Conformity Crisis – Breakaway Consciousness

What the List of Most Banned Books Says About Our Society’s Fears

“A mind needs a book as a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge.”
– George R. R. Martin

“Real books disgust the totalitarian mind because they generate uncontrollable mental growth – and it cannot be monitored.”[Bold Emphasis Added]
– John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind Of Teacher, p. 82.

Source: Time.com
Sarah Begley
September 25, 2016

Censors are increasingly focusing on books that represent diverse points of view

For as long as humans have printed books, censors have argued over their content and tried to limit some books’ distribution. But the reasons for challenging literature change over time, and as Banned Book Week begins on Sept. 25, it’s clear that public discomfort with particular ideas has evolved rapidly even in the last 20 years.

When the American Library Association started keeping a database of challenged books in the early ’90s, the reasons cited were fairly straightforward, according to James LaRue, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. “‘Don’t like the language,’ or ‘There’s too much sex’—they’d tend to fall into those two categories,” he says. Some books are still challenged for those reasons—Fifty Shades of Grey is a common example. But there’s been a shift toward seeking to ban books “focused on issues of diversity—things that are by or about people of color, or LGBT, or disabilities, or religious and cultural minorities,” LaRue says. “It seems like that shift is very clear.”

The ALA’s list of the 10 most challenged books in 2015 bears this out: it includes I Am Jazz and Beyond Magenta, about young transgender people; Fun Home and Two Boys Kissing, which deal with homosexuality; Habibi and Nasreen’s Secret School, which feature Muslim characters; and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, which was cited for “atheism.” In contrast, the top 10 most-challenged books of 2001 were more straightforwardly banned for strong language, sexual content and drugs, like The Chocolate War and Go Ask Alice.

The shift seems to be linked to demographic changes in the country—and the political fear-mongering that can accompany those changes, LaRue says. “There’s a sense that a previous majority of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are kind of moving into a minority, and there’s this lashing out to say, ‘Can we just please make things the way that they used to be?’” LaRue says. “We don’t get many challenges by diverse people,” he adds. In recent years, book challenges have peaked while religious liberty bills were in the news, he says.

Here’s a look at how things have changed in the past 15 years:

Most-challenged books of 2001:

Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling
Reasons: anti-family, occult/Satanism, religious viewpoint, violence
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
Reasons: offensive language, racism, unsuited to age group, violence
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, violence
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit
Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Greene
Reasons: offensive language, racism, sexually explicit
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Reasons: offensive language, unsuited to age group
Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
Reasons: drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit
Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
Reason: offensive language
Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Most-challenged books of 2015:

Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).
I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”).
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).
The Holy Bible
Reasons: Religious viewpoint.
Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).
Habibi, by Craig Thompson
Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.
Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”).

But the recent backlash challenges have not been limited to conservatives: the Bible is on the top 10 list for 2015, in part because of concerns about why a book that argues for the murder of homosexuals (as in Leviticus) would be in a public library. Opposition like this comes from “people that are just questioning in a larger sense what is the appropriate role of religion in our society,” LaRue says.

Over time, some books lose their opponents—the Harry Potter series, for instance, were the most-challenged books from 2000 to 2009, but have since fallen off the top 10 list. “There was a period there where Harry Potter was [considered] a Satanist and a cult, and people were doing book cuttings and book burnings,” LaRue says. “And now if you read people that are kind of on the right side of the religious spectrum, their kids love the Harry Potter books, so sometimes the things that we’re convinced are signs that the end is nigh are completely normalized in five years.”

The ALA usually learns that a book has been challenged either from librarians at schools or public or academic libraries calling in incidents, or from reports in local newspapers. In recent years there’s actually been a decline in reports—the ALA recorded 311 challenges in 2014 and only 275 in 2015. On the surface, that may seem like a good thing—but it probably indicates that fewer people are speaking up when a book is removed, meaning more banning is going on under the radar, LaRue says. “We have reason to believe that where censorship starts to succeed, there’s less reporting about it,” LaRue says. “So we can say it’s hard for us to know, we know that challenges are underreported, but we don’t know by how much.” It doesn’t help that school librarians are frequently the victims of school layoffs, meaning there are fewer professionals “trained to use this language of intellectual freedom.”

Still, one thing hasn’t changed since the dawn of censorship: having your book banned is very, very good for an author’s sales. “If what you’re trying to do is stop this book from getting into the hands of a minor,” LaRue says, “the surest way to [fail] is to declare it forbidden.”

Conformity Crisis: The War Between Conformists & Non-Conformists | #Conformity | #Freedom| #Life | #Truth | #Friendship | #Friends

“The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”
– Socrates

BreakawayIndividual.com
Zy Marquiez
May 18, 2019

These days it seems that not a moment goes by without someone having some sort of disagreement.

Not that people should always agree about everything, that’s not the point. Disagreements come in all shapes and forms, just like people do. The point is that many of these disagreements you see, whether in person, or online, stem from a certain section of the populace’s ceaseless push to inculcate their beliefs on others, regardless of the consequences.

There seems to be two prevailing schools of thought out there regarding how to handle these situations. When aiding others in their search for truth, the initial school of thought, the non-conformists, don’t mind when other individuals ask them questions about beliefs and ideas discussed. The second group, the conformists, take downright offense to anyone questioning them on anything. The former seeks to help the individual arrive at their own truth; the latter seeks to be the high priest, just like those of ancient times who controlled the free flow of specific information.

This particular trend of individuals not wanting to have open discussions seems to be growing with time. Individuals who do wish to carry out further inquiry to seek firmer ground have nigh no options when speaking to closed-minded conformists because ultimately with a conformist, it’s their way or the highway. Ironically, what is happening to those who seek firmer ground is not unlike what happened to the “Father of Philosophy,” Socrates, over two millennia ago.

Socrates was feared because he wasn’t afraid of questioning an individual’s beliefs about any given subject, similar to individuals today who question the official narrative on countless issues. In parallel fashion to modern conformists, in Socrates’ time, the ultimate conformists of the time – as with much of history – was the state. This see saw bout of ideals that took place millennia ago still takes place now. That said, because of his very ideals, Socrates is the Godfather of Non-conformity. Socrates is the living definition of a question mark.

With the Socratic Method – of querying deeply into the subject – Socrates would begin to dissect an individual’s paradigm and those inherent flaws if any, usually in the realms of justice and goodness. Because of Socrates’ method, many times the paradigms individuals had – inculcated by the state and by religion – would drastically shift or disintegrate altogether, and begin something anew. This lead the state to lash out against him for questioning the system, particularly the “might makes right” the state was notorious known for, and eventually got him executed.

The state feared that the changes Socrates was bringing about in the populace would continue to spread and from their tyrannical point of view they could not allow that. Thankfully though, most of what he was able to accomplish still echoes to this day – even to this very post, thousands of years later.

In similar fashion, nowadays, people who push conformity are doing themselves and the other individuals a great disservice. This is because individuals pushing conformity are: (1) not being open minded, thus contemplating life from an incredibly narrow point of view, which (2) stunts the growth an individual may have by the exposure of a wide array of information. Further, (3) by attempting to force conformity on others, conformists are taking away a terrific learning opportunity from the individuals truly seeking answers to poignant questions, and (4) in the worst case, these conformists are even losing relationships through all social strata because they are not being open minded about the possibility that other options exist. All of this stands against the very nature of free-flowing inquiry.

Keen conversations of proactive mental discernment should have a certain flow, like a see saw, a back and forth between minds. However, what is taking place is far from such a common sense and proactive approach. The talks that are taking place currently between conformists and non-conformists echo a societal instability brought about by the conformist that will only exacerbate with time.

Intricately, this particular issue is touched upon in the thought-provoking book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki, who cautions individuals on this very subject:

“Try not to force your idea on someone but rather think about it with him. If you feel you have won the discussion, that is also the wrong attitude. Try not to win in the argument; just listen to it; but it is also wrong to behave as if you had lost. Usually when we say something, we are apt to try to sell our teaching or force our idea.”[1][Bold & Underline Emphasis Added].

In other words, allow others the freedom to make choices, to find their own path – to make mistakes. That is one of the best ways individuals grow, by learning from their choices. However, forcing opinions and/or beliefs on others is diametrically opposed to all that is good and sensible.

Moreover, not only is overriding someone’s freedoms rather inhuman, or conformist to say the least, but it goes directly against the very idea of Freedom and its downright tyrannical. In contrast, if conformists would opt to listen to others, as happens in free-flowing conversations of open-minded individuals, those pushing their beliefs and agendas would come to an understanding as to why the other individual feels reticent to the particular issue. That simple step can help magnitudes in understanding where another person is coming from and why the other person feels as they feel. A conformist’s conversations never even get that far. Ironically, that would arguably be the place where the most progress could be made.

If inquiring individuals who wish to engage in mental discernment are not allowed their own personal moment of clarity of piercing through the veil, they will not own the moment – know the truth – but merely borrow another person’s footsteps as their own. Such an instance robs the individuals of making great progress in their strides for the truth, and thus leaves them at square one.

When someone is forced to intellectually conform they are not allowed the freedom to philosophize – to seek wisdom. Philosophy is crucial, for it literally means the love of wisdom. How is an individual ever going to gain insights, journey to wisdom, unless they are allowed or even urged to ask questions?

As modern philosopher Peter Kreeft Ph.D. warned in his Philosophy 101 By Socrates:

“If we do not philosophize, if we do not question appearances, if we are satisfied with whatever makes us feel happy, we will never know whether we are being deceived about who we are and what level of our being is being satisfied.”[2][Bold & Italics Emphasis Added].

An individual that is not allowed to hone their senses and polish their intuition will not have the opportunity to learn to see the forest for the trees. If said individual merely accepts the authoritarian conformist’s attitudes, they will suffer in many ways. These inquiring individuals will have a harder time – or nigh impossible time – figuring out deception, as we are seeing nowadays; these individuals won’t be able to figure out a well constructed argument based on facts and logic from outright speculation or downright lies; these genuinely curious individuals will also not be able to become as robust and intellectually self-sufficient as possible as they could be in this newfound age of disinformation. Such an individual will be just like a boat in the ocean with a damaged sail that is drifting aimlessly directly into an eternal storm confusion.

That is why it’s imperative as individuals to help others realize their full potential as they seek truth and growth within our world. As other individuals grow, they will share what made them change in positive fashion. And as we learn from them we can integrate these lessons and help others just as so. This type of concurrent growth is not unlike the rising tide lifting all ships.

Ruminating a bit deeper into this entire conundrum, maybe this issue is about more than truth though. Perhaps there’s more on the line than meets the eye. What seems to be missing to some extent, in some individuals at least, is simply the ability for them to be caring human beings, regardless of beliefs. A truly caring, wholesome individual will not simply railroad someone else because they believe something different or refuse to believe them.

It seems that following a personal philosophy of seeking personal growth through an attempted mastery of your mental and spiritual wellbeing seems like a prudent choice to say the least. And personal growth involves more than just attaining truth or strengthening beliefs.

Observing the words of Kreeft once more:

“Wisdom is more than knowledge. Knowing all facts in a library does not make you wise. Wisdom is a knowledge not just of facts but of values, of what is humanly important; and it is a knowledge that is a lived, that is learned by experience and lived out in experience.”[3][Bold & Italics Emphasis Added]

When conformists push their ideals and beliefs onto inquiring individuals, they take away the opportunity for those individuals to have meaningful experiences for growth and self-development, which includes more than simple truths or beliefs. Those instances may never take place again. Individuals that are not allowed to live to their fullest extent will only realize a fraction of the capability they would otherwise be able to achieve if they were allowed to venture upon their personal road less traveled – their individual journey.

Those who are allowed to gain personal insights on their road to self mastery will not only grow profoundly but will also develop a more robust Socratic Philosophy, just like the Greeks did in ancient times.

In ancient times:

“The Greeks became the world’s greatest philosophers partly because…they learned to question appearances to find something more, some hidden reality behind the appearances.”[4][Bold Emphasis Added]

Such is the reason why appearances, beliefs and supposed facts must always be questioned. For if they are not, what might be hidden will never rise to the surface and will not be able to be seen in pure darkness. Truth is the only light beam that disintegrates the shadows. And the only way to attain truth is for individuals to hone their inner fire, their inner light.

Touching upon this very concern, award winning teacher, advocate of self-directed learning and of individual freedom, John Taylor Gatto urged in his landmark book Dumbing Us Down:

“People have to be allowed to make their own mistakes or to try again, or they will never master themselves, although they may well seem to be competent when they have in fact only memorized or imitated someone else’s performance. Success in my practice involves challenging many comfortable assumptions about what is worth learning and out of what material a good life is fashioned.”[5][Bold, Underline & Italics Emphasis Added]

Questioning our conformable assumptions, our beliefs, about what is worth learning for each individual and bringing about the most growth is what this entire conundrum is about. That is why it is crucial that:

“One should not present others with ready-made answers, preach to them, or only make them memorize things. One needs to activate them. They should figure things out. The ambition can even be to liberate them.”[6][Bold, Underline & Italics Emphasis Added].

To help individuals achieve total freedom – physically, spiritually, psychologically, emotionally and mentally – they need to be encouraged to walk their own path, learn their own lessons – find their own wisdom.

If individuals aren’t allowed to grow, or choose not to, their mental faculties will atrophy, like someone who uses crutches constantly and has their muscles atrophy from disuse.

As friends, colleagues, or simply caring human beings, perhaps it is imperative not to worry only about our subjective ideas, beliefs, or even outright facts. Not saying those are not important, so please do not misunderstand me.

All I am getting at is that, perhaps, what the vanguard consideration should be is helping other individuals wherever they may need help along their road, so they can then better understand whatever it is that they seek knowledge in. What got them to their current point in life is vastly different to what got you to yours. In like fashion, what gets them to the truth will most likely be vastly different than what got you to it.

Allowing other individuals the opportunity for growth, by not making them conform, is one of the greatest gifts we can help flourish in another human being on their journey. Along this journey, other individuals may at times need help. Walk along side them, as long as they need, and help them when possible. But remember, their life is their journey.

While your paths may cross time and again, ultimately an individual’s journey will be a rather unique and authentic experience. Along this path, the side of the road will surely be rife with random rocks lacking meaning. But now and again, among the ruble, an individual’s curiosities will be sparked by sparkles of truth, and they will find gratifying gems. These are the very gems of wisdom that will push individuals further down their path to intellectual treasure, further towards their adventure for truth – towards individual growth and incredible self-development.

Ultimately, what another individual does is up to them, for its their life, their freedom, their choice. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t help them along that journey. Just help them in any way you can, especially if they implore you for help. That’s what friendship is all about. That’s what being a caring human being is all about.

And maybe, just maybe, one day these individuals will realize that it was you whose left some of those gems along their road, and that they’ve been given a gift, and that it’s been there all along, just waiting for the right moment.

And the right moment is now.

Give them that gift.
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Author’s Note:

This article was written a few years ago for New Agora Magazine. It has been slightly edited, but the core content remains unchanged.

I share this because if you simplify a lot of the issues taking place nowadays, they are about conformists vs. non-conformists. Now, whatever side you fall on, that is your business. What you rarely see from each side, but even less from the conformist side, is an attempt at seeking understanding.

How can progress be made without understanding? Perhaps that’s where a lot of the arguments and discussions should start, seeking understanding and/or common ground. After all, we are all humans, and just because we can’t see eye to eye on every issue doesn’t mean we don’t have the option to see what other people have gone through, empathize with their plight, comprehend their obstacles and circumstances better, but most of all, understand why they are who they are and why they believe what they believe.

That alone will solve more problems than forcing people to do anything, even if you are inherently right.
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Footnotes:

[1] Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, p. 108.
[2] Peter Kreeft Ph.D., Philosophy 101 by Socrates – An Introductory To Philosophy Via Plato’s Apology, p. 74.
[3] Ibid., p. 10.
[4] Ibid., p. 19.
[5] John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling, p. xxxv.
[6] Tommi Juhani Hanhijarvi Ph.D., Dialectical Thinking – Zeno, Socrates, Kant, Marx, p. 32.

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Who Is The Individual? | #Perspective | #Conformity | #SocialEngineering | #Mindset

“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.”
— James Fenimore Cooper

BreakawayIndividual.com
Zy Marquiez
May 6, 2019

Earlier today, I was asked, “How many versions of you are there?” It’s a great question, so let’s explore it.

Which version reflects me best: am I the person that loves to write, or the person that loves to dance? Am I someone who loves living life to the fullest, or the shy person that retreats within himself many a time? Am I the person that’s written most love poems in my life while listening to Eminem songs, or am I the person that’s written most dark poems while listening to songs from Britney Spears? Am I the person that has no tattoos, or the person that plans on getting at least 7 of them? Am I someone who loves to have conversations, or am I someone who prefers reading a book? Am I the person that loves to read the night away, dance the night away, or talk the night away with someone? Am I the person that has that enjoys dance music, or classical music? Am I a person that is mindful, or am I someone who lacks mindfulness? Am I the book cover, or am I the book?

I am all that, and more. Every single individual has a lot more range than most people realize.

Let’s dive deeper into this conundrum.

The question, “How many versions of you are there?” has two inherent and crucial assumptions.

First amongst these is the fact that there must only be one ‘version’ of you – that you as an individual must fit within a box. This is the very definition of conformity.

Ask yourself this: why must there be just one version of any single individual out there? Are individuals not boundless by nature? Aren’t the limits individuals carry around as baggage (whether societal imposed or personally imposed) detrimental? Why would anyone limit themselves in any way shape or form?

The second inherent assumption is the fact that you are not the book, you are the book cover.

If you are seen as a ‘book cover’ and not as a book, what would that mean? That would mean that if someone finds you crying because something is incredibly painful, you might be labeled “Emo”. But, is that the version of the person? Isn’t it a little shortsighted to judge someone based on only one event, one instance?

What if the person is incredibly happy, would the same apply? Would that happy person only ever be happy and never be sad, or depressed, or frustrated? Of course not.

Seeing any single individual from only one color from the full spectrum is seeing them in an incredibly narrow way, no matter who it is. In fact, it is my contention that this is the reason that people sell themselves short, because they are not expected to have a lot of range.

Individuals are simply expected to fit within societal cookie-cutter molds, and if you don’t fit into these worlds, you are (1) labeled a black sheep, (2) treated in an askance matter, (3) looked down upon, (4) made fun of, (5) ridiculed, so on and so forth.

Countless conversations with individuals have taught me that people are who they choose to be. But who they choose to be is based incredibly around how they have been taught to see themselves, whether by family, school or society.

Such is the world we live in, and individuals – every single one of us – have to be cognizant of this.

Always remember, seeing someone as merely a book cover, is missing out on them as a book; it is missing out on the full range that this individual contains.

It is in that range that we get to see individuals for who they truly are, and it is in this range where people bond the strongest – because they get to see the deeper aspects of themselves and others in ways most never even contemplate.

And isn’t that what life is about, contemplation, bonding, meaningful relationships, and more? How is that ever supposed to happen if people are only judged by their appearances, as a veritable book cover?

Book covers will never tell the whole story, only books can; narrow versions of individuals will never offer the full range of that person, only an individual operating in their true boundless nature can.

And that true boundless nature is You.

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Suggested Reading:

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If you find value in this information, feel free to share it. This article is free and open source. All individuals have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and BreakawayIndividual.com

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About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, inquirer, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, and freelance writer who aims at empowering individuals while also studying and regularly mirroring subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

Conformity Crisis: The Use Of Labels In Society | #Conformity | #SocialEngineering

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike, than those who think differently.”
– Nietzsche

“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
– Sun Tzu

BreakawayIndividual.com
Zy Marquiez
April 28, 2019

One of the pillars of conformity is politics.

Furthermore, another of the biggest hints that conformity exists is the fact that there are ‘only’ two mainstream political ideologies – as if there ever truly were or ever will be just two. Of course, each all-encompassing ideology is an umbrella in which a variety of degrees of beliefs gravitate towards. These umbrella catch-all tenets are the way in which people are precisely controlled.

Put yourself in the comptroller’s shoes. What would be easier to do, to pin two sides against each other? Or to pin hundreds, thousands of different ideologies against each other? They couldn’t. It would be impossible. It would take exponentially more time/energy/resources than it does now for the establishment. That just wouldn’t be efficient.

Its always easier to control groups, then it is to control individuals. This is because the incisive individual is the pillar of society. He is the exception to all conformity rules.

That is why there is a constant assault manipulating reality for the individual on a daily basis.

One will rarely ever hear mainstream media expound upon how a person carried out a certain crime. Negative. That’s not ‘part of the plan’.

Something more subtle, yet still deviously sophisticated is what does take place; labeling said individual. This happens all of the time. There are countless examples of this.

Any particular issue that takes place, can never be just a person. The person that committed the crime becomes a symbol by the media. Quickly, one will hear the words black/white muslim/christian left-wing/right-wing and all those permutations in an effort to fan the flames of the divide and conquer left vs. right paradigm. This serves to socially engineer society into whatever agenda the comptrollers wish to focus on. This also forgoes most logical debates as people focus on the wrong thing, the label, rather than the alleged perpetrator as a person.

The closer a group operates to individual mentality, the stronger it will be. The farther it delves from individual mentality, the weaker it will become and the easier it will be to be manipulated. This is classic groupthink.

That is why umbrella-terms are oft-used or created and at times even subverted to serve a more duplicitous purpose.

It should be clear by now to those that have done their homework and have been paying attention how disastrous and misleading focusing on labels can be. Still, this takes place far more than people realize. In fact, it’s become so common place and automatic people don’t even contemplate anything but using labels most of the time.

This happens all over mainstream circles, and even to a large extent within alternative ranks as well. The latter is very frustrating personally, because those are folks that constantly are quick to label people i.e. sheep, whilst they themselves claim to be enlightened. Yet, by conforming to the system that the comptrollers indulge in, it shows how ‘awake’ certain folks truly are. Besides, demeaning others is one sure way to get them to open up to you. That was sarcasm by the way.

Don’t fall for the divide and conquer left/right paradigm.

Forgo the insidious use of labeling.

Be specific. Be precise.

Please always keep in mind the words of John F. Kennedy:

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

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Note:

I do understand that sometimes the use of a label or stereotype is inevitable. My point is merely for people to be cognizant that many times the media focuses on the label, rather than the larger issue at hand. Moreover, you can be sure that if the fires of division are being stoked, the label is the tip of the spear in that particular circumstance.

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About The Author:

Conformity Is The Antithesis Of Freedom | #Freedom | #Conformity | #

BreakawayIndividual.com
Zy Marquiez
April 26, 2019

Freedom is arguably the most important idea humanity has ever ruminated upon and realized. Knowing this, then, isn’t it the least bit suspicious that the idea of Freedom isn’t talked about at length in the media, school, or nigh anywhere in society? Ponder that very deeply.

One would figure that if the very tenet of Freedom was so important, and the government and those in the upper tiers of society and politics really cared for Freedom, there would be something called the Department Of Freedom in America, ensuring people’s freedom’s don’t get trampled on. For the record, preventing people from carrying out crimes, and ensuring Freedoms are two very different thing. Some “crimes” people commit are nothing more than state overreach that ironically trample all over freedom, like say, feeding the homeless. And no, that’s not a joke.

Since this idea is so vital, and arguably the main premise of our Democratic Republic, one could argue that because the very core of this ideal is central to our society, myriad courses all over America would be brought about to bring this to light. Predictably, such is not the case. Ask yourself, why is that so?

Why is it that The United States, the so called paragon of Freedom, does NOT teach Freedom or hold Freedom courses in its school system or universities? Sure, Freedom is mentioned here and there, and mostly in a historical context of the past, if it is taught at all. It takes a rather percipient individual in order to come the terms with the possible truths of those questions.

The very tenet of Freedom runs anathema to Govern-ment, which literally means to govern the mind. Another one of those notions that school doesn’t teach you. Now isn’t that interesting…

Instead of the system of government and public schooling laying the foundation for which people may learn about Freedom, why it’s so valuable, what it took to secure it, and why hundreds of millions have died over time seeking it, the opposite takes place. The system is all about forbidding freedom by the application of crushing conformity, as the late award winning teacher of the year and researcher John Taylor Gatto has exhaustively shown in all of his books, each of which shows documentary evidence of this going back more than a century.

The system being about conformity, and not about Freedom, is not a theory when countless documents from institutions talk about molding the individual from the ground up to merely become a cog in the proverbial machine. If you want further information, please read:

The True Purpose Of Modern Schooling
Dumbing Us Down
A Different Kind Of Teacher
Weapons Of Mass Instruction

Its time individuals take cognizance that the system is how it is – by design – because it’s been molded to be this way, although it wasn’t always like that. Likewise, if the conformity crisis that continues to grow unabated with impunity, the future we walk upon will be a perfect fusion between the iron fist George Orwell showed in 1984, and the velvet fist Aldous Huxley showed in A Brave New World.

Freedom is indispensable, and the comptrollers know this. The last thing the comptrollers wish to do is have people discuss what Freedom truly means. Such conversations lead to people seeing the full potentiality of freedom and those pulling the strings don’t want people contemplating such far-reaching ideas.

The notion of Freedom challenges everything, from the ground up, in every single life, in every single country, throughout time immemorial.

Ask yourself, when is the last time you ever had a conversation about Freedom – the idea itself. You probably can’t even remember, can you?

The fact that such an important tenet is oft-overlooked – and rarely spoken about in our everyday life – should go to show how easy it is to overlook critical components in our lives, even though it seems the ideals are ever-present. However, as many folks who’ve had their rights infringed upon know, at a moment’s notice, any individual’s Freedoms may be trampled upon.

Where are we going as a society? Moreover, why is it that the laws don’t apply to those at the top, but do to the ones at the bottom? That’s called a clue.

Hopefully none of us ever have to find out. Then again, many people have already had those thoughts and have gotten railroaded by the system.

Be proactive.

Always remember, conformity is the very antithesis of freedom.

Lastly, please ponder Freedom and what it means to you, and ponder it quite deeply. For most days, most people don’t think of Freedom at all.
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Note:

Freedom is a topic that can be discussed from myriad angles. The above is only offered to serve as seedling for the considerations that freedom has to to the inherent nature of all individuals.

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Suggested Reading:

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About The Author:

#Quote Of The Day | #Conformity | #Individuality

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

#Quote Of The Day – #Conformity | #Politics | #Fear

“The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”
– Adolf Hitler