The Conformity Trap

We can escape, we can escape, we can escape...

Conformity Trap

We Can Escape. . .

Most of us are dragged headlong into the cultural currents of conformity. Like it or not. We do what’s necessary to swim in the direction of acceptance and approval. 

Failing careful attention we are overwhelmed by a constellation of imposed assumptions. Assumptions harden into beliefs. Beliefs, widely held, dictating what’s best for us. 

Eventually we are imprisoned by what we come to believe. We adapt to prison life, rarely if ever noticing our confinement. Bars? What bars? 

Occasionally we glimpse the bars that confine us. We see an interior decorating challenge. There are surely better bars to buy somewhere. Different colors, other materials, more pleasing diameters. We can shop this weekend.

We grow comfortable in our prisons. All we want is more. More of this or that in order to get more comfortable. 

"You and I, as children, were given a drug: it was called approval, it was called appreciation, it was called praise, success, acceptance, popularity ... Awake people break out of this drug."  ~Anthony de Mello

ADDICTION?

The plot thickens.

We have divided our addictions into two categories: acceptable, even vaunted - and ‘highly’ unacceptable. Often, though not always, the unacceptable are defined by their contrast with the acceptable.

While I’m tempted to plunge into the deep vein of addiction (sorry about that), I’ll not let temptation hijack the day. Addiction deserves attention in its own right and wrong. Sufficed to say, for now, conformity and addiction are close relatives.

As Tom Waits said about the difference between paranoia and foresight, “there’s a thin line.” If you’re patient, the addiction dispatch will feature my lunch with a movie star, at The Savoy in London. Steak tartare. Yum.

The Savoy Grille

The Tartare

The Guest

Approval, acceptance, and success are powerful influences in our lives. They tend to define our identities. We are ‘judged’ by the company we keep. Success is both a function and an indicator of our perceived desirability. That’s the fatal attraction of ‘rich and famous.’

If we look closely at our more or less compulsive desire to ‘please others’ we see it arises from a frail connection to our sense of UNIVERSAL SELF. We feel small, insignificant, and alone. We feel our little self as dependent on others for sustenance, just as we did in early childhood, when we first entered the approval cycle, when we were legitimately motivated to get survival needs met.  

We experienced then, and perhaps to a lesser extent still do, a primal discomfort with the oneness/individual paradox. As we individuate we feel tension between our oneness with it all, which was our sense of SELF as infants, and the increasing push and pull toward independence and conformity necessary in the so-called grownup world.

This uncomfortable tension can lead to trying too hard to connect, primarily for the sake of acceptance and success, yet true connection, a felt sense of natural, uncoerced interdependence, is of the essence for us to thrive, to live life alive. We’re caught in a double-bind, a harsh dilemma.

Who do we need to please for acceptance and success?

How do we do it and what happens if we don’t?

We want to know, and our culture offers us ways ‘to know.’

We buy in. We conform.

Mike Nichols, while directing Anne Bancroft in The Graduate offered her a character note. He saw Mrs. Robinson as someone who gave up her true life in exchange for wealth and security. It was essential for Anne to embody the anger and regret this choice embedded in Mrs. Robinson.

"That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it." ~Mike Nichols

GIVNG UP RATHER THAN IN

Life lived alive asks us to give up our fear based need to know. It asks us to fully accept an inter-connected Universe as our theater. It asks us to live in the spirit of play with open and curious minds, with the courage to relish surprise. 

"Unknowing isn’t ignorance; it’s recognizing a world flush with wonderment and puzzle and mystery." ~Tom Lutz

It takes courage to create a life. To open to all its wondrous possibilities. To reject the insistent tug to conform, to give in to “norms” for societal acceptance. To know how to behave.

Rather, we must embrace NOT KNOWING. To know is the bait, a false promise of security on which we chomp at our peril.

When we open our hearts to ourselves, to each other, and to the abundance of life and wonderment, we will find that courage naturally flows into our actual, felt experience.

“Our lives improve only when we take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.”  ~Walter Anderson

TRUTH AND TRUST

There is no doubt that a certain degree of conformity is necessary in life lived together on this Earthly plane. Our agreements with regard to safety and health issues are important. Although they are often abrogated. So, there’s that. 

It would be lovely if we shared a vision of robust community steeped in kindness and service. To help and care for one another.

“. . . to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”  ~Kurt Vonnegut

The more we ‘conform’ to ideals that reflect our loving nature the less we feel alone in daily life, and the more likely we are to notice that we are never actually alone. We are always inextricably connected to everything.

We can create vibrant atmospheres in which life giving aspirations at the highest levels will flourish. 

When we serve our souls, we create daily lives that reflect a Universal Theater that sees HUMAN ACTORS playing truthfully.

Most often, in my experience, this version of ‘conformity’ is derided as utopian. The product of imagination, as if imagination was anathema. 

In truth, it is our unique imagination that can see us through the many dangers we are mired in now. 

Oh Albert . . .

“All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." 

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift".

~Albert Einstein

When we understand the principles of ACTING HUMAN, and practice its fundamentals, we will learn, from lived experience, these essential truths.

Everything changes, including us. We are never the same. We change moment to moment.

Everything connects. We are entirely interconnected in life and death ways. Without trees, we suffocate.

Everything we pay attention to transforms in light of our vision. When we play with the intention to explore and discover truth, we reveal great power. 

“You must overcome the notion that we must be regular. . . it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.” ~Uta Hagen

Inspiration and imagination are birthrights. To belittle or ignore imagination and inspiration, as they are drowning in the persistent din of calls to fear based conformity, is to give in to lifeless living.

While it is not easy, nor comfortable, to live life alive - it is simple. 

Pay attention. 

Practice.

Act Truthfully.

Trust.

Live life as life lives itself.

"Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know." ~Wisława Szymborska  Source: The Poet and the World 

The rudimentary question we as HUMAN ACTORS ask, the question that leads to endless curiosity, to a quest that births adventurous lives lived alive, is ‘Who Am I?’

“The question ‘Who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer. The question ‘Who am I?’is meant to dissolve the questioner.”  ~Ramana Maharshi

“It is a singularity where all the known collapses and disappears. . . what remains is a wild, free, spontaneous, and utterly unknowable aliveness, within the glowing darkness of the Mystery that we ultimately are.”    ~Mauro Bergonzi

Until next time . .

Lights Up!