SUO: Re: Re: Conformance & Conformity
From: "Jon Awbrey" <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
> SR: That's a bit of a subjective evaluation on your part ...
> from my way of thinking its not true. People might
> want to conform to a dictionary just because they
> get more strokes from their peers if they do.
>
> Well, I did say "best reason", not "only reason",
> but, yes, judgments of what's best are relative
> to an arbiter, hence "arbitrary".
>
> Still, there are reasons to be sought in primate evolution
> why different folks should desire these strokes from peers.
> And those reasons evolve from the adaptive relationships
> of communities to realities, else we would not be here,
> such as we are ... for as long we are ...
Adapting to reality is certainly something that goes on in evolution.
Another thing that goes on is shaping external reality to reflect internal
urges. There is probably as much or more of the latter going on as there is
of the former. Case in point: consider modern culture: most of what we
encounter in our daily lifes that is important to us was not part of our
reality a mere 5,000 years ago .... where did that reality come from?
Seth Russell