Not too long ago, various biologists were studying zebras out in the wild. The problem they kept confronting in their observation of individual zebras was discerning a given subject as it milled about with the herd. Someone came up with the idea to mark his subject with a simple blot of paint so that he could keep track of the subject.
To their horror, the lions cut that individual from the herd and ate it almost immediately. Thus, it was surmised, the safety of the individual within a zebra herd was in blending in with the rest of the zebras. Those who stand distinct will be identified as individuals and consumed.
When I first heard of this study, it struck me in a very significant way. Most who know me will attest to the fact that I've walked the earth these many years with a large paint blot on me for any apex predator to see. When I was a young lieutenant, I tried like mad to wash it off. By the time I was twenty-seven, I realized that it was a pointless exercise and that I must find a way to make due, malformed though I might be.
It's a weird dichotomy for me, and it's something that I've chased around in my head for decades. Mistrusting groups of people while being a Marine. Working for a government that I mistrust. An old friend wrote to me the other day that, "Your paranoia of anything new and the world writ large is scary to me. Not because of the things that cause it; because of what your nightmares must look like." (I responded with, "My nightmare is Solzhenitsyn's description of what happened to his country.")
If nothing else, these suspicions have allowed me to think critically in ways that are probably far from standard and I think it has been useful in those instances where I can avoid cynicism at all costs. What follows, therefore, is a realistic view of the healthy interaction between an individual and the group, the mob, the masses, "culture"; how "duty" and "patriotism" jibe with "individual sovereignty" and "free will"; and finally, how the difficult path which is separate from that of the herd justifies our suffering and allows us to transcend it.
Standing Out
Any explanation that seeks to explain the way things are now without looking from whence we came leaves out the conditions under which this entire reality is operating. Hobbes, Locke, Nozick, et al recognized this, but most obviate the requirement to consider this stage of history in the context of a "state of nature". I will spare the 10,000 words that the worthies referenced above used to explain how we derive "natural rights" because that isn't germane to my argument.
Sometime between 550,000 and 750,000 years ago, homo sapiens became distinct from our nearest ancestors. What's never really talked about is how a species of "featherless bipeds" with very unimpressive physical defenses survived and reproduced with enough success to take over the world. The obvious answer is that we grouped together into tribes and adopted habits and techniques unique to the most successful of those nascent groups. Perhaps the largest factor that reinforced this was the fact that, unlike female apes, human females were very selective in whom they mated with. Also, while this is supposition, I think the beta-version of the human race had a heightened ability to communicate or at least empathize at least a subconscious level that gave them an advantage over other predators. Thus, humans strived, suffered, overcame, and thrived in groups that conformed to very strict patterns of behavior. An individual who would deviate from those patterns was either quickly killed off or similarly excluded from the group and died alone because his deviation could result in the decimation of the entire tribe. Kierkegaard brushed up against this when he said:
"Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. A person keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there."
The stakes were high indeed in those days. But over time, men who had new ideas did emerge to the benefit of their tribe. Think on it for a second, those geniuses had a tightrope to walk, didn't they? They had to learn the various behavior patterns that had benefitted their tribe for generations. They had to prove their worth in executing those patterns competently. They had to conceive of a "better way" and then have both the competence and reputation to articulate their "new ideas" to the rest of the tribe sufficiently to convince their mates to diverge from the "old ways" of doing things. Only then would their new ideas be tested at quite a risk to their tribe, people whom they loved and were devoted to. Any failure potentially meant the abrupt end of everything and everyone they knew. I think this adequately describes the reason why such geniuses are seen to be a bit crazy and are easily and casually disregarded even now. More so, this completely describes the anxiety that Kierkegaard described above.
Now, rather than trace all of the advances made by men such as these, let's just think for a moment about what all this means. What began as collections of very small tribes of people have resulted in 8+ billion people across the globe. There was error and there was blood but we somehow managed to get to the year 2022. I would submit that all of this was made possible by the continued selection across time of those who were not simply complacent to go along with the tribe. Thinking critically within a given pattern of behavior is in our DNA. The circumstances are not anywhere close to being as dire as they were in the beginning, but the propensity to expand outside of established norms is deep within our genes and within our psyche. Each of us is the sum of the men and women who were willing to risk everything to find a better answer to the problems encountered through all of the suffering and striving for hundreds of thousands of years. Placed in this light, it is clear that we have a duty to our ancestors and our families today to fulfill all of the requirements that they surmounted to advance us to this point.
It is in this that we can answer the dichotomy posed above between being a member of the herd while yet standing out from the herd. There remains risk involved and it is not easy. For most, the call to conform and "stay in one's lane" is the obvious and least strenuous choice. As Fredrich Nietzsche once said:
“A traveler who had seen many countries, peoples and several of the earth’s continents was asked what attribute he had found in men everywhere. He said: “They have a propensity for laziness.” To others, it seems that he should have said: “They are all fearful. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions.” In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that there will be no second chance for his oneness to coalesce from the strangely variegated assortment that he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience – why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conformity and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that forces the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. For the majority it is idleness, inertia, in short that propensity for laziness of which the traveler spoke. He is right: men are even lazier than they are fearful.”
So the pay off for not risking the disapproval of society, for accepting conventional wisdom without taking the time and effort to analyze it, is safety. The lions can't see you against the backdrop of the rest of the herd.
What would then justify standing out from the crowd? What is it that dwells within each of us to step out of line? Why face Kierkegaard's "anxiety" if we don't have to?
Well, you're going to suffer either way. You will feel pain whether you walk their line or not. Reality is structured in that manner and there's no arguing or bargaining your way around it.
But you do have a choice as to how you will face that pain, that suffering. The legacy of our anscestors is choice in what we believe and how we embody that belief in how we act. It is thus our responsibility to make use of that legacy to learn about the world around us, to understand what our limitations are, to dare to step beyond those limitations when it is appropriate and necessary for us to do so. Philosophers for time out of mind have done so and attached adjectives like "meaningful", "satisfaction", "proper", or "complete" to describe life as a result of having done so.
I find those descriptions to be somehow incomplete. Nietzsche up there threw out "laziness" and "fearful" in describing those who refused to accept the burden of originality. I tend to agree, and I've come to the conclusion that such negative connotations reflect an unwillingness to look within oneself and realize the potential that is inside of us. The realization of that potential by constant learning, improvement, and reflection that is then embodied in our interaction with the world is what we owe to that legacy that was freely given to us by dint of simply existing in our current form.
We learn with the tribe as we grow older. We understand its ways, what keeps it thriving and why. Then it becomes our lot to look within us, to see the potential there, to make up our own minds, and to choose to step out and lead it. The failure and the repetition is necessary for us to realize the full value of what is inside us. That potential doesn't belong simply to us though. It is on loan from our ancestors. It is the birthright of our children and their children. It belongs to the tribe.
Stand out.
