When given the choice between following our conscience and following the crowd, why is it so much easier to go along with the crowd?
The answer is found in whether our culture is working with or against our individual conscience.
Healthy cultures encourage us to apply our conscience to reality-based ideas that we’ve been individually persuaded are true.
Unhealthy cultures form when our shared opinions become the basis for punishing as traitors those who aren’t in complete agreement with us.
Paul Rosenberg says it like this:
“The stronger the culture… the tighter the web of expectations it spins around us… the more it becomes the enemy of what is good and transcendent in us.”
When a culture becomes dominant enough, we tend to see it as inherently right.
This means that people will find it less painful to conform to that culture’s expectations than they will to assert their conscience as an individual.
If we allow our conscience to become a slave to what our culture demands of us, we may find ourselves participating in outright persecution of individuals who follow their conscience.
Or, we’ll cheer on the ones persecuting them for their failure to conform.
Students of history will recognize that the biggest advances made by humanity nearly always come from individuals who were emotionally prepared to stand alone before the world.
Learning to follow our own conscience starts with taking a step back anytime we feel the impulse to punish others for following theirs.
You may also enjoy Latter-day Voices, another quality publication in the Fifty-two Seven Alliance family.
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