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Published online 24 June 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.593
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Conformists may kill civilizations
Lack of original ideas leaves societies vulnerable to environmental upheaval, model suggests.
The capacity to learn from others is one of the traits that have made humans such a global success story. Relying on it too much, however, could have contributed to the demise of past populations, such as the Maya of southern Mexico in the eighth and ninth centuries and Norse settlers in Greenland 1,000 years ago.
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The problem with 'prestige bias' now is that since the USA frontier closed and Social Darwinism took hold, success, for most Americans and in similar frontier-less places, is corrupted by the conformity of the landowners and employers who engage in a lot of discrimination against people who in fact have ideas with more survival value than the conformists. Success in this Social Darwinist employment context is only in relation to the conformists in control of the natural resources employees need to survive. For example, people interested in the housing industry who have more sensible approaches to keeping people out of floodplains, or using adequate tornado-resistant construction already advised by governments, or fireproof construction for houses built beyond the reach of fire hydrants: these people are routinely shut out from making these contributions and becoming dominant players. The consequent loss of lives and property is less important than conformity and repetition.
Professional management is the death of the future. Process not product! Put the "no" back in "innovation." There is no "I" in discovery, winner, first, profit, and survival. The average IQ of a committee is less than the IQ of any of its members: Congress. Rather than foster brilliance we allocate for its suppression. Diversity! Mediocrity is a vice of the doomed. Anybody young and creative who has applied for grant-funding or is an industrial lab chigger knows all that. What is the performance bonus attendant to having smothered First World civilization?
I completely agree with Hal Whitehead that: "societies should promote individual learning and innovation over cultural conformity,"... In every possible field, it's impossible for innovation to deliver its true genie, without escaping conformity's gravity. -Aiya-Oba(Philosopher).
It is not the role of society, the collective, the species, or the group to encourage non-conformity. In fact, its role is the opposite. Non-conformity is not developed institutionally. That we dare to write comments on this subject is confirmation of our own conformity. We feel entitled to comment because of our intellect. But most of us were given our label of intellectual or intelligent from institutional authorities which really are monuments to conformity. Non-conformity is individuality at its essence. One has to be groomed from a young age to make one's own judgments, to have the ego strength to withstand mockery and ostracization. It is a function of the individual personal environment and cannot be produced from mandate or policy. Its kinda like when my son was in high school and the principal wanted to encourage volunteerism among the students. So she made it compulsory.
"Figuring things out for yourself can be time-consuming, however, and a waste of time when others around you have already acquired the relevant knowledge. Once individual learning is common, the less costly strategy of conformist social learning can get a foothold." nanos gigantum humeris insidentes (Dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants)- Bernard of Chartres. The trick, of course, is to not be afraid to look up. ---------- "People might find it difficult to believe that humans, in all their complexity, would do something so stupid as to copy themselves to extinction..." Really? Isn't it gruesomely obvious we're the most self-destructive of all creatures by far? ---------------- "What matters to most people is how they are doing as individuals right now, and longer-term considerations are very easily pushed down the priority listing." Think globally, act locally. What effect will the huge increase in life expectancy have on individual thinking...when now for the first time most of our lives are spent after propagation...and we now live long enough for the observations of individual expirience to give perspective on the effectiveness of how we have lived?
"We lack empirical data on human behaviour with which to test these models," This article makes me think about people behaviour in companies. Conformism, non-conformism, learning, changing environment?
An example of non-conformity in modern society might include being a conservative Republican and an academic. Ouch.