What I'm Scared Of...
Sep. 22nd, 2005 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_elyanI was thinking about this point, and what occurred to me was:
I'm not scared of conformity (I'm an _accountant_, for heaven's sake).
I'm not even scared of being expected to conform (see earlier answer).
What I'm scared of is a situation where conformity ceases to be an issue, because there is no alternative, either in deed or (more importantly) in thought. A situation where everyone does the same thing not because they want to, or need to, but because that's what they do.
This is why I have to get out of Kings Lynn, and was why at an earlier age I had to get out of Teesside. It's the feeling that we do what we do because there's nothing else - not that there's nothing to do, but that there's nothing else we can imagine being able to do.
This is of course linked to the leaving do thing to some extent. I have not had a single taker for going for a curry, but several for going to the pub - this is because going to the pub is what we do if we want to do something - that's the way it is.
I remember asking in an email if anyone fancied going to a comedy gig at King's Lynn Corn Exchange. You could have heard a pin drop - the strong impression I got (which I freely admit may have been completely wrong) was that it wasn't that people didn't want to go to a comedy gig, it was that it wasn't for them to go to comedy gigs, and that there were other people (most of whom, presumably, wore black polo-necks and berets, and smoked very thin cigarettes) who did things like that.
Hell's teeth, even the people I trained with (who were not interested in much that didn't involve inflated pigs' bladders or modern substitute) allowed themselves to be shepherded up to Highgate once to see Ardal O'Hanlon...
In my experince, it is always as well to beware of any place whose inhabitants think it is the best place on God's green earth. There are exceptions (Edinburgh, arguably Liverpool), but in many cases, that is a clear indication that people can't (or more often don't want to) see beyond their own town limits - the Oglaroon problem in real life.
I remember when I was 12, everyone in my second-year class at comprehensive in Middlesbrough being asked to write a short letter to an imaginary new classmate, about the class. The teacher proudly told us about how many people had commented on how friendly the class was - not having much of an appetite for blood, he didn't let on that I was a gap in the ranks. The class wasn't friendly to me because I wasn't one of them, and one thing that any non-conformist who grew up in a conformist town (especially in the North, as it happens) will know that all the rich talk of how friendly the place is ignores the fact that if you aren't entirely with them, you are very definitely deemed to be against them.
I was (by comprehensive standards) a non-conformist, listening to the Beatles instead of Sinitta and Kylie Minogue (this was long before she lost her surname). When we all had to do a talk on a pet subject, I chose The Beatles ... and the next person up chose "Why we should not like the Beatles". I didn't have a local accent, I didn't do local things, and worst of all I didn't give a stuff how the Boro got on. I didn't conform, in a place where nonconformity wasn't even an aberattion, it was incomprehensible.
Even though I am not especially nonconformist now (except to other accountants), I would still struggle to live in a place where I didn't have the option, and the availability of nonconformity. I don't feel that in Lynn, and thuis I have to get away from it, or finally start channelling Viv Stanshall in the High treet, and be mown down in a hail of turnips and phlegm.
[This whole question of the unimaginable nature of nonconformity is what makes, to my mind, the concept of Newspeak the crowning glory of "1984". The Wittgensteinian notion that if a thing cannot be described, it cannot be thought - that's the kind of idea that changes the world, alas]
I'm not scared of conformity (I'm an _accountant_, for heaven's sake).
I'm not even scared of being expected to conform (see earlier answer).
What I'm scared of is a situation where conformity ceases to be an issue, because there is no alternative, either in deed or (more importantly) in thought. A situation where everyone does the same thing not because they want to, or need to, but because that's what they do.
This is why I have to get out of Kings Lynn, and was why at an earlier age I had to get out of Teesside. It's the feeling that we do what we do because there's nothing else - not that there's nothing to do, but that there's nothing else we can imagine being able to do.
This is of course linked to the leaving do thing to some extent. I have not had a single taker for going for a curry, but several for going to the pub - this is because going to the pub is what we do if we want to do something - that's the way it is.
I remember asking in an email if anyone fancied going to a comedy gig at King's Lynn Corn Exchange. You could have heard a pin drop - the strong impression I got (which I freely admit may have been completely wrong) was that it wasn't that people didn't want to go to a comedy gig, it was that it wasn't for them to go to comedy gigs, and that there were other people (most of whom, presumably, wore black polo-necks and berets, and smoked very thin cigarettes) who did things like that.
Hell's teeth, even the people I trained with (who were not interested in much that didn't involve inflated pigs' bladders or modern substitute) allowed themselves to be shepherded up to Highgate once to see Ardal O'Hanlon...
In my experince, it is always as well to beware of any place whose inhabitants think it is the best place on God's green earth. There are exceptions (Edinburgh, arguably Liverpool), but in many cases, that is a clear indication that people can't (or more often don't want to) see beyond their own town limits - the Oglaroon problem in real life.
I remember when I was 12, everyone in my second-year class at comprehensive in Middlesbrough being asked to write a short letter to an imaginary new classmate, about the class. The teacher proudly told us about how many people had commented on how friendly the class was - not having much of an appetite for blood, he didn't let on that I was a gap in the ranks. The class wasn't friendly to me because I wasn't one of them, and one thing that any non-conformist who grew up in a conformist town (especially in the North, as it happens) will know that all the rich talk of how friendly the place is ignores the fact that if you aren't entirely with them, you are very definitely deemed to be against them.
I was (by comprehensive standards) a non-conformist, listening to the Beatles instead of Sinitta and Kylie Minogue (this was long before she lost her surname). When we all had to do a talk on a pet subject, I chose The Beatles ... and the next person up chose "Why we should not like the Beatles". I didn't have a local accent, I didn't do local things, and worst of all I didn't give a stuff how the Boro got on. I didn't conform, in a place where nonconformity wasn't even an aberattion, it was incomprehensible.
Even though I am not especially nonconformist now (except to other accountants), I would still struggle to live in a place where I didn't have the option, and the availability of nonconformity. I don't feel that in Lynn, and thuis I have to get away from it, or finally start channelling Viv Stanshall in the High treet, and be mown down in a hail of turnips and phlegm.
[This whole question of the unimaginable nature of nonconformity is what makes, to my mind, the concept of Newspeak the crowning glory of "1984". The Wittgensteinian notion that if a thing cannot be described, it cannot be thought - that's the kind of idea that changes the world, alas]
