Are You a Conformist? Most People Are.
To what degree do we do as we are told and conform to the group? Most of us would like to think that we are independent — unplugged from the matrix, if you will.
Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels was one of Adolf Hitler’s greatest allies. He served as the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Goebbels is credited for the following insight:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
In our modern times, it’s easy to dismiss such an observation and to pretend that propaganda does not exist because alternative media such as the Internet allows us to research any topic. However, a disturbing series of studies suggests that the majority of us will eventually conform to the group, even if we know that members of the group are lying or misinformed.
The first of these conformity tests were conducted a few decades ago by Solomon Asch. According to Wikipedia:
The Asch conformity experiments, which were published in the 1950s, were a series of studies that starkly demonstrated the power of conformity in groups. These are also known as the “Asch Paradigm”.
Mind Power News explores this subject, showing the following video of a modern-day reproduction of the Asch conformity experiments:
According to the article published at Mind Power News, hundreds of these reproduction experiments showed that, “More than one third of the times the subject gives in to the collective error, and up to three quarters of the subjects eventually gave in at some point. No one was told to conform. There was nothing to gain or to lose. This is spontaneous social conformity.”
Our biggest source of information comes from the media; chiefly, television. Television has enormous sway in shaping opinions, whether they are based on truth or not. Trash Your TV reports that:
The most recent figure from Nielsen Media Research, Inc., is 4 hours and 35 minutes per day, up three minutes from last year. Now, let’s add that up. That is 31½ hours every week (almost a second job!). That is also 5½ solid days per month and more than two whole months every year. By age 70 that is over 13 years watching television!
It’s been widely reported that the Bush administration planted fake news to justify the Iraq war. Television is such a powerful medium in shaping social opinion that advertisers spent approximately $9.3 billion in advertising for 2007 prime time television programs. In fact, it is estimated that a record $800 million will be spent on television advertising for this November’s presidential election.
That’s just television, a medium for standards that we might be conforming to. Messages come from our peers, the newspaper, the Internet, churches and the community we live in. To what extent are these constant opinions actually true? Do we really know what our own personal truth is, or are we simply conforming to the onslaught of messages that we receive on a daily basis?
To be free and to command our own destinies, we can’t be a slave to social conformity. The first step in unplugging from the matrix is to unplug the TV set and see things for what they are. And, as the Trash Your TV project reports, that gives us over 30 hours a week to create something meaningful.
I’d rather be a creator than a conformist. How about you?
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