What is Conformity?

[soos_mite_ah]

I'm rewatching this video in tandem with the Epistemic Responsibility video. 

I'm going to summarize this video in my own words so let me know how well I have understood this video.

I think that the video provides a plethora of examples of conformity without going into why these things are conformity. These are the common themes I have found from the examples in the video: 

Conformity is the by product of group think and cultural conditioning and is a form of survival to navigate in various social systems/ bubbles. 

Conformity comes from not deconstructing these mechanisms of culture and group think. It's doing things without properly thinking through things and checking in with yourself to see if something feels authentic. Whether or not something is coming from a conformist place can come from how you have come to your conclusions and the level of thinking you have utilized to get to your conclusions. This is where I feel like I see intersection between the Conformity video as well as the Epistemic Responsibility video. 

Some forms of conformity is denser than others as you go down the sprial. Stage blue conformity (around religion, patriarchy, racism etc.) can be more tangible than say stage yellow conformity (the conformity in higher education and the biases that can come from it). 

I guess I'm wondering is that where does the divide between choosing something authentically and rationalizing it as a response to fall back into conformity lie? For example, say I decide to buy a house for my own reasons. Is that me rationalizing and falling in line with the conformity of the American dream or is it me genuinely thinking through things and making an authentic decision? I guess to answer that question you need to ask yourself to what extent did you deconstruct your desires to buy a house and still choose to do so anyway. Because deconstuction isn't just taking things apart, it's taking things apart to understand it better and see what parts you want to keep and alter.

For example, if you were to deconstruct a sandwhich, you would take it apart and see what the ingrediants are. Maybe you'll see that you don't like the meat as much so you may get rid of it. Or maybe you like the meat and you decide that you want to have turkey instead of ham. Maybe you pick and choose which vegetables you want and then make your own sandwich out of scratch. Maybe you realize dairy hurts your stomach so you decide to leave cheese out of it. Or maybe, you decide a sandwich isn't for you and you get something else entirely for lunch. Just because you deconstruct the sandwich doesn't mean you can't have a sandwich or enjoy one. It's about being mindful of what goes into it, what you like and don't like, and getting a better understanding so you can make a better decision about it. The same form of thinking around deconstruction can be applied to culture, life decisions, or social groups. Conformity would be just eating the sandwich without stopping to think about what goes into it, whether you like it, where your tastes are coming from etc. 

My other question is what consitutes as following a source in a conformist way versus using sources to fine tune your own understanding? I know when you're researching something, the quality of your sources matters a lot in terms of credibility and the extent of which it's been tested and accurate (then again, you can also deconstruct what is deemed credible and what consitutes accurate testing or else that can also fall into the conformity trap). I guess you could say direct experience but I also think that direct experience can come with it's own biases due to things like sample size and not having enough of a breadth of perspective to accurately summarize a concept or phenomenon. And what's to say that taking in more perspectives doesn't add to the illusions or biases getting piled on top of each other?  Or perhaps is taking in more perceptions kind of like a sophisticated camera that uses multiple slightly distorted lenses to create a high resolution picture? I guess maybe it's the extent of which you're consciously taking in information?