Why is conformity so important?

Question

or why is conformity not important

Answer 1

Conformity is an essential ingredient to inclusion into a community, and community is an essential need of most humans.

Very few people are actual non-conformists. Many that are regarded as such are actually conformists, but to standards of a different community.

The judgement one has to make is, what community does one want to belong to?

Answer 2

Conformity is highly overrated. Oh, to be sure, there are certain mores of the society one lives in that will have to be adhered to or at least given lip-service. But to blindly follow the dictates of the popular society? No, this results in a society of dull, obedient slaves, amenable to whomever is cleverest at manipulation. Far better a group of unique individuals capable of independent thought and action, who are yet able to join together to accomplish a task. Their individualistic outlooks may cause some strife, but they will also bring more creativity and freshness to any project they tackle than a complacent, conformed group that will simple wait to be told what to do. Of course, some must be conformists for there to be non-conformists, but it should never be forgotten that those who think outside the box are the ones who discover and rediscover the things that can keep us from stagnating.

Answer 3

It's not important. Conformity is people proving that they don't have a mind of their own. They just follow what other people say they should look like, do, say, and all it is is making a world of clones. If everyone is different, why do so many people dress the same, act the same, say the same thing? I'm so sick of these preppy b itches thinking their tough s hit and thinking they're original when they're really just the same as everyone else.
So, yes, I get a little angry talking about this stuff, but it makes me so mad how everyone is quickly becoming the same. I feel like my life is the search for a non-conformist.

Answer 4

Conformity may be important for the maintenance of smooth operation of human cooperation (through family, society, nation etc.), but it needs to be crossed in order to create anything new..... in the longer run mere maintenance can not continue to serve our ever changing needs... but for creativity, we could have been extinct long ago.

Answer 5

Conformity is NOT important. In fact, it's not desirable. To be obedient to the law of the land, and to be sensitive to others needs/boundries/feelings, etc., is important. But to conform oneself to the expectations of others is not desirable. It cripples one's soul...

Answer 6

well if you ask a philosophical question I guess you get an anthropological answer. Think back to our ancestors as hunter-gatherers. Those that did not conform to the "packs" norms probably would have been shunned.

Answer 7

I saw a concert, thousands sang in unison, "I'm not like everybody else" I still smile, what a lark!

Answer 8

such is the unspoken law of society