Obedience, Conformity, and Selfishness

Obedience, Conformity, and Selfishness

In my opinion, most people’s values, morality, and hence their behavior, are not the result of the use of Intellectual Choice or Heartfelt Compassion for others, but rather of (1) Obedience – “I must do it because I am told to do it,” (2) Conformity– “I must do it because everyone else is doing it,” and (3) Selfishness – “I am going to do it because it gives me pleasure regardless of the suffering itmight be causing others.”

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From The Sane Society (1954) by Erich Fromm

What is so deceptive about the state of mind of the members of a society is the “consensual validation“ of their concepts. It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing whatsoever on reason or mental health. Just as there is a „folie à deux“ there is a „folie à millions.“ The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make them virtuous, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make them sane.

There is, however, an important difference between individual and social mental illness, which suggests differentiation between the two concepts: that of defect, and that of neurosis. If a person fails to attain freedom, spontaneity, a genuine expression of self, he may be considered to have a severe defect, provided we assume that freedom and spontaneity are the objective goals to be attained by every human being. If such a goal is not attained by the majority of members of any given society, we deal with the phenomenon of socially patterned defect. The individual shares it with many others; he is not aware of it as a defect, and his security is not threatened by the experience of being different, of being an outcast, as it were. What he may have lost in richness and in a genuine feeling of happiness is made up by the security of fitting in with the rest of mankind – as he knows them. As a matter of fact, his very defect may have been raised {141} to a virtue of his culture, and thus may give him an enhanced feeling of achievement. (pp. 14-15)

The mentally healthy person is the productive and unalienated person; the person who relates himself to the world lovingly, and who uses his reason to grasp reality objectively; who experiences himself as a unique individual entity, and at the same time feels one with his fellow man; who is not subject to irrational authority, and who accepts willingly the rational authority of conscience and reason; who is in the process of being born as long as he is alive, and considers the gift of life the most precious chance he has.(p. 275)

From Demian (1919) by Hermann Hesse

Those  who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own  judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them; things are  forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and  other things are allowed to them that are generally despised. Each person must  stand on his own feet.