It helps if you start out awkward. Tall, thin, and uncoordinated with the grace of a giraffe on roller skates, I mastered the art of standing out - and not in a good way. Combine that with a naturally introspective disposition and a built-in allergy to the popular crowd, and you have the ingredients for social hermitry at an early age.
That taught me to ignore social pressures and expectations of conformity, which continues to this day. Not to rebel like the hippies or goths, but to sidestep both confrontation and compliance, keeping any hint of political identity carefully obscure.
Later in life, as a father, co-worker, or boss, I continued the practice. Even my own children were seldom exactly sure where I stood on any issue. Instead, they’d rib me for never giving a straight answer—just firing back questions, usually from the devil’s advocate playbook, as if my real mission was to audit their logic instead of share my own.
That’s why, like many social observers, I wonder when and where this intolerance for viewpoints that challenge conventional wisdom—or stray from the party line—first took root. At what point did people become so sure that their own perspective was grounded in an accurate and absolute analysis of complex and multi-variant cause-and-effect relationships that no further consideration was necessary or warranted? More than that, when did that certainty begin to manifest in the expectation that others should conform to their point of view or be removed from their field of vision?
For me, awareness of the growing intolerance and pressure to conform hit around my retirement in 2014, after a couple of years of diversity training at work. Those classes stimulated my conformance-and-compliance gag reflex. I mostly stayed quiet in class and during operating committee discussions, and made sure not to impose their assumptions or principles on my organization beyond what the corporation required.
But the defining moment for me was shortly after the 2016 election, when friends, associates, and executives began expressing their desire to distance themselves from others who held opposing or contrasting viewpoints.
“If any of my friends can’t see the harm being inflicted on the LGBTQ community by this administration, they can unfriend me right now. We do not need to get together again in the future.” - Facebook post from a former mentee
“Those who condone the actions being taken against immigrants in this country should no longer consider me a friend…” - Tweet from a mid-level executive and associate
These so-called cancellations were far from rare and caused me to comply with their requests, whether or not I agreed with their position on the issue that provoked them. I simply couldn’t imagine that friendship or association could hinge on conformity to a specific point of view. Over time, and especially during the COVID pandemic, this kind of exclusionary behavior seeped into families, neighborhoods, and workplaces, leaving its mark everywhere.
At the time, I attributed the practice to those on the left side of the liberal-to-conservative spectrum. Recent events, however, suggest to me that we may be drifting to the same kind of response on the other side. I hope society will put that to bed and instead begin to value curiosity, exploration, and dialogue over intolerance and conformance.
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