What is conformism. Dictionary defines it as “willingness to conform”, but I think a better definition of conformism would be the want, desire to conform (as everyone are willing to conform when given the right motivation). This is not a complete definition either, because in order to have conformism you have to have something to confront to i.e. an established way of doing things which in turns entails that there must be an an establishment i.e. a group of people who determine what’s right and wrong.
The two things are very interrelated - you cannot have conformists without having establishment and you cannot have establishment without having conformists.
I think that it is unquestionable that the dream of every aspiring conformist would be for the, to become the establishment, to be the person who sets the agenda. Only then would a conformist be who they want to be i.e. conformists are people are ready to change the whole world, just so they can be who they want to be while remaining conformists.
No need for that. Just don’t be conformists. Conformity is not the way.
If you’re not a socialist before you’re twenty-five, you have no heart; if you are a socialist after twenty-five, you have no head. – anonymous
I am young enough that there are still people telling me that they too were anarchists/artists/communists/optimists when they were my age, but then they “matured”. And when they do that, I always think about what does the word “maturity” mean. Traditionally, it obviously means responsibility, taking care for yourself and other people. But, apparently, in today’s society it also means conformism. The logic goes like this, I think: in order to take care of your family you need money and in order to obtain money you have to quit “fooling around”, a viewpoint that is captured well in the quote I began the text with. But implicit in this quote is that thoughts that differ from the status quo aren’t “serious”, that they are just “dreams”. What the quote actually says is something like: “since birth, you have a natural capacity to dream, and you need to learn how to suppress that capacity i.e. you need to lose faith” (that’s exactly what being a conservative means, if you think about it, it means, stop believing a better future is possible and instead focus on changing as little as possible).
So, this is how the concept of maturity is used a tool for political/societal control:
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The meaning of “mature” is shifted. It no longer means “being responsible”. Instead it means “being faithless”, for example, people who exhibit any quality that signifies they have any faith left, such as a sense of humor, practicing arts, sports, having rich social life, or even disinterested in material wealth, are perceived as “immature”, regardless of how good they are taking care of their responsibilities.
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At the same time, we have a cult of this so called maturity. Immaturity is no longer seen as a normal stage of life that everyone goes through, each at their own pace. Instead, the word “immature” is routinely used as an insult, even towards children, who are also constantly told to “Grow up!”, (the disappearance of childhood being a natural response to this). It’s like a best thing that a person can do is mature as much and as fast as possible (and that it’s better for a person to be bad, mean, stupid etc. than “immature”).
A couple of points on this:
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People who use that quote that if you aren’t into communism as a youth you have no heart, but if you don’t later drop it when you get older you have no brain, seem like they are so desperate over the fact that they have lost their hearts that they made up the second part to soothe themselves.
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I find all this ridiculous, and I don’t even know how those “mature” people even find the will to live such a life.
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Obviously a better world is possible, it’s always possible to be better. And nobody has any grounds to say anything else.
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Even if a better world wasn’t possible, I would continue living my life as if it’s possible, simply because there is no point in living any other way, there is no point in living as a pet and there is no point in raising children to live the same way
When I am done with art anarchism and optimism I won’t be old, I’d be dead, at least mentally.
People claim that that you cannot have an anarchist organization, as “anarchist organization” is an oxymoron, and anarchism by definition rejects any form of organization.
That’s not true — anarchism rejects authority. And you can have organizations without authority. You don’t have to have someone be the boss to have an organization.
An organization can be just a bunch of people who decide to do something together.
People set the agenda
A given non-authoritarian organizations exist because a given number of people decided to participate. And it is these people, who determine the agenda of the organization.
Hierarchy constantly changes
It is subtle, but you can also have non-authoritarian hierarchies as well — whenever there is some task at hand, the person most qualified to do it becomes the boss and the rest of the people follow them.
Hierarchy changes constantly based on the project at hand e.g. when we are doing activity A, the person who is best at A is “the boss”, when we are doing “B” the same person might be at the bottom of the pyramid.
The cult of personality
In authoritarian organizations, the same people are in charge all the time. In order to make sense of that, to explain why is it the case to ourselves and to others, we portray these people as the ones who are best at everything. This is just a cult of personality. The belief that there are such people, that people are divided to leaders and non-leaders (a-la Ayn Rand) is probably the reason why authoritarian organizations exist in the first place. Dismantle this belief, this concept, and all that I said would make sense immediately.
I was thinking that Plato allegedly said that ignorance is the only sin and if it’s possible that he said that, since the concept of a sin came later in history and I suddenly realized that the concept of a sin is pure BS Like “There is this thing that you would really like to do but you should not do it because it is wrong (and God will punish you), so you should never ever do it and you should beat yourself (literary) when you go as far as to think about it.”
That’s like saying “you’re guilty until proven innocent, and you will never be innocent. All you can do is pray to us to relieve your pain.”
The doctrine of the world’s major religion is just totalitarian propaganda, thinly disguised as advice/prophecy.
Like, if you take the fable about Adam and Eve and the apple. What does the apple represent? Sex? Knowledge? Or most probably just opposition to authority. Not clear what was God’s purpose with putting the tree there. All we understand is that if we do wrong we will be punished and we already did wrong…
Intelligence is just the practice of thinking freely about something, (without accepting any kind of external dogma as a-priori true.) Nobody can ever teach you to be intelligent.
99 percent of being intelligent is realizing that all those fucktards who give you advice like “Don’t marry” or “Go study this and that” are just fucktards who don’t have anything better to do and are using you as a means to raise their self esteem m by having people listening to them.
Most people recognize some of these people as fucktards, but few recognize and are able to break free from all of them.
