There is no easy way for me to start this. Of all the many things that can be said about me as a person, that I have difficulty starting things is one of the most prevalent, especially where an assignment like this is concerned. I am a self-aware person; I haven’t always been. I spend a fair amount of time thinking about myself and my life and why I am the way I am; I don’t spend much time at all divulging my opinions of myself to anyone else. I’m a writer, and it’s not as if I’m not used to talking about human nature, especially not in terms of its manifestation in the individual, but it is not something I can easily do for myself. I can talk for days about anyone else, fictional character or otherwise, but reflecting on myself outside of
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I can definitely see it – I’ve always been beyond awkward in groups. I can’t match the energy or emotions of the people around me, which is, according to sociologists, something humans are supposed to do by nature. Conformity, as defined in Psychology in Everyday Life, is “adjusting our behaviour or thinking toward some group standard (p. 342).” In that sense, I’m sure I just never got around to conforming to normal social behaviours. The book continues on to list situations in which we are more likely to conform, a couple of those being situations in which we are “made to feel incompetent or insecure,” or “admire the group’s status or attractiveness.” It’s not that I have anything against conformity or have any sense of superiority over being nonconformist, the situation is just that I don’t have these kinds of responses in social situations. Feeling incompetent or insecure, I’ll make steps to improve myself in ways that I feel would enrich my life or view of myself, rather than wedge myself into some situation I don’t fit into. If I find a group attractive, I’ll imitate that group somehow – but never try to be ‘one of them’ in the sense that that group would necessarily accept me, only to the end that I can see that attractiveness in myself. It’s difficult to say whether this is because of my upbringing or my brain, but either way, isolation and nonconformity (or an inability to conform?) seems to be a staple of my
I can definitely see it – I’ve always been beyond awkward in groups. I can’t match the energy or emotions of the people around me, which is, according to sociologists, something humans are supposed to do by nature. Conformity, as defined in Psychology in Everyday Life, is “adjusting our behaviour or thinking toward some group standard (p. 342).” In that sense, I’m sure I just never got around to conforming to normal social behaviours. The book continues on to list situations in which we are more likely to conform, a couple of those being situations in which we are “made to feel incompetent or insecure,” or “admire the group’s status or attractiveness.” It’s not that I have anything against conformity or have any sense of superiority over being nonconformist, the situation is just that I don’t have these kinds of responses in social situations. Feeling incompetent or insecure, I’ll make steps to improve myself in ways that I feel would enrich my life or view of myself, rather than wedge myself into some situation I don’t fit into. If I find a group attractive, I’ll imitate that group somehow – but never try to be ‘one of them’ in the sense that that group would necessarily accept me, only to the end that I can see that attractiveness in myself. It’s difficult to say whether this is because of my upbringing or my brain, but either way, isolation and nonconformity (or an inability to conform?) seems to be a staple of my