Conformity And True Freedom In Modern Society
True freedom is only found when you discover the bars society has bound you with, to break out of the conformity to find who you truly are. Socrates stated, ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’, expressing the idea that we must find our purpose and meaning behind everything we do, however I believe that in the 21st century examining your own life, though possible, is difficult to achieve as there is underlying pressure for conformity which is embedded in the values of our society. We are so entrenched into the system, So are we truly thinking for ourselves anymore? Or are the choices we are making already chosen for us? Can we find our true purpose when before we were even born we were in society's cycle? It isn’t possible to examine ones life when they don’t truly have the freedom to think for themselves, when originality is difficult to achieve. Without this one is only surviving and never truly living, one day we will wake up and discover we have lived our lives through the paths in which society has pushed us down, never really making own own decisions on how we want to live. To discover our purpose it takes the human mind to break a habit of following the norm. We can only live an examined life when we break from the conformity of society and create our own paths. On every level we are bound by rules and patterns of behaviour that make it truly difficult to examine life in a rewarding way.
Political conformity is universal, it doesn’t matter where you are from or what time period, we’re all victims to this conformity and this strongly affects our ability to make choices. Political conformity is process that we all follow, like a factory it produces the same product but in different sizes and colours. For example, we may or may not go to university or similar substitutes like TAFE. We are made to believe that we have that choice. However, if we weren’t to choose university and get a degree, there is next to no chance of gaining a job to support ourselves. Then again, you could live a life of freedom, you could choose to not have a job and travel the world and live your life, fall in love and get married. But for much of this you need money. To get a house you need money, you need money for our basic needs in life like food, water and sanitary products. You need money to raise children, to pay for health insurance. You need money to live. Therefore you must have a job, and to get a job that pays well enough to live and support a family then you have no other option except to choose one of these forms of university. No matter the circumstance, not just in university, we are made to feel that we have a choice but in the end, do we?
The film, Dead Poets Society directed by Peter Weir, follows the lives of a class of boys as their English teacher, John Keating, educates them on how to break from conformity, to accept all life has to offer and take each opportunity. Keating states in scene blah blah ‘you must strive to find your own voice because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are going to find it at all’, highlighting how age affects our ability to think outside the box, and how as we reach an older age our complacency in society grows and we begin to put up with the pressures we receive from the world.
Poet David Henry Thoreau (YEAR) wrote ‘most men live their lives in quiet desperation’, so desperate for freedom, so desperate to break through yet they do not speak. Thoreau highlights the intensity of conformity, that your soul can silently scream for freedom but not a word will ever be heard because we have been hard wired against it. How can we examine our lives if our opinions are clouded by conformity and each decision we make has been chosen for us and chosen by millions of others like us around the world. There are extensive limitations to stating ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’, Socrates is therefore saying that the lives of millions of people are pointless. Conformity holds us back from being able to make these decisions. A purpose is different to each human, but this is because of their values and our values are not truly chosen by us. Values are borrowed from our parents and our friends. Not matter how hard you try, you can not examine your life until you step out of this shadow of conformity and actually find who you really are. GOOD Political conformity often goes unnoticed, the cultural sphere is no exception. Many of us don’t notice how cultures can create nations of conformists, culture can control the way we dress, speak, act, our attitudes and mindsets and. In the Eastern World, life and culture is extremely different from what we are used to here in the Western World. For example, female culture In Pakistan, women struggle to receive basic freedoms like education. 2. 6% of girls attend school due to their cultural expectations and the conformity that is ingrained into their culture. In India, it is cultural for girls as young as 7 to be married to a far older man but as these men grow older and die, these girls are not only held responsible for their death but are treated as ‘human waste’ and get left homeless. These are customs present today that Westerners could hardly believe still exist. This kind of mistreatment warps minds and creates distorted images of what life should be like, leaving girls like this unable to make any decision on the meaning of their lives as their assumption would be to be a housewife and look after children at most. Eastern meets Western conformity in ‘Bend-it Like Beckham’ where two girls have come to fight cultural conformity. Jess comes from indian heritage but she is very talented with soccer. Her Sikh culture doesn’t agree with girls playing sport nor wearing shorts (revealing legs). Her mother is steering her in a direction of womanhood that she doesn’t want to enter, shown when her mother tries to teach her to cook. She demands that Jess would give up her dream and become a housewife and get engaged like her sister telling her, ‘eyes down, don't smile. Indian bride never smiles. You'll ruin the bloody video. ’
On the other hand, Jules (who plays soccer with Jess) is pressured by her mother to suit western culture, to dress in a more ‘feminine’ way like the ‘other girls’ and to get a boyfriend. Her mother eventually assumes she is lesbian because of the way she dresses and how she plays sport. Her mother has conformed to the stereotyping of our western society, ‘Mother, just because I wear trackies and play sport does not make me a lesbian!’. Both of these girls lives have been affected by their parents wanting to inflict cultural customs on them.
