Essay Introduction

In "Do You Dare to Be Different?", Kenneth W. Sollitt uses the Greek myth of Procrustes—who fitted his victims to an iron bed by stretching or cutting them—as a metaphor for the modern trend toward social standardization and regimentation. Sollitt warns that America is following the path of totalitarian nations by placing a premium on conformity and group action while penalizing individual initiative. He argues that coerced conformity leads to mediocrity and national suicide, whereas true progress has always been driven by nonconformist individuals who dared to challenge the status quo. Addressing the younger generation, he urges them to resist the pressure to become mere "cogs in a wheel" and to accept the responsibility of being individuals in a world increasingly resembling a "cage of apes."

Do You Dare to Be Different?

by Kenneth W. Sollitt

FROM Greek mythology comes the story of Procrustes, the grisly bandit who was not content merely to rob and plunder and despoil. His eccentricity was to make each of his victims lie down on an iron bed and be fitted to it. If they were too short, he had them stretched on the rack. If they were too long, he lopped off their extremities at just the right point, for he was insistent that no one should be any taller nor any shorter than he. Procrustes was his own standard of perfection.

In the realm of things, standardization is wonderful. I never fail to be fascinated by that marvel of our scientific age, the rotary meat cutter, as I watch it cutting sandwich meat—every slice the same size and shape and thickness. But I can't help wishing for my friends and myself something different than that we all resemble slices of bologna—each an exact duplicate of the other.

Cogs In A Wheel

My greatest desire for you graduates is a world in which you can amount to something as individuals and not just be cogs in a wheel, numbers on a Social Security record, names on little white crosses in some distant cemetery. I wish for you a world in which you can become the individuals God intended you to be. But I would certainly be over-optimistic to promise you such a world—for the spirit of Procrustes is abroad, and replicas of his iron bed are now in mass production.

The standardization of human beings is known as regimentation. The results of regimentation have been witnessed only recently in Japan, Italy, Germany, Russia and her satellite countries; and those with eyes to see can witness it going on in these United States.

There is ample evidence to show that in America we are following, slowly but surely, the pattern of the fascist, communist, and socialist countries of the world. We are putting a premium on conformity, regimentation, and group action; a penalty on originality, ingenuity, and personal initiative. The greater tragedy is that we are following the pattern blindly—even willingly—because it is the path of least resistance, because a whole generation has arisen in the past 20 years that knows nothing different, and because there is a mirage on down the trail which beckons to us.

We seem oblivious to the fact that this same mirage has beckoned many a nation to its doom. Nor can we seem to understand that a social group which does its thinking by ear and its acting by imitation can never do more than travel in circles—like elephants in a circus ring, tail to trunk and trunk to tail. Coerced conformity is a sure road to national suicide, and the blind acceptance of the role of an exact duplicate of everyone else is self-condemnation to mediocrity and oblivion.

A Look Into The Future

Consider what the insistence of our leaders that we all be forced to fit their standards of perfection—their little iron beds—means in terms of your future. Perhaps you have noted how, in your school life, you readily conform to the latest fad in dress, manner, or speech. You adopt the latest slang because if you do not, you're an "odd ball"—somebody will think you've "flipped your lid" if you fail to conform to the prevailing patterns. But that is only a minor symptom of the disease; the conformity in those examples comes from social pressure rather than from force of government.

At a given age, however, you boys are all expected to wear the same uniform, learn the same habits, acquire the same attitudes, and learn to do whatever a "brass hat" tells you. Here begins your real training in conformity and regimentation. Presumably the purpose of this training is to make you stanch defenders of our glorious democracy; but other countries have used this same means to destroy belief in, or desire for, democracy. Many persons fear that even in America a serious consequence of militarization would be to teach you to conform—to lie down on a standardized "iron bed" when you're told to do so, and without any back talk.

Those of you who are permitted to go to work in civilian occupations—if and when you are—will discover that there again you will be expected to conform to the generally accepted pattern of the employees. If you join with the rest in demanding more pay and shorter hours, you're a "good Joe"; if you figure out a better way to produce more in less time—so your employer can afford to pay you more—you may get lynched.

When you get your first pay check, and every check thereafter, you will find that a part of it has been deducted for the purchase of a number of things which no one asked you if you wanted to buy—Social Security, old age assistance, and maybe bonds and medical benefits. You will conform to this practice for approximately 47 years in order that the government can pay you a pension after you reach the age of sixty-five.

If you go to work in industry, your union will tell you when to work, when to strike, and how much to produce when you are working—and you will conform, or else!

Like Baby Robins

If you go into business for yourself, the chances are that an FEPC will tell you whom you can hire and whom you can't; the WSB and the unions will tell you how much you shall pay each man; the OPS will tell you what you may charge for your goods and services; and if you can make any money, the Bureau of Internal Revenue will relieve you of it—to take care of your less ambitious classmates who sit like baby robins with their mouths open, waiting for someone to bring them their food.

In other words, while we insist that you get an education, we don't give you credit for having brains enough to use it. So we arrange to have all your decisions made for you in Washington!

Finally, when you reach sixty-five, you will be expected to retire, whether you want to or not, and to try to live on dollars which may then buy only half as much as those Uncle Sam has withheld from your pay checks through the years.

Paths To Destruction

Those are some of the ways in which you will be under tremendous pressure to conform. They are the same paths that other nations have followed to their destruction. And the thing that makes it all possible is the widely accepted and utterly ridiculous idea that individuals do not count—only groups; that people have no brains—only governments; that it is undemocratic to act like a citizen of a democracy and to express yourself on important issues; that it is un-American to be "taller or shorter than Procrustes."

The world's progress always has been started by individuals, not by groups. And these individuals have always been nonconformists—people who had a vision of something better than the status quo and had intestinal fortitude enough to fight for it—people who bearded Procrustes in his den and did battle with him, instead of letting themselves be cut down to his size. Progress is never made by those who merely follow the crowd, but by those who dare to show the crowd a better way.

A Cage Of Apes

Blind conformity, regimentation, and loss of the individual in the mass are both national and individual suicide. When we have reduced the world to a cage of apes, each imitating the other, we may be perfectly sure that we will be apes and nothing more. For leadership does not develop in an atmosphere that provides no opportunity for change, growth, and self-determination.

God gave you legs on which to stand, and may He forgive you if you use them only as something with which to run away from reality. Yet he who takes a stand on anything today is in danger of being torn to pieces by those who run with the pack. Do you dare to be different?

Despite all interpretations of the Constitution to the contrary, man still has innate and inalienable rights. One of these is the right to be an individual. But this right is also a responsibility. If you refuse the responsibility, as so many people today are doing, you will be deprived of the right—as has happened in almost every other country in the world. The hour calls for people who dare to be individuals in a world where it is fast becoming improper to be anything but apes.

Free Men Or Slaves

My prayer for you is that you may not succumb to the false notion that people as individuals no longer count. Someone has said that most of the world's problems are attributable to one per cent of the people. Wars are traceable to individuals and small groups. Strikes are traceable to the acts of a few individuals.

Communists, though too numerous in America, comprise but a small percentage of the total population. They just work harder at being effective Communists than we do at being good Americans. Now, if one per cent of the people working against the rest can produce such havoc, can it be that individuals do not count? No—as they count for evil, they also count for good.

Now, there may come a day in America when most individuals will not count. That day has come in other countries. If we have another generation of Americans tolerating a political Procrustes and his little "iron bed," there may be no tall men left to lead. It is the fate of your generation to decide whether we shall have a world of free men or of slaves.

Value Your Freedom

IN spite of all I have said, you American young people still have the largest measure of freedom of any group in the world. You do not need to be regimented into collective nothingness and pushed into individual oblivion—if you do not want to be. People are still the most important force on earth, especially young people. Whether or not you lose your freedom depends on how you use it now.

Attribution

Sollitt, Kenneth W. "Do You Dare to Be Different?" In Essays on Liberty, Vol. 2, 252-258. Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954.