Day 2 encourages participants to write creatively about the theme of conformity, exploring its nuances and personal or fictional examples.
Theme Explanation
Conformity is a complex word with many nuances and consequences.
It can be akin to safety but also create danger.
The challenge asks: Is conformity good or bad?
The prompt is both a reflection on societal views valuing non-conformity as well as an exploration of the risks of growing in the wrong direction.
Crawford provided examples which included cultural references like Apple’s 1984 ad and Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
ARTIFACT 01 > Retro Recipes x Commodore. “4K Restoration: 1984 Super Bowl APPLE MACINTOSH Ad by Ridley Scott.” YouTube, 12 Feb 2023.
ARTIFACT 02 > Unsolicited advice. “Why You Can’t Trust Good People | Kafka’s Metamorphosis.” YouTube, 03 Dec 2023.
Reflective Questions
What does conformity mean to you personally?
Have you conformed to expectations you later regretted?
Have you refused to conform, and what were the outcomes?
When reflecting, consider the consequences for characters who conform or refuse to conform. One can also explore the power dynamics in scenarios involving conformity and protest.
Creative Exploration
Crawford encourages participants to consider writing about conformity through poetry, and to use personal experiences or fictional examples to explore the theme.
"The possibilities here are endless."
CREATIVE BRAINSTORMING / PREPARATIONS / REFLECTIONS
CONFORMITY: the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms, driven by real or imagined social pressure to fit in or be correct. It is a pervasive social influence that affects decision-making, often leading individuals to align with a group to gain approval (normative) or gain knowledge. Correspondence in form, manner, or character. (Oxford / MW)
Psychology Today notes how: “Conformity is the tendency for an individual to align their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those of the people around them. Conformity can take the form of overt social pressure or subtler, unconscious influence. Regardless of its form, it can be a powerful force—able to change how large groups behave, to start or end conflicts, and much more.”
WHAT DOES CONFORMITY MEAN TO YOU PERSONALLY? Conform, to acquiesce. To submit, fall in line, to be accepted. Listening to Artifact 02 above, I found that my own life (and likely other people’s lives) parallels to the main character of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. My own physical and mental health issues parallel the kind of obstacles and challenges the main character of Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa dealt with when he was transformed into a dung beetle. Samsa had significant difficulties dealing with this metamorphosis which understandably created great fear in the very fabric of his being, causing him to question his very place in life. In an instance, Samsa is unable to provide for himself and the ones he loved. Everything about his sense of self was taken away which led him to sink into a world of anxiety, despair, misery, and shame. Samsa also faced the fear of his family, who were terrified by his transformation, and it was that fear which fed the anxieties that led them to isolate Samsa both physically in his bedroom, and mentally by how they reacted to and interacted with him.
Comply
Years ago, I did a self-portrait of my body standing tall, naked, my legs disappearing into the stump of a tree, my arms outstretched transforming into the branches of a deciduous tree. It was perhaps an exploration of feeling stuck in life, in one place, unable to move and explore the world outside of reaching upwards towards the open sky.
HAVE YOU CONFORMED TO EXPECTATIONS YOU LATER REGRETTED?
HAVE YOU REFUSED TO CONFORM, AND WHAT WERE THE OUTCOMES?
There’s this loss
There’s this looking back
There’s this
realization that the failure of my youth involving my disinterest in sports and any kind of persistent strenuous physical activity may have been a through line which lead me to a series of precipices which thusly
one by one
fell like dominoes or
ran like pac-man chasing bullet points while avoiding hungry ghosts
leading to that blackened night as snow meandered down onto the ground from a muted greyish layer of cotton baton clouds when I awoke to my upper body and right leg feeling like pins and needles
someday one day I fear
having a funeral no one attends
a photo of me on a table
dusty cremated remains in a jar
row after row of empty pews and chairs
cloudy skies overhead
grey muted light passing through open blinds
cars on the highway passing by
a sprawling open field
row upon row of headstones scattered
with the odd bouquet of flowers
small plastic angels, buddhas, and bears