#12: it's too early to conform
Good morning,
I’ve been digging through my own archives for the last 6 weeks.
Some things I discovered:
a cassette tape of me talking at 2 years old in Hindi that was made for my parents who lived in America while I lived in India (I thought my name was “Baby Jolly”)
my childhood journals, first one at age 7 (in which I documented both not wanting to live in America and Geri quitting the Spice Girls)
my own journey practicing Buddhism as a child (my pride over my smarter, more talented brother was that I could chant more than him)
the fact that children of identical twins are actually genetically half-siblings, not first-cousins (I’m a child of a twin) because we share 25% of our DNA, not 12.5% the way most first-cousins do
a lot of new media about South Asian Americans, like Indian Matchmaking, which I found hilarious, horrifying and refreshing and Saumya Dave’s new book Well-Behaved Indian Women
It all made me think how shaped we are by the people around us, how keenly and efficiently we observe them, compare ourselves to them, copy them and compare their behavior against our values, even when we don’t realize this is what we are doing.
It all adds up.
I’ve also been wondering/worrying about a few things for the last 6 weeks, namely: How sustainable is the learning that is coming from newly popular antiracist literature and its accompanying exercises is actually going to be?
I’m seeing more and more (white) friends and peers silence themselves and oblige, as if they are all suddenly earnest and dedicated students wearing invisible uniforms, sitting neatly at desks, asking no questions, some appointing themselves as prefects, pacing the rows, saying heads down, examine your privilege.
It’s quite a moment. A great thing is happening but I’m not sure it’s happening in a way that can last, because humans aren’t that simple. I miss making messes of our thoughts and feelings with my friends. All of them.
Meanwhile, I’m taking notes of what I agree and disagree with, what gives me pause, and what I appreciate, as we try to create this new, just world, and I’m able to dialogue with very few people about it, so I’m hungry and grateful for perspectives that are willing to push the boundaries just a little bit, like Jonathan Chait’s Is Anti-Racism Training Just Peddling White Supremacy? and the now infamous Harper’s Letter and its ensuing backlash, not because I entirely agree, but because it feels human to disagree respectfully.
It makes me think about what my role—and the different roles of non-black POC—can be, not just now, but for years to come, to facilitate learning and dialogue when black and white feel more polarized than ever, even if working toward a common goal.
This isn’t unique to conversations about race of course. It’s been happening for a few years, steadily, across many spaces and ideological divides.
I found Paul Graham’s take, using the 4 Quadrants of Conformism, a useful mental exercise amidst all this. He writes:
One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism. Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system whose horizontal axis runs from conventional-minded on the left to independent-minded on the right, and whose vertical axis runs from passive at the bottom to aggressive at the top. The resulting four quadrants define four types of people. Starting in the upper left and going counter-clockwise: aggressively conventional-minded, passively conventional-minded, passively independent-minded, and aggressively independent-minded.
If you consider kids as an example, he says, this is how they work:
Aggressively conventional-minded ones: the tattletales. They believe not only that rules must be obeyed, but that those who disobey them must be punished.
Passively conventional-minded: the sheep. They're careful to obey the rules, but when other kids break them, their impulse is to worry that those kids will be punished, not to ensure that they will.
Passively independent-minded: the dreamy ones. They don't care much about rules and probably aren't 100% sure what the rules even are.
Aggressively independent-minded: the naughty ones. When they see a rule, their first impulse is to question it. Merely being told what to do makes them inclined to do the opposite.
When measuring conformism, of course, you have to say with respect to what, and this changes as kids get older. For younger kids it's the rules set by adults. But as kids get older, the source of rules becomes their peers. So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite.
And then in adults, he says they can be recognized by their call:
Aggressively conventional-minded: “Crush <outgroup>!”
Passively conventional-minded: “What will the neighbors think?”
Passively independent-minded: “To each his own”
Aggressively independent-minded: “Eppur si muove” [“And yet it moves”]
Finally, the types are not equally common. The largest group are the passively conventional-minded, and the smallest are the aggressively independent-minded.
I don’t think it’s as simple as he makes it out to be, but it’s interesting to think about this from the perspective of how we learn. In some senses, the major work of my life has been to shift from passively conventional-minded (I was a sheep!), to aggressively independent-minded (I think this is my true self finally coming out) and I also think that if those two were on a spectrum, it’s actually those of us who feel comfortable on both ends of it who can be of great assistance mediating and facilitating dialogue.
In other words, what each community needs is a dedicated force of broad-minded individuals who are willing to do the work of caring for friends who are grappling with trauma, with social conditioning, with emotions they’ve never before been able to honestly experience or address while developing a vision for what’s next for each sphere of society, for a truly just world.
If you, like me, feel exhausted or a bit confused thinking about these things, here is the advice I keep giving myself:
Talk to one more person. Consider one more possibility. Study one more example from history. Take a long term view of the future. Examine your own stories.
We’re all just waking up. It’s too early to conform.
Jihii