Dark Brown Waffles

I am forever aghast at the societal imposition of norms upon individuals even though I do precisely the same thing myself on an almost daily basis. Ask me, for example, about skinny leg jeans and my head will explode and go rolling down the street. Still, I read with great interest Erik Kain’s brief missive on the issue conformity and stealth variations of non-conformity. 

To be brief: I disagree.

To not be brief: I think Kain and the author he is citing (Robin Hanson) are fundamentally misunderstanding the actions of the people they’re describing as “non-conformists.” They’re not doing this out of ill will; they’re simply assuming their own values onto those individuals without giving sufficient regard to their needs and wants. It’s the same thing we all do when we run up against people who make decisions that we don’t. We strive for a grand explanation of that behavior instead of a much more simple and much more obvious one. Before I go further though, I should mention that my baseline belief is that people make the decisions they want to make, and that those decisions make rational sense to them as individuals, even if the rest of can’t understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. That is applicable here for reasons I’ll discuss.

“I’ve known some very successful people with quite weird ideas,” Hanson writes. “But these folks mostly keep regular schedules of sleep and bathing. Their dress and hairstyles are modest, they show up on time for meetings, and they finish assignments by deadline.”

First, we have a definition of nonconformity being hinted at without being stated explicitly, wherein the term is applied to people who do not sleep at the appropriate hours, who do not bathe on an appropriate basis, who do not maintain modest dress and hairstyles, who show up late for meetings, and who do not finish their work on time. It seems me that it is quite possible that Hanson is speaking about one particular individual, given how broadly some of these categories apply to humanity generally. Surely there are plenty of human beings who are simultaneously clean and yet awake at odd hours. Surely there are plenty of human beings who are simultaneously neatly presented but perpetually five minutes late. 

“When some folks go out of their way to show off their defiance and rebellion,” Hanson continues, “others go out of their way to publicly squash such rebellion, to assert their dominance. But if you are not overtly rebellious, you can get away with a lot of abstract idea rebellion — few folks will even notice such deviations, and fewer still will care.”

Why would we assume that the individual showing off their defiance and rebellion is actually prioritizing idea rebellion? What is that conclusion based on? Because it seems to me that the person with pink hair may be less interested in idea rebellion than they are in having pink hair. 

From that only tenuously established baseline - wherein the rebellious person isn’t allowed to speak for themselves but rather has their motivations established for them by third parties - we have Kain’s commentary:

The risk with making your rebellion too extroverted is that you trade one status quo for another. Your outward rebellion now has to conform to a particular group you are now affiliating yourself with. You join a tribe – and you run the risk of accepting all the group-think of the tribe in question. See again, e.g., college.

The baseline assumption of all of this is there in the first sentence: “The risk with making your rebellion…” Because obviously, having pink hair is evidence of rebellion as opposed to merely an expression of individual interests and affectations, ones that we all have in some form or another. Thus, it cannot simply be that the person with pink hair likes having pink hair; it has to instead be a revolutionary act intended for third parties. 

Here is a practical example: I like shaving my head. Not all of the time, but occasionally. This infuriates my mother, despite the fact that I am now in my 30’s, because she believes I look better with longer hair. That is parenting at work. But it is never simply enough for me to tell her, “Hey Mom, I like having a shaved head.” She is forever convinced that I am attempting to send some message out to the world at large: about my politics, about my emotions, about something else unknown. It can’t just be that I like it. 

We’re seeing the same thing at work in these two articles. They’re dismissing one of the most obvious explanations for one of the most complex, and they’re simultaneously assuming their own standards onto third parties whose own priorities they never bother to account for. In essence, they’re saying, “If I had pink hair, it would be because I wanted to send a message, thus, because that young woman has pink hair, she’s trying to send a message.” 

Back to Hanson:

So, ask yourself, do you want to look like a rebel, or do you want to be a rebel?

Respectfully, what if the answer is neither? What if the answer is something as simply as the *act of alleged rebellion* is actually just an expression of what the individual likes? Perhaps - instead of making sweeping generalizations about people assumed to be nonconformists - it makes more sense to assume that those people who seem to be different are doing exactly what we all are: what we like.