Should we conform? Someone's musings on this

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Some of the auties I know really want to conform (some can, some can't) and others don't want to (but feel very pressured to). I've always been in the second group. I found this article quite refreshing because it's not often that someone questions the unwritten command of conformity.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/ ... d=11416255

Personally I detest the word "conform."

I don't feel we should actively seek to "conform," in a slave-like manner, to "greater world" standards.

By the same token, I don't believe it is useful to actively seek "not" to conform.

I believe in picking and choosing when to conform, and when not to conform.

Conforming is very hard when it is unnatural for you to do so.
It not only can cause depression, but it can appear as insincere and fake.

It is also very exhausting to be something that doesn't come natural to you.

Only conform when you feel you need to fit in fully.

If you go to work in a corporate environment, conforming to the corporate culture is very important. If you don't conform, you will basically be considered rather marginal.

I don't get why so many people say that conformity makes life easier. In my experience, it makes life harder. It puts stress on me to conform to social norms when the logical part of the brain tells me that doing so isn't a good idea.

Might be because most people are not logical thinkers.

conforming is submission

In the work place, meekness keeps you your job. No neurons for that quality.

This is good advice. Sometimes you have to and sometimes you don't have to. Knowing the difference is tough, but a good skill to learn.

I think of it not as conforming but as "performing." I am putting on a show of ritualized words, voice tone, and body language, a kabuki or rather Peking Opera for others' benefit. (Hey, I'm a Chinese history buff living in Japan -- these are my metaphors, people.)

Anyway, if that's what the situation demands, then I can try to perform for them. But a key to corporate culture, which NTs do, too, is learning how to hide away so you can do real work without others getting in the way. There are strategies to limit the amount of time you need to perform most places. Some places won't let you, though, and there you just have to get out.

I conform to the extent I want to and it is of benefit to me in the short/long term as the case may be (so yes, there is some conscious thinking about it that goes on, on my part).

I wasn't always like that however - used to conform quite a bit, usually out of fear.

Got past that <crap> however, and now largely do my own thing.

THIS.

Some of the time, conformity is a good thing. It saves time, and trouble, and discomfort, and makes things work. I will conform to the traffic laws. I will conform my vocabulary and accent to match that of the people I'm talking to. I will smile and nod in political discussions. I will not get opinionated with the preschool moms. I will smile and nod when my MIL speaks. I will not opine about "getting your feelings out of a bottle" when my relatives are getting drunk and playing with prescription meds.

Some of the time, conformity is a bad thing.

"Oh, you want to buy the falling-down fishing cabin that is $20,000 above where we set the top of our price range?? And your parents think it's a great idea?? OK, Honey!!" I'm just grateful that ALL we lost was every penny we put into it-- at least we were able to sell it for enough to cover the balance of the mortgage!!

"Oh, I'm sick of having no one to hang around with. Cousin wants me to steal wine, cigarettes, and marijuana from my dad and spend all my allowance on gasoline and nail polish. She wants me to hang around with people I know are dangerous and ride down the road passing a bong. If I do this stuff, she'll let me hang around with her. Well, hell, it's not like I've had any success being myself..." BAD DECISION!! BAD DECISION!!

"Oh, I really don't think Daddy should be up that holler alone trying to take care of his freshly crippled wife. If I don't help him, nobody will. But I'm the only one who thinks I should do it, so I must be wrong. I'll probably get thrown out if I put my foot down and go to him, so I'm going to sit here in my house and call him half a dozen times a day and worry myself sick." Yeah, I'll be living with the consequences of THAT one for the rest of my life.

"Oh, gee, I haven't been able to get ahold of him for two [three, four, five, six] days. But everyone says he's probably just busy. FIL says he's probably mad at me and avoiding me because I'm stupid. Yeah, I guess I am stupid. Can't blame him for not wanting to talk to me. He probably wishes I'd go away. I should make some cookies and stop being autistic..." Except, of course, that he was dead and rotting in his bed, and nobody gave a s**t but an old stroke patient with half a brain and a high-functioning autistic (two people that no one is going to listen to, ever).

Yeah, conformity. SO GLAD I DID THAT. [/sarcasm]

It's been interesting to me how conformist/herd behaviour has created huge real estate bubbles here. People rush in to buy because they are told that other people are buying, the market "will only go up and up forever", (a lie) and so they rush in lemming-like (scared of "missing out") and the bubble gets bigger and bigger and then poof! It bursts and prices come tumbling down, they find that they are then in negative equity (the property is worth less than their borrowings to buy it) and they are worse off than ever. No matter how often this happens, people don't seem to learn the inherent lesson - don't believe the hype, don't run with the crowd on this..

I'm not one of the lemmings. With experience I did learn to buy at the bottom of the market and sell at the top. It made more sense to me - as a non-conformist... of course you have to judge when the market is at the bottom, but many of us have great analytic and pattern detection skills which can be applied to that. In real estate, never follow the crowd is a good thing in my experience..

I agree with Kraftiekortie and BuyersBeware.

A certain level of conformity is necessary to function in our society but it is also important that we don't do so to the point where we lose ourselves for the sake of fitting in.

The real estate bubbles in the UK and Canada will pop soon as well, not to mention China.
Trillions will be lost. The Too-Big-To-Fail banks will fail. The bail-ins will ensue. The TBTF banks will be made whole by the bail-ins. When people have their accounts emptied by TPTB they will be stunned. Even though it is plain to see.

Yes, there are plenty of historical precedents for all of those events.

It depends on your environment and your goals in life. Sometimes it can be about survival, (not necessarily in a life/death way) for example, I think most people conform in the work environment, it's required to mantain an income or conforming lessens the likelihood of being the Managers/H.R.s obvious choice for redundancy when the company engages in cut backs.
Conforming is an individual standard, the limits should be set so that the persons health and wellbeing is not jeopardised.
-Self care through awareness of strengths, potential areas for growth and limitations.