Examples Of Conformity

Often times in life, people do irrational things just because it makes them “feel good.” Getting along with others is a great way to produce those feelings and people have been known to go to serious lengths just to get along with their peers. Whether it’s lying about their opinions to agree with someone or participating in a felony to avoid a conflict of interest, people are desperate to remain uplifted in their spirits and conformity is a great way to gather the good feeling that they so desire. Jim Hightower, a columnist and political activist, said, “The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.” This quote compares people who conform to dead fish because they have no motivation to be themselves and stand up for what they believe in; they get dragged in by the current and follow the path prepared for them by …show more content…
73 seconds after the space shuttle lifted off, it broke apart and left its seven crew members dead. Six months before NASA was ready to launch, Roger Boisjoly, an engineer from Morton Thiokol, a company that specializes in rubber and related chemicals, announced to NASA that the O-rings used on the shuttle were susceptible to erosion problems and a failure to fix them could result in a loss of human life. Later, on the evening before the shuttle was launched, on a conference call with NASA, Boisjoly warned NASA to cancel the launch because cold weather could cause the O-rings to be unable to seal the joints of the solid rocket boosters. NASA had plenty of delays before this and their leaders didn’t have the courage to delay the launch any more, so they conformed to what the public wanted to see: the Challenger space shuttle launched the next day. NASA, like Tessie from “The Lottery,” chose conformity. However, unlike Tessie, NASA’s failure was the result of a lack of courage, rather than a lack of a solid