What do you think about CONFORMITY in general?

Question

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982)

Answer 1

This quote is from "The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy," which can be found in "The New Left" by Ayn Rand. This article was written in response to "For Three Minutes I Felt Free" by Henry Kamm, printed in the New York Times, in which Kamm wrote about some Soviet citizens were put on trial for protesting their government. Ayn Rand, having grown up in Soviet Russia, praised these individuals for standing for what they believed was right, even though they went against the majority. She wrote:

"There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days—the conviction that ideas matter. In one's youth that conviction is experienced as a self-evident absolute, and one is unable fully to believe that there are people who do not share it. That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters. "

When Rand wrote about the "fashionable non-conformist," she was not talking about these brave individuals. The non-confirmist does not go along with what other people think, but unlike those protestors, they don't stand *for* anything. She wrote:

"While, under dictatorships, young men are giving their lives for the freedom of the mind, it is against the mind- against the "tyranny" of reason and reality—that young thugs are rebelling in America. "

Answer 2

I love Ayn Rand and agree with everything she wrote.

Answer 3

you are a unique individual just like everybody else--t-shirts that say conformity bites are mass produced and selling like hotcakes--no matter how hard you try to avoid conforming, you are secretly blending in with yet another large group of individuals who also think that they are being creative--resistance is futile, you will be assimilated