Compliance meetings predate the modern world of businesses, industries, and university athletic programs. Think Inquisition. Galileo and Giordano Bruno suffered because of noncompliance, the former in an imposed “house arrest,” the latter in being burned alive. At the very least, those who are guilty of noncompliance suffer some exclusion from the compliant. “No one gets back in ‘here’ until he or she complies; no one gets to participate without complying.” At the worst, those who are guilty like the victims of ISIS lose their lives, some by fire in actions no different from those that cost Bruno his life. The world hasn’t changed.
This isn’t a matter of traffic rules to which we adhere to avoid crashing into one another. It’s a matter of free-thinking. We could look at ancients who suffered because of noncompliance, Socrates, for example, and wonder whether or not we really are any different. Take a social tour of universities today. You might not see a requirement to drink hemlock tied to noncompliance, but you will see exclusion demanded of those who don’t comply with political correctness.
We pride ourselves on our ability to think rationally and to understand, but throughout civilization’s rise, a common principle has bound any majority: Compliance, the enemy of free thinking. Every group has its rules of compliance, written or unwritten, spoken or unspoken, yet always “understood” by the group even when such rules are ill-defined.
Look around social media. An “Inquisition” is still active. Whatever the “dogma” and whatever the commonly held beliefs, those who don’t comply are subject to expulsion of some kind, exiled or virtually imprisoned because of their noncompliance. Free-thinking is generally a myth. From ancient to modern times, free-thinkers and the noncompliant have been ostracized.
Here’s a “should” that seems to me an action necessary if we want to break free from compliance: All of us shouldexamine the dicta of compliance to which we adhere in our interactions and in our thinking. The bond of compliance that enables societies to rise also quashes the freedom of individuals to think as they will.
We could say that we are the product of societies that rose and fell through both compliance and noncompliance. The Soviet Union, for example, no longer exists because of noncompliance. Yet, no one is free from the rules that bind. As noncompliance overturns a compliant society, a new compliance evolves. We’re locked in a cycle, and the only way out personally is by examining why and how we individually comply. In examining our own compliance, however, each of us has to consider the consequences of noncompliance.
All societies have been and still are Orwellian; every year is 1984. The irony is that in the very places where free thinking is either promulgated or assumed—universities and the Press—any noncompliance seems to be punishable by exclusion of some kind. Thinking freely buys the noncompliant a cup of hemlock.
This isn’t a matter of traffic rules to which we adhere to avoid crashing into one another. It’s a matter of free-thinking. We could look at ancients who suffered because of noncompliance, Socrates, for example, and wonder whether or not we really are any different. Take a social tour of universities today. You might not see a requirement to drink hemlock tied to noncompliance, but you will see exclusion demanded of those who don’t comply with political correctness.
We pride ourselves on our ability to think rationally and to understand, but throughout civilization’s rise, a common principle has bound any majority: Compliance, the enemy of free thinking. Every group has its rules of compliance, written or unwritten, spoken or unspoken, yet always “understood” by the group even when such rules are ill-defined.
Look around social media. An “Inquisition” is still active. Whatever the “dogma” and whatever the commonly held beliefs, those who don’t comply are subject to expulsion of some kind, exiled or virtually imprisoned because of their noncompliance. Free-thinking is generally a myth. From ancient to modern times, free-thinkers and the noncompliant have been ostracized.
Here’s a “should” that seems to me an action necessary if we want to break free from compliance: All of us shouldexamine the dicta of compliance to which we adhere in our interactions and in our thinking. The bond of compliance that enables societies to rise also quashes the freedom of individuals to think as they will.
We could say that we are the product of societies that rose and fell through both compliance and noncompliance. The Soviet Union, for example, no longer exists because of noncompliance. Yet, no one is free from the rules that bind. As noncompliance overturns a compliant society, a new compliance evolves. We’re locked in a cycle, and the only way out personally is by examining why and how we individually comply. In examining our own compliance, however, each of us has to consider the consequences of noncompliance.
All societies have been and still are Orwellian; every year is 1984. The irony is that in the very places where free thinking is either promulgated or assumed—universities and the Press—any noncompliance seems to be punishable by exclusion of some kind. Thinking freely buys the noncompliant a cup of hemlock.
RSS Feed