn this into a rant against culture, media, or ‘kids these days’ (though as I age I find it’s increasingly easy to do so). Like many of my peers I have struggled with who I am, wondering why I was so inaccessible to myself. Who is the real me? was a question I had asked--continue to ask--over and over again. It would certainly seem that seeking things I enjoyed or admired might provide a clue to the answer, and so--again, like many of my peers--I spent adolescence and after ‘trying on’ new looks, personalities, life goals, and the like. Whichever ones ‘stuck,’ I reasoned, would be truly me.

Listen to how seductive that is.

There’s some evidence, I’m told, real scientific and psychological evidence, to suggest that such ‘fishing’ for personality traits and values is an essential part of adolescence. And like most of adolescence, it is at its heart quite selfish.

Oh, I’m not denigrating adolescents. A rather recent father myself (whose daughter, thankfully, is still far from that age), I’m beginning to understand how essential selfishness is to a kid’s survival and development. It’s not malicious or thoughtless, really--it’s just natural. It feels natural.  Maybe self-absorption is a better term, maybe that more accurately captures the need for children from toddlers to teenagers to focus on their consistently expanding knowledge, sensations, emotions, and the like. So I’m not saying that adolescents equal selfish. If that’s true at all, then it doesn’t even tell half the story about what adolescence is: the passion, the idealism, the joy at finding such a marvelous, multifaceted, and wonderful world as ours. Seriously.

But one thing that nearly every psychologist says about adolescents is their desire to fit in. And shopping around for something that’s ‘truly you’ is usually more accurately defined as trying to conform to some thing, some value, some culture in which you want to fit in. A teenager dying his hair black and wearing makeup may look weird and stand out, but he’s also fitting in to a specific group. A few weeks later, when he gets a crew cut and tries out for the soccer team, he’s again trying to fit in. Such attempts, whether by teenagers or by adolescent adults who should know better, and who haven’t ‘found themselves’ by their late twenties (I’m one of the latter, I’m afraid, and I’m already 30!), are based on the pervasive and alluring belief that image equals reality, and they are focused entirely on the self.

That’s why they don’t work: we blithely acknowledge that while a soft drink company may imply that drinking their product makes one beautiful and happy and puts one into a life of partying, it isn’t necessarily true; we all too often assume that if we change ourselves to conform to someone who looks to us like he or she is beautiful and happy, we will then become similarly beautiful and happy. Maybe that attribute, or that personality trait, or that job, or that ‘look,’ we say, maybe THAT’S what I’ve been missing all along. Maybe THAT’S truly me!

“What I’ve been missing.” “[What’s] truly me.” Focused on self. It’s really seductive, as I pointed out before. It brings with it the illusion of control (“I can change this”). It indulges the fantasies that prey on all of us, fantasies about being attractive and fulfilled and successful and always having fun. And if phrased as a search for authenticity, well, then it becomes admirable too. How often, readers-in-your-twenties-and-thirties, have you heard your friends say something like, “I’ve just decided to try some things out, to let go, to really explore/experience the world and find myself?” Maybe I’m the only one, but I’ve heard it a lot. I’ve said it a lot. And boy is it admirable. You can’t help but respond with some cocktail of envy and adulation and pride, “good for you! That’s great!”

And they will go off on their own. But to find what? Someone or something else they admire. Why do they admire it? Is there some immutable personality that must be unlocked in each of us? Perhaps. Christianity teaches us that we are all unique and created for love in a unique way. Two children, raised identically, will not be identical. Not even if they are identical twins. But when we start talking about ‘finding ourselves,’ we are looking for things that will inspire us. We are looking for people, and ideas, and values (and yes the superficial things too, such as looks or styles) with which we desire participation and closeness.

Participation and closeness to things means a relationship. All of those things which make up personality--“the set of enduring behavioral and mental traits that distinguish [individual] human beings” (thanks Wikipedia, though I think this originates in the DSM-IV)--are partially (mostly?) forged in and by relationships. We learn basic ideas of self from our parents (actually, we don’t even distinguish ourselves from our parents until we’re several years old). We learn initial values from parents and teachers and peers, and as we develop we continue to expand our number of relationships. I don’t deny that some behavioral and mental traits seem to be ingrained in us from birth, but there’s no doubt that even those supposedly immutable traits are modified by our relationship with people who give us role models, or who mentor us, or who shape and develop those original traits. All of our relationships, good and bad, have affected our personalities, have created a complex layer of emotions and ideas that shape our unconscious responses to stimuli ranging from how we greet a stranger to our behavior in an intimate relationship.

That is why it is foolish, and ultimately selfish, to embark on a solo quest to ‘find oneself.’ Without the relationship one is merely imitating the images he or she sees, and the self-development is essentially superficial. The relationship, the encounter, the challenge of ideas and the emotional investment that makes one care--that causes self-development.

Therefore conformity actually engenders relationships.

Wait, hear me out.

For people concerned with ‘finding themselves,’ all of those superficial distinguishers--the looks, the hobbies, the certain friends, the political positions, the opinions--those things are actually defense mechanisms. They are meant to declare, like the ‘emo’ teenager, I’m this way, and you’re not. They are meant to inhibit relationships, except with a select group of people who are deemed ‘worthy.’ And though they would say that relationships exist within their clique, they are actually all using each other to convince each other that they are ‘truly themselves.’ More accurately, each one of them is privately trying to believe that individually he or she has become the best version of him- or herself. In other words, they aren’t interested in relationships because they are too busy trying to feel good, on their own, for themselves.

They are brainwashed. They adhere so closely to an idea that they cannot see the beautiful reality of the other complex people around them. They are closed to wonder, because they’ll reject anything new that doesn’t enhance their opinion of themselves.

I feel pity, if that’s the case. I’ve certainly been there before, and it wasn’t because (I hope) I was then or am now a horrible, self-absorbed, malicious, narcissistic person. It was just that I was trying so hard to find my ‘true self’ that I couldn’t see that I was actually retreating into myself. I’m sure Freud would have a field day with me.

Conformity, though--conformity attempts to deny the luxury of outward appearances. It means one must interact with the person, not an impersonal collection of attributes. It means one can’t exist in a pleasant fantasy of self-actualization, half-way in the future; one must be in the present. And what I’ve found in the Marine Corps is that you see everyone’s real personality. What they really think, and want, and care about. That’s because you are personally close to them, and understanding fosters companionship, which is essential to teamwork.

Relationships create roles. We all play roles throughout life--son or daughter, sibling, friend, confidant, supporter, lover, taker, hero, employee, manager, customer, server, husband or wife, mother or father. Roles can change, if we want them to, to be sure. But roles are also comforting as well. They help us understand how to relate to others, and guide our behavior. We understand it’s inappropriate for a child to back-talk to a parent because we understand each of their roles in that relationship. The rigid rank structure of the military creates pre-defined roles, which also engenders relationships.

Conformity is such a bad word in today’s popular media. It carries connotations of stupidity cowardice, and contempt. ‘Be yourself!’ we are exhorted in songs, on billboards, on talk shows and late-night radio. Well, yes, I say, but ‘self’ is developed in relationship with others. That requires some conformity--at least a conformity to manners, if the relationship is to be friendly. In fact, the more I conform and develop a common visible connection between myself and another, the more I can understand and appreciate (for good or for bad) those behavioral and mental traits that constitute personality.

I suggest that conformity might require you to change the way you look, but it doesn’t change you. It actually lets your self out of its cage of appearances to encounter the world.

So, I told this lady. The conformity to which we submit as Marines actually brings us closer personally, and fosters a community. In a platoon, all are unbearably, undeniably individual. With just a look, or an epithet, or a terse opinion (respectfully voiced from lower ranks), one individual may change the course of the whole unit because there exists common respect and reliance. That’s what enables Marines to make good decisions in tough situations. In that sort of community, someone who is putting on a show, adopting superficial changes, that person is rejected. It’s a little bit like a family, actually, but then families conform to each other too.

Paradoxically, conformity seems to be (in some way) the key to individuality.

And except for the odd sociopath, individuality is a wonderful thing, because out of it springs true love, community, creativity, and knowledge (and probably a lot of other things that elude me now)--it produces all the things that make life worthwhile. But first you must have good relationships, and despite the negative connotations, good relationships mean conformity.