I have recently been working my way through "How I found freedom in an unfree world" by Harry Browne. It's a fantastic book, which I encourage everyone to read regardless of their views.
He does an excellent break down of how people let themselves be held back by these self imposed barriers. Worrying too much about what friends think, looking for approval from the wrong people, only acting within popular trends, etc. I think that perhaps the most important points are the underlying reasons why people do this.
This book really resonates with me, because I have always been very independent minded. There were times where I wondered if something was wrong with me, because I had no interest in just blindly "following the herd".
As I mentioned via Facebook recently, if there's anything that my passion for politics and philosophy has taught me, it's that independent, critical thinking is extremely rare.
We're all a mix of rational and irrational beliefs. Nobody is completely unbiased. However, I think it's a question of acknowledging your own biases and prejudices.
The roots of my anti-conformist mindset
As a little kid, I was extremely shy. I had low self esteem mainly because I was too hard on myself , and tried to hold myself against some kind of ideal standard.
Since I was shy, I tended to spend more time around my parents and other older people, than children my own age. This caused me to mature faster, which I feel further distanced me from my peers.
(The funny thing is that children spending time more time around adults actually was how it used to be through the vast majority of history. That's why people matured faster, and adulthood used to start between thirteen to sixteen. The concept of young adults in their early twenties needing to be shielded from different belief systems would have been unthinkable.)
Although it seemed unnatural at the time, I don't regret it. I feel that my parents instilled a strong curiosity and love of learning, which the school system only seemed to quash.
Towards adulthood
The thing with me, was I always realized what bullshit high school really was. Just by general observation, and what older people told me.
In my experience, the only people who cling to that time as "the best years of their lives" are people who peak in those years, and don't do anything meaningful afterwards. Being the best saxophone player in a band with three or four of them isn't really a big deal in the grander scheme of things.
Life is what you make it. Those years are only the best if you can't think beyond looking through validation from partying, being a local sports hero, and being popular among a group of teenagers.
The funny is that they tell you "don't worry what others think, just be yourself".. And yet almost nobody actually follows that advice. It's even worse when teachers try to suck up to the popular kids to win their approval.
I'm sorry, but as thirty something year old, do you really need the social approval of a teenager to make you feel accomplished?
It all disgusted me. To this day, I have almost zero interest in sports because I just heard about them nonstop. I think that people who obsess over sports past high school are trying to vicariously live their lives through watching these athletes.
That's not to say there's anything wrong with being interested in sports; my Dad, grandfather and several intellectuals I admire are. The difference is that they have numerous other interests and fields of knowledge as well.
I wasn't interested in smoking weed or experimenting with drugs, and I couldn't find any entertainment in the the immature bathroom and sexual humor that surrounded me.
It felt like a prison, and I wanted out.
In retrospect..
I think that perhaps in retrospect, it wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time. It just wasn't my kind of environment.
I was often told "enjoy these years, before long you will be out in the real world and have responsibilities."
I don't see it that way though. Yes, I have more responsibilities than I used to, but I also have a lot more freedom. And I'm willing to pay the price of some responsibility for that.
My first career
I wrote a previous blog about this topic awhile back, so I won't go too long about it here.
Why I quit cooking
I think that one of the reasons that cooking wasn't the right career for me, is that I'm not good with blind obedience.
I have to know why I'm doing something. That, and I can't deal with the whole "it doesn't matter who messed it up, we're all part of this" rule that permeates most kitchens. I find that this is how so much slips through the cracks.
Conformity in politics, and the importance of self knowledge
My belief system is certainly a minority where I live. There is an anarcho-capitalist meetup group, but they're a minuscule percentage of the population.
My beliefs make perfect sense to me. I feel that they are logically consistent, moral, and forward thinking. And believe it or not, there are many historical cases of the sort of ideas that I espouse working successfully.
It took me some time to arrive at these beliefs. As most people know, New York City is a far left, Democrat stronghold.
Talk about conformity.. I infer from talking to many people here, why this viewpoint is so dominant. The main reason I've concluded, is that it's trendy, and it's "what most people are doing".
I used to be one of those people who got all their news from people like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. I realize now how absurd that was.
That's not to say that they're not talented, and right in some areas. In fact, I admire Colbert's ability to do satire almost flawlessly.
I find that there's thing this thing in left wing culture (particularly here in NYC!) where you fall into this trap of thinking along the lines of:
"My friends believe this. The people I like in the media believe this. I love guys like John Oliver and Colbert, and they expose Fox for how biased it is. I must be so right about everything, that I shouldn't bother to look into opposing viewpoints. Conservatives and libertarians are just idiots, religious nuts, rednecks, etc."
(This is the mindset that I used to hold by the way.)
This is a blog I wrote talking about how my views changed over time for any of those interested.
Finishing thoughts
Even if you don't agree 100% with everything that I say, (which I don't expect anyone to) at least consider these points:
- There's a quote from Mark Twain that I really like:
Ask yourself.. Are your views and tastes determined by internal judgements or popular sentiment?
- Anyone who uses "my friends are doing it" or "lots of people are doing it" loses all credibility instantly in my mind.
These are logical fallacies. The former is a variety of "blood is thicker than water". It assumes that someone is right just because they're a friend or family member... That would only be the case if those people were right 100% of the time, which isn't true of anyone.
The second is the "appeal to popularity" or "argumentum ad populum". It assumes that the general population is always right.
Intuitively, the seems right but it's not. Many of the beliefs that were commonly held in the past have been debunked. "Everyone knew" that the world was flat, that leeches cured sickness, that women didn't deserve equal rights, that the Earth was the center of the universe, that slavery was necessary...
You get the point.
Popularity doesn't prove or disprove something.
- Nobody who just blindly followed the herd ever accomplished anything notable.
Consider how many people have ever lived. And how many of them we actually hear about today.
I even read a statistic recently, which stated that only one out of a thousand people will be talked about within fifty years after their death by anyone other than immediate friends and family.
Anyone who brought about a major change usually faced a ton of criticism in the process. Socrates was forced to commit suicide for what he said.
When Albert Einstein published his "General Theory of Relativity", one hundred and fifty physicists wrote letters opposing it. This was because it didn't "fit the views of the time".
Einstein argued against this saying that if one person could disprove his work, why were the other one hundred and forty nine required?
And just earlier this year, gravitational waves studied in space have proven Dr. Einstein's theory correct.
- Ask yourself why you conform, or at least feel the need to.
I feel that advice that they give us when we're little of:
"Don't worry what others think, just be yourself" is incomplete.
The advice should be more along the lines of:
"Don't look for a sense of self worth through approval from people that you have nothing in common with."
As with Harry Browne, I felt truly free once I grasped this.
With people that I really find value in talking to, I'm aggressively extroverted. With people that I don't, I tend to come across as standoffish.
This is not to say that they're bad people.. However, I think that we can agree that if one of the two people doesn't find value in the conversation, it's most likely a waste for both involved.
-Whose approval are you looking to earn?
The real world is not high school. You don't have to conform to fit the approval of a tiny handful of people that you're forced to be with. I feel like this tendency is ingrained in the mind of many young adults.
I've actually known some women who won't watch Star Wars because they're afraid that it will get them made fun of.
If people insult you for something as shallow as having a different taste in movies, are they really people that you should be spending your time around?
You have millions of people that you can potentially be friends with, so why settle?
With the various online dating sites, as well as websites like "Meet-up.com" it's far easier to connect.
I have made several friends from meet-up groups that I have gone to, and met people who invited me to check out other groups too.
I really believe that's the future.
- Don't think in terms of "society"
I was as guilty of this as anyone, but I'm not anymore.
There is no monolithic entity called "society". We're not the Borgs from Star Trek, with a Hive Mind that we have to obey.
When people say "society", they're usually referring to a collection of different people. Those people all have different goals, viewpoints, and cultures.
I would now like to end with a quote by the late great poet Edward Estlin Cummings who summed it up better than I ever could:
Thank you all for reading! More coming soon.
- STK
No comments:
Post a Comment