“Once you learn to think, conformity becomes a difficult habit to adopt again. Doubt and critical examination become your guide, not for rebellion but for evolution.
"No one who learns to think can go back to obey as he did before, not out of a rebellious spirit, but out of the habit he has acquired to question and examine everything. "~ Hannah Arendt from her essay 'Some questions about moral philosophy'
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That’s very true. Adopt that habit early enough and it’s with you for life. It annoys many people, and often you know it at the time and can make it uncomfortable in the moment, but you can’t contemplate doing anything different.
When you’re young it perhaps takes courage, but eventually your subconscious senses the greater perils of conformity and you do it without hesitation. Not that you should be non-conformist as a master of course either. If your perception of the truth aligns close enough with others, or there’s differences but it doesn’t really matter, you can go along with it. But when it doesn’t, you don’t. Ayn Rand said something similar, along the lines that sticking to what (she perceived) the truth to be didn’t take courage, if anything it’s that she’s not brave enough to depart from reality.
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