“They’re a visible compliance symbol, and once they became enforced/mandated and encouraged, group psychology took over. People who didn’t wear them were shamed and outcast.”
I find the current implementation of this stage especially fascinating. In a deviously clever maneuver, the strategists formulating this aspect of the campaign inverted the traditional symbol of identification from an imposed mark of humiliation to one the ingroup ecstatically embraced—hence my inspiration for The Yellow Star Series. Those obeying the State’s authoritarian commandments virtue-signal their altruism with masks, while those who fail to don this sign of subservience are shamed and may even face jail time and extortionate fines.
Conformity with no reason or innate wisdom seems to build bad things. Cooperation with reason, seems to build better -or way better- things. The ability to reason, assign relative values to various actions in the future, analyze the past. Our society requires so many conformities just to get through the day. Kids learn from their parents through conformity, parroting, copying. We are wired for it. Till we decide to look at some of that wiring, like now. Separating the baby from the bathwater. Watched a great talk with a female math prof who talks about how schooling teaches the opposite of cooperation, so much competition re schooling, much to our societal detriment.
thanks for the brownstone article, conformity and virtue signaling have been a problem for a long time, and a bottomless source of cheap laughs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmsOIjzQ1V8
“They’re a visible compliance symbol, and once they became enforced/mandated and encouraged, group psychology took over. People who didn’t wear them were shamed and outcast.”
Bingo! I addressed this ingenious approach to coercion in the #2 of the 10 stages of genocide in “Letter to a Holocaust Denier” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-holocaust-denier?s=w):
2) Symbolization
I find the current implementation of this stage especially fascinating. In a deviously clever maneuver, the strategists formulating this aspect of the campaign inverted the traditional symbol of identification from an imposed mark of humiliation to one the ingroup ecstatically embraced—hence my inspiration for The Yellow Star Series. Those obeying the State’s authoritarian commandments virtue-signal their altruism with masks, while those who fail to don this sign of subservience are shamed and may even face jail time and extortionate fines.
Conformity with no reason or innate wisdom seems to build bad things. Cooperation with reason, seems to build better -or way better- things. The ability to reason, assign relative values to various actions in the future, analyze the past. Our society requires so many conformities just to get through the day. Kids learn from their parents through conformity, parroting, copying. We are wired for it. Till we decide to look at some of that wiring, like now. Separating the baby from the bathwater. Watched a great talk with a female math prof who talks about how schooling teaches the opposite of cooperation, so much competition re schooling, much to our societal detriment.
https://youtu.be/KZnGSVwIpeU Lex Fridman and Jo Boaler educator
thanks for the brownstone article, conformity and virtue signaling have been a problem for a long time, and a bottomless source of cheap laughs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmsOIjzQ1V8
LOL thanks for introducing me to them!