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Page 2 Summer Session Kansan Friday, June 28, 1957
Conforming Individualists?
We cannot, however, accept such a one-sided point of view without first considering other facets of such a generalized statement.
True, we do conform, but it is also very possible, and it is being done by thousands, to be an individualist within a conforming society.
According to Webster, to conform means to act in harmony and agreement with. We conform primarily because we want to be in harmony and agreement with society. We do this by observing the same social rules, customs, and mores, and by trying to achieve somewhat of a moral, social, and intellectual equality. Much of this is already inherent in us, and the rest we try to achieve for ourselves.
This generation has been chided and berated for this kind of conforming, but there is really nothing wrong with it. If we did not conform in this way, we would be ruled out of society and our goals of security and happiness would be shattered. And who would dare to find fault with such goals?
Thus, there is no justification for making conformity an accusation, as if we were guilty of some crime. Rather it proves that a certain amount of conformity is necessary.
But conformity does not constitute our whole makeup. It is possible, within this sphere of conformity, to be a society of individualists. And we
are individualists in that we are a generation that decides things for ourselves. We decide whether to go to college, what profession to pursue, whom to marry, how we want to live, and even many of the customs and rules to which society later conforms.
Further, it takes time, thought, study, and investigation to make these decisions, and we are living in an age when others do not have the time to think for us, so we do it ourselves.
It is through this thinking and through this learning to act for ourselves that we eventually form new ideas, express them, and later to put them to use. So we are individualists, who are working for the good of the whole group.
In our personal lives we are probably doing more what WE (meaning each individual) want to do than any generation to date. So again, we are individualists.
We have learned, too, that it is possible to get what we want without defying authority or making demands on society, because we know that authority and society are for our benefit rather than for us to defy. This ability to resist defiance is a challenge, and we have proven that we can meet it successfully and without defiance. So once again we conform.
Examples to prove individuality as well as conformity could be cited indefinitely. It adds up to an answer to the accusation of conformity because it proves that we can be, and are, a generation of self-thinking individualists within a society that also conforms. —Ardeth Nieman
Today's Top Tune Just A Gimmick
There no longer seems to be a basis for popular music. The lyrics—when they can be deciphered—are essentially the same, but the tempo and rhythm have become a frenzied hodge podge of off-beat sound effects as we have gone from jive to rock and roll, and now the latest mania, via Harry Belafonte, Calypso music.
These have all been denounced from pulpits to PTA meetings and yet they prevail. The adherents try to vindicate themselves by implying that it isn't any different from the Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Ray popularity of the 40's and early 50's, but it is different! Perhaps the avid following was around then, but the music did not send their fans into the obsessed state as do singers of today, nor did they arouse such powerful sensual emotions.
What has happened to the songs with a melody you could hum, and the honest-to-goodness lyrics that you could sing along with?
Where are the singers with the pleasant mellow voices and the smooth delivery? Why does every song have to have a gimmick, every singer a nasal twang or a display of body gyrations?
The new twist seems to be that as infatuated and satisfied as today's teenagers are, they continually have to be given something new.
Lovers of other kinds of music are content. Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, and Verdi have been around for many a decade, yet their popularity remains constant.
The only people who get any benefit from the current "Hit Parade" are the record companies, advertisers, and the "artists" themselves. Yet those of us upon whose ears this music grates, continue to be subject to it from every media, and our only hope is that the next musical fad will bring the music industry back down to earth.
—Ardeth Nieman
... Letters ...
Editor:
If your recent editorial on conformity is to be taken as the collective voice of the younger generation, America is lost and I had better cancel my plans to apply for citizenship this year.
Full of self-pity, cowardice, and sloppy reasoning, the editorial expressed a profound distrust of anything like self-reliance. Behind it I sense the contemporary ideal of the "well adjusted personality" who "gets along with others" in "democratic" fashion. Moving in lonely crowds, these anxious persons desperately believe that numbers make them safe. After all, how can one individual decide what is best, which way to go? Better run where all the other anxious sheep are running—straight to the wolves. This, of course, provides a collective solution.
"Old liberals," the breed of veterans who were around in my undergraduate years, did not look back to the depression and the war as "the good old days," and all I ever met knew they had fought for more than the right to be good, well adjusted consumers of nationally advertised goods. Instead of countering with feeble accusations, the younger brothers of these might better ask themselves whether zero plus zero equal strength.
Immigrant,
Kenneth Inniss,
Lawrence graduate student
Editor:
I was duly horrified at the lack of discernment on the part of the
commencement orators" quoted in Tuesday's lead editorial, "Conformity—Strength in Numbers," but the "serious and thoughtful questions which are implied, if not asked, by the writer leave me with a few doubts.
The form of the editorial is above question; the device of citing a text and elaborating upon it, bringing out either the virtues or the absurdities of the source, is a useful one. However, the author, after quoting his texts (from sources that are more respectable than the damning term "commencement orators" would indicate), proceeds to ignore the content of his quotations and wander into a condemnation of those who underestimate the virtues of "security," a term that is defined negatively as the elimination or absence of human want and suffering.
But the distressing point made by the writer is not his unwarranted (on the face of the evidence) attack on the "liberals," but his confession of faith in the final paragraph: "We have learned that there is strength in numbers . . . our elders are just as much intellectually lost as we are. . . . It (basic strength) is all we inherited—except perhaps the everlasting human drive to find the answers-collectively." Isolated from reality, this manifesto sounds noble, and rather vaguely comforting. It is based, no doubt, on the assumption that man is a social being, one who is comfortable and useful only in the society of his fellows. And very few people would deny this.
But there is a sharp distinction
between a society and a herd, although even a herd must have some sort of leader. And the herd virtued—tranquility, lack of revolutionary impulses, adjustment—while all very well in their place, are not the qualities upon which Western civilization or the United States are founded. The "orators" are well aware that men cannot exist as men under humanly intolerable conditions; they are also aware, no doubt, that absence of pain and a full belly are not the ultimate goal of mankind. Collective thought and action can lead, if practiced consistently, to the subordination of the individual to the group, to the replacement of the good, the true, and the beautiful by the useful, the comfortable, and the inoffensive. Individualism can be dangerous, but its dangers have been considered, at least in this country, to be preferable to those inherent in collectivism.
The term "unAmerican" has been cheapened, but it would seem to apply to the implications of the views advanced in your editorial. I do not doubt that your writer is sincere, nor do I believe that he is aware of the implications of his statements.
R. M. Davis,
Lawrence graduate student
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
(Published Tuesdays and Fridays)
Ed. Phone 251 Bus. Phone 276
Editors ... Dale Morsh
          John Eaton
Business Mgrs... Colby Rehner
          Bill Irvine
Reporters ... Martha Crosier
          John Husar
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Manager ... James E. Dykes
TV Notes
NEW YORK—(UP)—All live programs on NBC's fall "Crisis" series will be produced by Mort Abrahams, who was responsible for the big "Producers' Showcase" specs during the season just ended.
"People Are Funny" will present re-runs during the summer, through Sept. 7. The NBC program will be back in the fall with new stuff on both TV and radio.
"Father Knows Best" gets a repeat of the 15 best of the past season during the summer on NBC.
"Adventures of Jim Bowie" on ABC, following the Davy Crockett pattern, has a ballad about ITS hero that goes like this: "He raised himself in the bayous / On wildcat, nails and beans / He rode an alligator down the Mississippi / All the way to New Orleans."
The June 30 "Gooyear Playhouse" on NBC will star Melyn Douglas in "The Legacy" by Steven Gethers.
"Broken Arrow" has a new theme song of the same title written by Ned Washington and Paul Sawtell.
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