non(conformity)
A follow up

This past week, the holiday edition of the Galleon (remember to buy your copy next Feburary!) has been sporting an article that I wrote entitled non(conformity). Following the second-hand reports of praises from my fellow writers, I am going to go ahead and release this follow up to that article, not only to explain why I wrote it but also so I can open a means of discussion, as apparently I am a hard to find person.  So, without further ado, let us begin.

So, the question must be asked, as it happens, and I will answer. Why is non-conformity important? Why was it necessary for me to write on a subject very few seem to take up? The answer is really simple. I just felt it was necessary to spark up once again the general thoughts of my intellectual forefathers. Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Hawthorne, Dickinson, and all the rest from the time all, in their own ways, advocated non-conformity through their writing in a time where the common man was near bereft of real individualism.  The time that these men and women lived through was a time spattered with social revolution as the seeming struggle between industrial capitalism and its counter socialism took their places in history. So why then, you might ask, was conformity such an issue? To those a little versed in history, the answer might come rather simply. To others, I give my answer.

In that time, the world was moving along (or, to some, ‘progressing’) at an astonishingly fast rate. As a consequence, people in general had to adapt to that rate of change quicker than any other generation before them, for if they did not they would be, presumably, left in a lesser state that the revolution was swiftly deeming as the worst possible form of existence. So, naturally, most people began to take to conformity as a means to stay out of that supposedly terrible existence that we now call poverty, and this could only be helped along by the revolution that would sooner abandon those that refused to conform to the new ways of life rather than help them along.

So, non-conformity then was the counter to conformity, just as socialism was the counter the growing industrial capitalism. That is the way of revolution, no? Indeed, most advocates of non-conformity back then were those people who were in such unique positions that they could truly feel for what the revolution was doing to the common man, but could also speak out against it, and contradict the revolution that demanded compliance. 

But now, though, non-conformity has lost its fire as an issue in our society. And it is the opinion that this writer that that is absolute *#$%@#%, to be entirely frank, as conformity is still a very large issue in our society that, while admittedly not the foremost problem, is highly important for the betterment of this world, even if it does play a small part. If we end conformity where possible, then people will start to question the world they perceived as perfectly fine despite its problems, and they will also see, assuming they keep looking, why this supposedly perfect world is actually in shambles and what caused it. But that is touching on a subject I will not get into in the confines of this article. But, I will leave it up to you the reader voice out what you think about all of this. And if it comes to it, I will not hesitate to reply.