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To Conform or to Nonconform:
"Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist."-Emerson
Every group cherishes its own cliché jokes. My fellow nudists never tire of exclaiming, "Oh, I didn't recognize you with your clothes on." Among conservative conformists, an oft-recycled refrain goes: "No clique is more conformist than one composed of nonconformists." Flip glibness makes the quip seem self-evident at first careless glance. At some California college campuses, visitors might think shorts were mandated on sunny days. Yet, observes Amy St. Martin, distinguishing culture from couture, "Just because one may . . . dress like most other college students, (this) does not detract from his or her personal sense of individualism or open- mindedness. What matters is not how people look physically, or which type of music they listen to, but how people relate to those around them and to issues which affect them." (- Letter in UCSD Guardian, February 25, 1993.) Analyzing the joke, one might ask: 1. "Non-conforming" to what, exactly? Everything at once? If an individual shared no values with anyone else, he/she would be isolated to the point of irrelevance, becoming the completely private person whom the Greeks called idiotes. Such loneliness could perhaps lead to enlightenment, but more likely to delusions, catatonia, solipsism, suicide. Luckily, few achieve such consistent contrariness. 2. Did these individuals, one by one, each explicitly claim the thorny title of "nonconformist?" Or was the label glued on to them by others? Hey, don't nominate me for the toughest role in the play. Unless I call myself a "nonconformist," you're not entitled to judge me by that standard. 3. Would "conformity" and "nonconformity" equally be knee-jerk reactions? I reject Hitler and his views. Therefore, am I then required to reject vegetarianism, since that habit was among his few virtues? If so, "nonconformity" would become a trap-a mirror of conformity, in which my opponents dictate my choices. 4. Is individualism, or nonconformity, or independence, such an all-or-nothing category? Or, like many human traits, more a matter of degree? On an "individualism" spectrum of zero to 100, we might place Thoreau at 95, and the "typical" terrified teen at 20-but nobody lives consistently at 100, nor at zero. In the 1950's, dissident poet Allen Ginsberg, having strongly promoted his "Beat Generation" of writers as a group, winced when hostile philistines took over the image-making. LIFE magazine (November 30, 1959) even showed a "typical Beatnik pad," including the ultimate accessory: a black-garbed "beat chick." (See Michael Schumacher, Dharma Lion, chapter 13.) So now who was running the beat revolt? The rebels or the masters? The various beat writers differed widely from each other in thought and personality. The established "TIME/LIFE beatnik" seemed like a new conformity, a reality imposed by the supposedly neutral camera. San Francisco Bay Area bohemians, from North Beach to Berkeley and beyond, laughed at the bongo-banging caricature. But their chortling was choked off a little later when, to their shocked amazement, young provincials started "landing on the Beach"-already dressed down in media-median hip costumes, as wannabee "beatniks." Looking for some escape from The System, kids had bought a ready-made dissent kit. Style was all. The packaging was the content. LIFE, hoping to hurt the cultural revolutionists, had recruited more dropouts and runaways to their cause. Reactionaries helped the tides sweeping Eisenhower's grandchildren onto North Beach, huddling together for shelter against militarism, racism, and for- sure conformity, in which many viewed dissent as treason. The older bohos, appalled at the ignorance of these new diggers, belittled them as "high-school hippies." They then set about educating them in jazz, poetry, anarchism, painting, Zen, pot, happenings, free thought, free expression, and free love. A community was reviving, led by creatives but also including mere friends, fans, and lovers, trying to reject pat answers and ask better questions; a paradoxical community containing many extreme individualists, who were held together by their willingness to tolerate each one "doing his own thing." In the 1960's, when the media again tried to redefine bohemia, the story-subjects tried to edit the editors, by staging a mock funeral parade for "Hippie, Son of Media." And, more effectively, they invented their own "underground" newspapers, the freest press ever. Since the 1840's or so, in cities and in rural utopias, European and North American bohemians have worn many styles and tags, supported and abandoned many trends, nonconforming to old systems while trying to build anew. To the conformists, they look like a trivial parade of silly faddists. To themselves, ignoring their own history, they seem unprecedented. To the libertarian, a scarlet thread appears, connecting them all-a repressed desire for bodily and mental freedoms; for love; for a chance to think and re-think; for ways to re-connect with nature. So these alleged nonconformists often do conform: not to any One Revealed Truth, but more vaguely, more basically, perhaps biologically: to a common human tropism, growing toward liberty.
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