One of the most revealing ways to classify people is to determine the degree and aggressiveness of their conformity. Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system, the horizontal axis of which runs from left to right from tradition to independent thinking, and the vertical axis runs from passivity from below to aggression from above. The resulting four quadrants define four types of people. Starting at the top left and moving counterclockwise: aggressive conventionalism, passive conventionalism, passive independence, and aggressive independence.
I think you will find people of all these types in almost any society. The quadrant these people will belong to is largely determined by their personality, and not by the beliefs prevailing in their society. [1]
Both points can be best proven with small children. Anyone who has been to elementary school has seen all four types of people. The fact that school rules are highly arbitrary provides strong evidence that the class and quadrant to which a person belongs depends more on himself than on the rules.
The kids in the upper left quadrant, aggressive conventionalists, are talkers. They believe not only that the rules must be followed, but that those who disobey them must be punished.
Children in the lower left quadrant, passive conventionalists, are like innocent sheep. They are careful, obey the rules, but when other children break the rules, our sheep worry that the violating children will be punished, although they do not achieve this punishment.
Children in the lower right quadrant whose thinking is passive-independent are dreamers. They don't really care about the rules, and they probably aren't fully familiar with them.
Children in the upper right quadrant, whose thinking is aggressive-independent, are disobedient. When faced with a rule, they want to question it. If they are told what and how to do, they want to do the opposite.
Of course, speaking about conformism, you need to clarify what exactly it refers to, and also take into account that the thinking of children changes with age. In the case of young children, conformity refers to the rules set by adults. With age, their peers become the source of the rules. Thus, a group of adolescents who equally disregard school rules are not independent, rather the opposite.
In adulthood, we can recognize these four species by their distinctive features, just as we distinguish different species of birds. The slogan of aggressive conventionalists is “Break down <name of another group>”! (It is rather disturbing to see an exclamation point after the variable that denotes the name of a group of people, but this is the whole problem of aggressive conventionalists). The slogan of passive conventionalists is "What will the neighbors think?" The slogan of people with passive-independent thinking is "To each his own." Finally, the slogan of the aggressively independent - "And yet it turns!"
All four of these types are not equally common. There are more passive people than aggressive people, and there are many more people with traditional thinking than independent people. Thus, passive conventionalists are the largest group, and aggressively independent people are the least.
Since the quadrant is largely determined by the person's personality rather than the nature of the rules, most people would find themselves in the same quadrant regardless of the society in which they grew up.
Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote:
Sometimes I ask students what their position on slavery would be if they were white and lived in the South before the liberation of the slaves. And you know what? They would all be fighters for the abolition of slavery! They would all bravely oppose slavery and work tirelessly for its abolition.
George is too polite to talk about it, but of course that would not be the case. And we shouldn't just assume that his students would behave like other people. The idea is that aggressive conventionalists would have behaved the same way in that era. In other words, they would not just not fight slavery, they would be its ardent defenders.
I admit I'm biased, but it seems to me that aggressive conventionalists are responsible for a huge amount of trouble in the world. I believe that many of the customs that have formed since the Enlightenment were created precisely to protect society from aggressive conventionalists. In particular, one can recall the rejection of the concept of heresy and its replacement by the principle of free discussion of all kinds of ideas. This principle even applied to those ideas that are currently considered unacceptable, and also excluded the punishment of those who tested the viability of these ideas in practice. [2]
Why defend people with independent thinking? Then, that all new ideas live in their heads. To be a successful scientist, for example, is not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong. Traditional people can't do that. That is why all the leaders of successful startups not only have independent thinking, their minds can show some kind of aggression. The fact that societies prosper only to the extent that they have developed the custom of keeping traditional people at a distance is not accidental. [3]
It has become apparent to many of us that the customs that protect free thinking have weakened over the past few years. Some say that we are overreacting - as if they have not weakened, or weakened, but this will help in achieving a great goal. I will immediately refute the last statement. When ordinary people get the upper hand, they always say that they are doing everything for the great good. It's just that each time it turns out that we are talking about a completely different, inappropriate great good.
As for the rest of the theses regarding concerns about the sensitivity of people with independent views and restrictions on freedom of thought - this cannot be judged if you yourself do not have an independent mind. You cannot estimate the number of slighted ideas if you do not have them. Only free-minded people can come up with cutting edge ideas. This is why they tend to be very sensitive to changes in terms of freedom of thought. These people are canaries in the mine.
People with traditional thinking say that they do not want to curtail the discussion of all ideas in general, they want to exclude only bad ideas.
You might think that this phrase alone makes it clear what a dangerous game they are playing. I'll explain anyway. There are two reasons why we should be able to discuss even “bad” ideas.
First, any way of deciding which ideas to ban will inevitably lead to mistakes. Moreover, none of the smart ones wants to do such work, which means that in the end it will be done by stupid people. If a process can lead to a lot of errors, you need to leave room for maneuver. In this case, it means that you need to ban fewer ideas than you want. Aggressive conventionalists cannot do that. Partly because they like to see people being punished - they've had it since childhood. Partly because they are in competition with each other. The adherents of orthodoxy cannot allow any borderline ideas to exist, because this gives other people the opportunity to press them in terms of moral purity, perhaps these sides will even be pitted.As a result, instead of room for maneuver, we fly to the bottom, and on this bottom everything is prohibited that can in principle be prohibited. [4]
The second reason why the discussion of ideas is dangerous is that the ideas are more closely related than they appear. This means that limiting the discussion of certain topics may affect not only these topics. The restrictions will apply to all topics related to the prohibited. And this is not even an edge situation. This is exactly what happens with the best ideas: they affect areas that are very far from the original. Nursing ideas in a world where all other ideas are prohibited is like playing football on a field where there is a minefield in front of one of the gates. You are not just playing the same game on a slightly different field. You are playing a very dangerous game on a seemingly safe field.
Earlier, independent people defended themselves by gathering in certain institutions - first in the courts and then in universities. There they could, to some extent, establish their own rules. In places where people work with ideas, there are usually traditions that protect freedom of thought. This is as obvious as high-power air filters in microchip factories or noise isolation in recording studios. When aggressive inhabitants were furious with something, for the last couple of centuries it was possible to hide from them in universities.
Now, unfortunately, this trick may not work - the latest wave of intolerance originated in universities. It began in the mid-1980s, seemed to be dead by 2000, but recently it has flared up again with the advent of social media. Unfortunately, it looks like this is exactly what Silicon Valley was trying to achieve. Despite the fact that the people who run Silicon Valley are mostly independent, they have given the aggressive lay people a tool they could only dream of.
On the other hand, a decline in the spirit of freedom of thought in universities is both a symptom and a reason for the departure of many free-thinking people.
People who would have become professors 50 years ago now have other possibilities. Now they can become analysts or take on startups. Both of these areas require the ability to think independently. If these people were professors, they would have put up more resistance in the struggle for academic freedom. Perhaps the picture of people with freedom of thought fleeing from declining universities is too grim. Perhaps universities are going downhill because many of these people have already left. [5]
Despite the fact that I spent a lot of time thinking about this situation, I cannot predict the outcome. Will universities be able to reverse the trend and remain institutions where free-thinking people want to gather? Or will these people gradually abandon them? If this happens, then I am afraid to imagine the loss.
Be that as it may, I keep hope in the long run. People with independent thinking can protect themselves. If existing institutions are compromised, these people will create new ones. This will take imagination. But imagination is, after all, their specialty.
Notes
[1] Of course, I understand that if human qualities are different in any two respects, you can use them as axes and derive the resulting four quadrants of personality types. So I am actually claiming that the axes are orthogonal, and there is considerable variation in both.
[2] Aggressive inhabitants are not responsible for all the troubles in the world. A far greater source of trouble is some charismatic leader who comes to power by reaching out to them. When such a leader appears, ordinary people become much more dangerous.
[3] When I ran Y Combinator, I was never afraid to write lyrics that offended the common people. If YC were a cookie company, I would be faced with a difficult moral choice. Ordinary people eat cookies too. But they don't launch successful startups. If I discouraged them from joining YC, we would simply have to read fewer applications.
[4] In one area, progress has been made: the penalties for talking about forbidden ideas are less severe than in the past. The risk of being killed is low, at least in wealthier countries. Aggressive inhabitants are mostly satisfied that those who disagree with them are fired.
[5] Many professors are independent - especially in mathematics, science and engineering. Nevertheless, the state of affairs can be more accurately understood by students representing a large part of society (which means that there are more people with a traditional way of thinking among them). Thus, the conflict between students and teachers is essentially a conflict between people of different classes and types.
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