Conformity Examples Mega-Thread

[ExploringReality]

@Leo Gura

Explain what you mean by how badly we handle this topic. Your episode is very dense and is very sprawling, there's so much juice that just watching it once or twice isn't enough, there is always going to be more that went over my head

[Salvijus]

1 hour ago, Terell Kirby said:

Dry January 

More power to those that want to incorporate a healthier way of living. 

More power to the events like these that inspire people to lift themselves up. 

Edited Saturday at 06:43 PM by Salvijus

[Terell Kirby]

Meritocracy as a belief system. Many in the West have adopted this unconsciously, even those impacted in inequity.

Of course conformity can serve powerful minorities through mass adoption- meritocracy and the ‘American Dream’ are a few examples.

Libertarians are most prone to this kind of conformity-comes with the package of being libertarian.

Edited Saturday at 07:42 PM by Terell Kirby

[LambdaDelta]

9 hours ago, Davino said:

Then you might also take that as feedback on how to improve future communications, instead of totally offloading responsibility into the audience.

That's not quite fair since the point of the episode was to make the audience realize their full responsibility for their epistemology, behaviors, relationship to reality, and so on. The whole conformity spiel was a long-winded buildup to the heart of the matter — autonomy of mind and live intelligence. And it's these two crucial aspects that don't get the proper attention in discussions here; we can list all the examples we want but it's all content, not true structural analysis. Of course Leo self-aggrandizes to an extent, a lot of his own examples aren't that much better; some are deep but most just inflate the list, though that's still useful to demonstrate the breadth of the issue. "4 hours of explanation wasn't enough" is also a moot point, very few Actualized episodes work at full power as standalones; really grasping this one requires at least synergy with the Survival series, What is Will, How Your Mind Interprets Reality, Content vs. Structure, Social Matrix, and a bunch of other auxiliary ones. That's been repeatedly stated elsewhere but the viewer should also be intelligent enough to intuit it on their own. So the other side of what you're trying to say is a meta-lesson to stop relying so much on Leo's guidance and draw your own conclusions he himself may not have considered yet that'll also be fine-tuned to your particular situation. For instance, the episode largely dealt with collective conformity, but to those of us actively self-actualizing or very hermit-like by nature that's not necessarily relevant, far more insidious is the personal conformity of getting stuck in ways/paradigms we ourselves developed, especially when those have been yielding results far above par. 

[LambdaDelta]

Back to silly examples, last year after the blog post praising croc socks I immediately went and bought a pair. Turns out they're not comfy to wear at all, particularly putting them on. So they just collect dust in the drawer most times except the rare occasions I hand them to guests as an entertaining prop. 

[lostingenosmaze]

On 1/2/2026 at 0:40 AM, lostingenosmaze said:

@Carl-Richard Thinking conformity is not bad is conformity 🤪

 

[Terell Kirby]

Clothing- why do we wear clothes?:

 

[UnbornTao]

21 minutes ago, Terell Kirby said:

Clothing- why do we wear clothes?:

 

Ironically enough, nudism can also be a form of conformity - like at nudist beaches.

How much of a nonconformist do you have to be to go to a nudist beach wearing a swimsuit? Disgusting.

 

[Terell Kirby]

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

How much of a nonconformist do you have to be to go to a nudist beach wearing a swimsuit? Disgusting.

 

Haha that would be a form of voyeurism, creepy, yes - but can be authentically non conformist and isn’t illegal in this context.

Edited Sunday at 08:01 PM by Terell Kirby

[UnbornTao]

22 minutes ago, Terell Kirby said:

Haha that would be a form of voyeurism, creepy, yes - but can be authentically non conformist and isn’t illegal in this context.

The "disgusting" bit was a joke, actually favoring nudism over clothing. But yeah. The conformity topic is easy to make fun of - so I do.

[Human Mint]

On 3/1/2026 at 10:48 AM, Vali2003 said:

Not everyone’s bodies are the same. I can run on pavement without cushioned shoes without problems. It depends how your body distributes the force — which depends on how tense your fascia tensegrity network is.  

That's cool. 

[Human Mint]

On 3/1/2026 at 10:57 AM, Rigel said:

This is false. I’ve been going barefoot on pavement for years & my feet & legs are healthier than they’ve ever been. I run a lot on pavement too. You just need to be smart about progressive transition if you are starting from a weak place.

Not only is not my case, but also add to that the fact that I hate running in the city, because you have to be much careful with the traffic, and you have to stop constantly because of red lights, and that running in nature has no rival in terms of awesomness. 

Although the adrenaline of running in the city has its own flavour.

[Fandango]

Eating sushi with chopsticks instead of a fork when you are not Japanese is conformity 

[Carl-Richard]

1 minute ago, Fandango said:

Eating sushi with chopsticks instead of a fork when you are not Japanese is conformity 

Eating sushi with chopsticks when you are Japanese is conformity.

Eating with a knife and fork is the epitome of conformity.

[Terell Kirby]

A lot of Sex education in schools is conformity.

Most of it comes from the scientific paradigm-we are teaching kids about diseases and such (which is good), but could use more unconventional and experiential modes of learning.

Having kids/teens understand what horniness is and how to manage it responsibly, creating learning environments where kids can talk openly, not just get lectured by some old professor

[Fandango]

8 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Eating sushi with chopsticks when you are Japanese is conformity.

Eating with a knife and fork is the epitome of conformity.

We use tools instead of our hands for higiene although in many countries even Japan they use their hands

[Human Mint]

How are you supposed to break the food into smaller pieces cleanly without fork and knife? 

You are throwing bad examples, wait until you have better ones and then share it.

Edited Sunday at 09:05 PM by Human Mint

[Husseinisdoingfine]

 

[Terell Kirby]

2 minutes ago, Human Mint said:

How are you supposed to break the food into smaller pieces cleanly without fork and knife? 

You are throwing bad examples, wait until you have better ones and then share it.

Just because something works for practical reasons doesn't mean it can't be done out of conformity.

Think about how many things we adopt without actually questioning why we do it and where it came from.

The point is not that we adopt things, but its the lack of investigation and questioning into the why. This is the essence of conformity.. very subtle

[Human Mint]

32 minutes ago, Terell Kirby said:

Just because something works for practical reasons doesn't mean it can't be done out of conformity.

Think about how many things we adopt without actually questioning why we do it and where it came from.

The point is not that we adopt things, but its the lack of investigation and questioning into the why. This is the essence of conformity.. very subtle

Bad example, next one