The pathology of aggressively conformist people:

Follow a ribellious idea after it becomes the norm (sexism is bad), but don’t stop there. Stretch the idea to such an extreme that it loses its meaning and morphs into something else altogether which has very little to do with the original idea (being male is equivalent to being sexist)

Conformist people need to be kept at bay. While anarchists will work towards the betterment of society, dismantling authority or pre-concepts that can’t justify their existence (racism, tirannies, etc), conformists will work hard to shut every revolutionary idea.

Even when a revolutionary idea makes it through and changes society, conformists will embrace it, expand it and extinguish it by taking to extremes that don’t make sense anymore.

These people want to limit and prohibit ideas. Having ideas in a world where some ideas are banned is like playing soccer on a pitch that has a minefield in one corner.

Enlightenment provided us with a set of tool to limit conformism: free thinkning, openness to discuss everything. If the customs of free enquiry are weakened in the service of conformists’ “greater good”, and discussion of “bad ideas” is shut down, we are setting up a very dangerous precedent.

References

• https://coffeeandjunk.substack.com/p/naughtism