Seth Taylor-BrillMrs. IngramUWRT 1103 (Section 009)September 13, 2015

We are Sheep

Society is absurd. Each day, the average person walks through their life following certain unwritten rules, rarely questioning the origin or value of those rules. The words we use, the way we walk, the things we "love," and even the trajectory of our lives are strongly affected by certain social conventions. Few things in society are based on substance, but instead directed by what is considered “normal.”

For most of my life “normal” never existed. As a homeschooler, I missed out on the opportunity to naturally absorb the American culture, and up until a few years ago, I was largely isolated to the five green walls that outline my room. I recall my first interaction with the “real world” at a recruitment event for what would later become my rowing team.

I remember getting dropped off in front of the large cabin-like structure where the event was held. I opened the doors and looked around to see a swarm of kids and their parents all sitting around, talking, and waiting for the event to begin. I sat down in a plastic chair, dug into the fibers of its backrest, and slowly inched my way further towards the far corner of the building and quietly observed the scene before me. I heard the whirring of strange machines on one end of the building and coaches bellowing into a microphone on the other end. The waves of sound overwhelmed me. Eventually, I began to analyze their movements. I looked at their body language and their speech patterns. They interacted comfortably with each other and often spoke in an overly-exuberant manner. I often heard the same words or phrases repeated over and over. I thought to myself “Do they even realize the repetitive nature of their interaction?” I realized that I would just have to learn these customs and to teach myself to fit in. Three-and-a-half years have passed since that experience, and since then I have taught myself to act like them, but even now as team captain, I have never felt as though I was one of them. I act in the way that is expected of me; however, I still do not feel comfortable with it. What I say and do is a calculation based on what I have taught myself over the years, no more and no less.

This experience generally summarizes my last four years, and although I usually hold a pessimistic view of the time and my isolated childhood in general, I also realize that it presented me with a unique opportunity. My clinical perspective allowed me to consider the logic behind each of our conventions instead of simply taking them for granted.

For example we are often told mantras like “life is too short,” or “follow your dreams” by our closest friends and family. The basic idea is that your passion matters more to your happiness and success than most anything else. The notion that your inner passion is more important than your desire for cold hard cash is an appealing one, yet I will argue that not only is passion not a key to success, but also that passion can be changed easily in the right circumstances. A champion of the above notion and also a perfect example to illustrate my point is Steve Jobs. The Co-Founder of Apple consistently went on stage to tell the youth of America that they should follow their dreams and would exit with a resounding applause each time. And while I don’t doubt that Jobs wholeheartedly believed in his message, it is completely different from even his own path to happiness.

Jobs went to Reed College, but dropped out after just one year. He soon moved back in with his parents and got a job at Atari – despite the fact that he had little interest in electronics or business – simply because he needed the money. It wasn’t until he later met Steve Wozniak (the brains behind the first apple devices) that Jobs’ career took off in an unexpected direction into the electronics industry. Jobs youth was not directed by an appreciation for electronics, but was instead governed by a need for money. For Jobs, money did not follow his passion; instead, passion followed his money. I would argue that this path to happiness and success is not an uncommon one. Society believes that passion must come first because it is more satisfying to think that passion is so difficult yet rewarding to achieve. That is not to say that passion is not a good and healthy thing to have, but simply that it is not as essential to happiness as society might lead one to think.

Whether or not passion is a predetermined commodity actually matters very little. Instead, what really matters is what people choose to believe, not what is factually the case. I originally discovered this concept when I first started participating in Model United Nations (MUN). In both MUN and the real UN, being a knowledgeable and intelligent delegate is far less important than you might think. What really matters is whether you understand people, and whether you can use that understanding to sway their opinions. I learned two main ideas in MUN club: most people are sheep and what’s on the inside is inconsequential.

What I mean when I compare the majority of our advanced race to livestock is that most people – like sheep – feel vulnerable when alone so they will follow the first idea to which they are presented. As for the second idea, I believe that what is on the outside is what really matters. Most people would of course say the opposite; we as a society generally say that a person’s external appearance and demeanor are less important than the person underneath, but I believe that this course of thought is similar to the commonly held beliefs on passion. It feels better to think that our inner person matters more than just what other people observe, but – to me - this seems unlikely.

So What? Why does matter if we do not view the world in an entirely realistic way? As you consider my cynical perspective on society, you may wonder why it even matters. Is it really so bad that we choose to believe what appeals to us? I would argue that it certainly is. When we choose to believe that we are inherently passionate about only certain things or when we choose to believe that what’s on the inside matters more than what’s on the outside, we do so because it is easier to allow others to think for us.

If a person comes to a conclusion that is different from mine, if you think about my cynical views on passion and our inner value and still disagree, I can understand and respect that. I am passionate about our independent thought, and when people choose to avoid thought it frustrates me. Maybe the reason that I have found it so difficult to understand others’ decisions to let their brains sleep comes from my background in chess.

Since the age of five, I have played chess competitively. When you are constantly trained at such a young age to simply sit quietly and think about one sole objective for hours on end, it becomes difficult to understand why other people might find that difficult. A variety of experiments and studies have consistently demonstrated direct connections between chess education and academic achievement and future success, and while some argue that chess makes a person fundamentally more intelligent, I would disagree. Chess simply teaches kids to think for themselves and to actually enjoy hard thought – two lessons from which I feel the entire world could greatly benefit.

Even after playing chess, growing up in a family that valued intellectual independence, and viewing society from a clinical perspective, I still suffer from the many of the same problems that are so frustratingly exhibited by those around me. I often find myself choosing to watching BuzzFeed videos instead of watching the news, or accepting the views of my parents simply because I am too lazy to think about issues critically. Our brains’ desire to avoid hard thought is simply a part of human nature. Unfortunately, in my experiences I have found that the person who honestly loves critical thought is phenomenon rather than the norm.

As for the rest of us who were not born with an inherent love for thought or who did not gain such a love through our endeavors, what concrete threat do we even pose to society? I would argue that most notably they act as an obstacle to the betterment of society. For example, when we turn on the news and hear about the most recent act of racism, I think to myself how could we - in the land of the free - possibly still be facing this issue, 150 years after the end of the Civil War. I think it is because most people choose to believe whatever their parents believed and don’t think for themselves.

There are so many different problems that the US faces that would never have existed or would already have been solved if more people simply took the time to

come to their own conclusions. We often complain about how Democrats and Republicans can’t work together. I would argue that the whole reason that the party system is so dysfunctional is that people pick a side and then adopt all of that side’s ideas as opposed to determining their own nuanced perspective. Politics have become less about the issues and more about the sides. Similarly, the media feeds us shallow and repetitive news stories because it is easier for the consumer to simply observe the most recent scandal than consider their own opinions on important and controversial world trends.

It infuriates me that such a large portion of society is unwilling to think deeply about issues that we would rather just repeat the same ideas, but what frustrates me most of all is that there is so little that we can do. As social animals, it is in our nature to try to fit in, and while those traits have served our species well in the past, they are also what stop us from moving forwards as a society. I can only hope that some day through the evolution of our society, we get to the point where we value individual thought over the social conventions that have thus far dictated our actions.

Questions: (Here are a few questions that I thought of while I was working on the second draft. It basically all boils down to my main worry about the fluidity of my paper and whether my changes helped or hurt in that respect)- Do you think I should include some of the studies that show the connection between chess and academic success? I was nervous that if I spent too much time on the topic, it would draw away from my main message.- Do you think it’s even worth including the chess paragraph at all? I feel that it adds to the essay and personalizes it a bit more, but I think that it breaks up my idea on the whole problem with not thinking for yourself. I considered moving it elsewhere in the essay, but I’m still not sure where I would put it.- My biggest original worry with the paper was that the first and second sections attacked slightly different issues and made the essay feel disjointed. In these revisions I slightly changed my main message from a passion for thought to a passion for independent thought. Was this change evident from reading my paper or was it just a change in my head?- I had so many different ideas for this essay that I could probably spend ages writing an entire book on the subject, but since I obviously don’t have that much time, I attempted to summarize some of my ideas into this essay. Does it flow… or even make sense? I think that I failed to convey my message at least to the people in my group. They weren’t really sure what to make of the essay, and therefore found it difficult to give me any feedback. I chose not to simplify the essay because I feel that it would entirely go against the message of my paper to simplify it just for their ease. The whole point is to make the reader rethink their view on society. Do you think I should keep in all the ideas or maybe drop something?- I tried adding some personal experiences to the essay after our exercise from the last class, but they seem somewhat out of place to me because my original intention with this essay was not to discuss myself as much as the thing about which I am most passionate. Do you agree with my assessment or do you think that they fit in with the essay?- Even if after the addition of personal side-stories, the ideas of the essay still flow, I am still worried that those side-stories interrupt my general tone. I feel that this essay has the feel of a more objective analysis of society, but that the focus of the side-notes interrupts that to a certain extent. Do you agree?