The Absurdity of Excessive Normality/Conformism and Mindless Obedience

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work,
driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for,
in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes,
car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”
-Ellen Goodman

That’s why I have, to a decent extent, navigated AROUND “normal” most of my life...

I’ve been blessed with a deep curiosity, a sense of wonder – and a nonconformist streak – that have helped me avoid getting completely trapped in the swamp of “mainstream normal.”

That applies to my dual identity as an artist and as a scientist.

In my identity as an artist – well, nonconformism is a hallmark of being an artist!

In my identity as a scientist – Science is about disrupting default beliefs, in fact on a Grand and profound Scale!  Think about concepts such as evolution, the firmament, spacetime: “Humanity has believed something since time immemorial… but, hey, maybe let's change it!”

Insidious Ways the Mega-Corporate Oppresses by Fostering Mindless Obedience

“Mindless obedience is a slippery slope”

We all know about the intrusiveness of Facebook, constantly siphoning off your personal data to relentlessly spam you with targeted ads...

But there is an even darker side: getting people used to Mindless Obedience, from a young age, starting with petty things – to prime people to be meek on a larger scale.

For example, take their regular harassment of users (e.g. over something as silly a screen names or as imbecilic as their bizarre “nipple phobia.”) To some extent, that could be brushed off as them just playing petty tyrants.

But it goes deeper; if one thinks about it more carefully, there’s also something much more sinister at play…

Whether the Facebook management does it consciously to break peoples' spirit with their petty harassment and "facebook jail" - or whether it simply comes natural to them, in their role as a Mega-Corporation with a single purpose of squeezing more money from their users - the end result is the same: it's in their self-interest to keep people OBEDIENT, meek and just doing what told.
Otherwise, think about it, there’d be revolts over things like the student-loan ripoff or the exploding income inequality!

Did you know?  You can zap many Facebook ads – hitting them back where it hurts them – by using the free Adblock Plus extension on your browser (at least on Firefox and Chrome); also great against annoying ads on other sites!  See more on the struggle against Facebook and others

Mindless obedience over things like screen names and censoring those poor nipples, might seem like a petty trifle… But mindless obedience is a slippery slope: it becomes a habit starting from petty matters – and then it remains a habit in political life and other serious matters!

Fighting Back

How does one resist that slippery slope of over-conformity? If you want a snappy answer, one of the best one I’ve come across can be embedded in a bumper sticker… and indeed can be found on my car:

QUESTION ASSUMPTIONS

While dealing with slogans, I would add things like “resist”, “fight back”, “pick your battles”, “beware of consumerism”, “don’t try to be like everyone else”, “laugh off peer pressure”, etc.

Transcending the mundane (which overlaps with the “normal”) is a huge driving force for me. That’s why, for example, I regard Art , Science, Love and Eroticism as being closely related in a profound, fundamental way (though they typically appeal to different people and superficially appear very different): they are all powerful methods of transcending the mundane.

You’ll find that fighting back against the Unbearable Absurdity of Excessive Normality/Conformism (to paraphrase a film title, guess which one!) is a running sub-theme of this blog. For example, finding alternate ways to acquire an education, or not being limited by one’s native language…