Why People Do Not Conform

Each day people are impacted thousands of times by outside influences. These influences lie in advertisements, peers, lectures, books, newspapers, et al. Progressive political activist, Jim Hightower, once said, “The opposite of courage is not cowardice- it’s conformity; even a dead fish can go with the flow.” This man was one who paved his own way, whether or not someone agrees with his political views, he did not conform. To not conform means many things to different people; it can be in thought process or in actions. First off, conformity means something different to each individual. The people wearing tails and dyeing their hair blue think they’re avoiding conforming; as do people waving confederate flags and shouting racial slurs. They strive so hard not fall under the “ways of society,” but in trying so hard to do so, it backfires. Both stereotypes of people conform subconsciously. By trying to avoid the high school stereotypes, they create their own. The only way to avoid conformity is to always and completely think for oneself, without being influenced by outside sources.

The most prominent example of this is parents’ political or social views trickling down to their children. Rather than teaching their children to think for themselves, the children are ingrained with the same ideology as their parents. This can be seen through political views, and also how the children may view others. Racism is bread at an incredibly young age. As a small child, children only know what their parents teach them. This is an amazing, but also a dangerous thing. Some adults have a vastly skewed idea of what it means to be a good person; this translates to their parenting and into the way their kids act. Conformity, whether the kids are too young to realize it or not, appears