I really don't care if you want to live an limited life experience and assume it is the only possible way of life. But when you start telling other people that they must live like you want them to because they want to live in the same area you do is just too much to take. It doesn't truly affect you other than you have to accept something you don't agree.
> And there it is! We only want ourselves to be comfy, but nobody cares what effect it has on anyone else. Just as long as everyone conforms to your way of thinking.
Can you please lower the rhetorical temperature?
> But when you start telling other people that they must live like you want them to because they want to live in the same area you do is just too much to take.
There's plenty of cultural orthodoxy in cities as well, it's probably just more agreeable to you.
What are you referring to? In large cities, you can think and do what you want and nobody will much care or notice unless you force them to.
I do care what effect it has on others. I want say 80% of people to be comfy. Often that involves imposing norms on the other 20%. There’s lots of norms that (1) a majority like and benefit from that (2) break down if you don’t enforce them on the minority.
Unrestricted individual choice can affect others by changing market conditions and creating what in economic terms you’d call a race to the bottom. That’s the logic behind OSHA regulations and the minimum wage, for example. You can apply the same logic to social and cultural issues.
And it's completely unnecessary - in fact, people do very well living in freedom, as you can see in most places (by population) in the free world. No societies have been more successful, and it's not close.
You’ve got the causation backward. Freedom from social conformity is a luxury wealthy societies can afford. Western countries, including America, became rich at a time when they were still quite rigidly conformist. And some of the most conformist, such as Puritan New England were the most prosperous.
It’s also worth observing that those same societies are now literally dying out. Post-Christian Europe literally has to import people from societies with rigid social norms—among others, strong social pressures to start families and raise children—to take care of their elderly.
(I have plenty of criticism of racism and other discrimination in the US. It certainly isn't ok and I am going to help fix those problems.)
> Post-Christian Europe literally has to import people from societies with rigid social norms—among others, strong social pressures to start families and raise children—to take care of their elderly.
They need immigration in that respect (and so does the US) simply because of birth rates.
Immigrants have come from those societies to the US (and certainly parts of Europe) for generations. Some are too old to give up their old ways, understandably, but their children embrace freedom and those are the people of the US today.
And again, do you cede to me the power to make you conform to what I want? Why should anyone cede it to you?
You’re erroneously conflating collective freedom and individual freedom. The US was founded on religious pluralism, which meant different religious groups coming here to be free from persecution back home, usually due to politics. For example, the Puritans left because they believed England was insufficiently committed to the Protestant Reformation. But that didn’t have anything to do with individual freedom within those groups. Many of the groups that came to America, like the Puritans, were regarded as extreme and fundamentalist back home: https://paulspassingthoughts.com/2017/01/17/an-examination-o... (“In 1637, the general court of Massachusetts passed an order forbidding anyone from settling within the colony without first having his orthodoxy approved by the magistrates.”).
> They need immigration in that respect (and so does the US) simply because of birth rates.
What causes the low birth rates in those places and the higher birth rates in the places immigrants are coming from?
> Some are too old to give up their old ways, understandably, but their children embrace freedom and those are the people of the US today.
Sure, the kids become socialized into the culture of individualism—that just means that the society is unsustainable without continuing to import people from those societies with more traditional and conformist culture. Put differently, post-Christian Europe is sustainable only through population arbitrage.
All those people are coming to the US, not vice versa!
Sometimes. But we've also found it necessary to have laws governing road traffic, and pollution, and noise abatement, and fraud, and robbery. That's because humans often focus narrowly on their own desires when making decisions unless they're compelled, under pain of fine or imprisonment (which aren't always effective), to take others' interests into account as well.
It is easy for someone who is fairly close and doesn’t have to adjust much to say that the cost of conformity is worth it for the gain.
The 'rest of us' being people outside the monoculture? Things aren't so good there.
Conformity limits people's freedom, often greatly, often in very fundamental ways. People can't chose their religion, sexual orientation, politics, interests, career, etc. You are free to chose conformity if you like, but the problem is that conformity is forced on others.
But my question remains: why are you this way and why do you think it's a better way to be than the majority? What factors external to the conformist group contributed or influenced you, if any?
For the record, I, too, have fled regions and communities, both physical and virtual, where I was a deviant. I asked myself these questions and I have answers if anyone were to ask. I'm just curious what answers others have come up with, and whether they have ever asked themselves those same questions. I'm also curious if others have found their own answers lacking and how that is handled.
They are overwhelming, brutal, oppressive experiences of millions of people. Not bland, but poison to the people and our society.
> why are you this way and why do you think it's a better way to be than the majority?
I think this majority is non-existent - there is just too much variety. And regardless, I don't care about some 'majority'; I don't make choices for or against them - not in response to them at all. I am what I am, I live the way I want to live, the way that suits me best (which is probably most 'efficient' in many ways, including economically, matching me to resources, needs, etc.). Why would I live any other way? In fact, that attitude puts me in the majority in the US.
The whole argument smacks of another attempt by reactionaries to encroach on the freedom of others, now trying to force conformity to what they want. I'm sure they wouldn't want roles reversed!
Though one who's proved quite hostile to other cultures and practices.
For me conformity has always just been boring and restricting, and I consider it an all around negative. I like to try new things, and I live to experience as much of what life can bring as I can. So I find the idea of artificially restricting ones options on how to dress, sing, what to eat, how to dance, what to make of art, what stories you can tell, how to make love, how to play, how to express yourself, what to talk about, who you can be with, what games are allowed, what you're supposed to do on Sunday morning, etc. just an all around negative. It feels like a choke hold on my life, which is the most precious thing I have, so restrictions on the extent of how much I'm allowed to live and experience seem completely unreasonable and oppressive to me.
But I'm a pretty confident and courageous person, I don't have anxieties, and I enjoy getting out of my comfort zone and trying new things, learning, discovery, are all things I'm drawn too. I know people who aren't like that, have more anxieties, so I never really thought that for them maybe conformity was like a relief, a way to take out a source of stress of the unknown with clear strict rules and conventions that they can rely on.
Restriction of choice can likewise be welfare maximizing. People’s brains aren’t fully developed until 25. Which is remarkable if you think about it. People spend a third of their lives walking around without all their faculties. And even after that most people have trouble making good decisions. Not just dumb people, but nearly everyone. Why are there fat doctors and nurses? Rigid social norms can help people make better decisions, especially the people who need the most help with that. Again, there is a reason individual choice is emphasized almost solely in societies rich enough to afford letting people make mistakes.
So when you say "rest of us" here you're coming from a society that's on the edge of survival?
That's a context I definitely wasn't thinking. I'd assumed based on the conversation we were talking about cities vs small towns in relatively well established countries.
Honestly, I'm not sure I buy your hypothesis though, even if I think of struggling countries, feel you'd have to back it up with more reasoning and data. I don't really see how conformity would help. It still seems to me like it's just an obstacle, all innovation or attempts at change or trying new or different ways are shut down and repressed. If the current way of life isn't yielding the kind of outcome needed to lift them above that edge of survival, continuing to strictly enforce and being against anyone trying to go against it seems counterproductive to me.
I'm not saying you get rid of law and order. But I don't see the benefits of say banning certain type of medicine, foods, dances, music, art, social interactions, love making, natural selection of a mate, methods of trade, methods of construction, etc.
> there is a reason individual choice is emphasized almost solely in societies rich enough to afford letting people make mistakes
I feel you might have the cause and effect reversed. It could just as well be that there is a reason societies that emphasize individual choice are often the ones to become prosperous and rich.
The conformity is kind of the point and makes it better for the rest of us.