"'Academics, like teenagers, sometimes don’t have any sense regarding the degree to which they are conformists.'So says Thomas Bouchard, the Minnesota psychologist known for his study of twins raised apart, in a retirement interview with Constance Holden in the journal Science.
Journalists, of course, are conformists too. So are most other professions. There’s a powerful human urge to belong inside the group, to think like the majority, to lick the boss’s shoes, and to win the group’s approval by trashing dissenters.
The strength of this urge to conform can silence even those who have good reason to think the majority is wrong."
-- Nicholas Wade, by way of Glenn Reynolds, who has finally run across one point made repeatedly on this blog (Glenn didn't think of it himself - though I've charged him with it - because, with all his power, when did he ever rock the boat?) I think this should be a major topic of discussion in American society - because it's a major aspect of it's post-60s cultism - maybe even taken up by me (and because they're so smart) Panda Bear, Ann Althouse, and the Instapundit?
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying, AMR, I'm trying.
ReplyDeleteBut how do you do that when the whole world, apparently, has gone insane?
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
ReplyDelete"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit."
ReplyDeleteJesus, man, I wish you guys would stop with this bullshit. People have different temperaments - even The Seven Dwarfs had "Grumpy - and not to accept that is a crime against our humanity. Not everybody wants to be some semi-Buddhist peace-loving chump (I know I don't) some men are built for speed, for action, for shaking up the status quo. That's to be admired, not squashed. If you're good at being a consensus-maker, more power to you (I don't knock it if you're good at it) but this insistence that the only state for man to be happy is as a doormouse is nonsense:
It's never been in my nature and it'll never be something I strive for.
I come from a place where such people get squashed - especially if they're arrogant about it - which is all I hear when people say it: unwarranted arrogance.