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So you have an external locus of control, that sounds like a personal problem but let’s roll with it. Maybe you’re right and the rules aren’t set by your peers,

So you have an external locus of control, that sounds like a personal problem but let’s roll with it. Maybe you’re right and the rules aren’t set by your peers, but that wasn’t the point of the example. The point was conventional-minded people can often feel rebellious by following a certain garden path of “conventional rebellion” that has been specifically laid out for them. That doesn’t actually make them independent-minded. In fact, you’re even worse off than you think because both the society that you live in and the specific way in which you choose to rebel against it are both completely outside your control and presented to you as closed systems that you have no input or contribution to.

soundnote 6y ago
As one example, flouting your skepticism in r/atheism is easy. Coming out as an atheist in the Bible Belt without living on r/atheism first? Orders of magnitude more difficult. Being a pro-social justice liberal in the universities is trivial - the whole social environment supports it. Be an open, conservative Catholic in one? We are anti-slavery today because we really believe it, but let's not forget that one huge factor in us being so is that it's laughably easy to be so in the modern West. Environment matters.
dencodev 6y ago
What is conventional rebellion? I label myself as anti-capitalist which is pretty uncommon in the US, but communism as a concept is not in any way unique or new and there have been millions of supporters of communism throughout history. If I identify with values that less than 1% of the population identifies with, am I conformist?