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2 • Cultural Blocks - Part 1

Cultural blocks represent all the effects of society on the indi­vidual. These are the forces that tear down our individuality— that shove us into accepted grooves in our thinking. Cultural blocks make us conformists. And the pressures to conform in our society today often seem so overwhelming that they may also seem irresistible. A great part of this pressure comes from our natural election to live, work, and participate in groups. By elect­ing to be a member of a group, we feel that in one way or another we should change. We find ourselves beginning to behave in a group as though certain things were expected of us, even though the other members of the group would probably deny that they had ever attempted to "set us straight." Even a group with the attitude of do-nothing and care-nothing tends to exert an influence on a member. As an example, the so-called "beat" set. Whether we like it or not, a group tends to make its members over into a group image. And whether we like it or not, a company or business organization is a group, and unless we want to leave civilization and become beachcombers or hermits, we have to learn to live with groups. But we do not have to become blind conformists to any group's ways of thinking, acting, or behaving.

Let's examine a few of the reasons why we feel we are under pressure to conform to a group image:

To start with, inclinations to conform begin early in childhood. The child learns to conform to family standards, because when he tries to ignore those standards, he is punished for it—or, when he is older, he runs the risk of being criticized for his actions and, according to the standards, criticism is bad. Now when this child grows to be a man and joins a business organization, his first in­clination is to look for the standards. Every organization which has been in existence for any time at all will have certain traditions, values, and standards which have become "accepted" as the way things are done. The newcomer, just joining such an organiza­tion, quickly learns that certain kinds of behavior are approved, while others are definitely frowned upon.

Some of these standards and values are never written into company policy. They are sometimes never even talked about. And yet they seem to exist—"seem" because often no one has ever had the courage to challenge them and find out if they really do exist! Not all of these standards are based on the best of motives, and some may, in actuality, be bad for the welfare of a company. Some such standards are relative to the various levels of a company. For instance, an ambitious and talented young man may find that other employees of his age group or position have set up an implied restriction which requires him to limit his ambition and the use of his talent. The motive behind this may be nothing more than pure envy. If he does not conform and if, in spite of the group's disapproval, he continues to exercise his ambition and display his resourcefulness to the point where he attracts management's attention and support, he will find him­self becoming a lonely person. His group, and its individual members, will tend to expel him. If his character is strong and his perception great enough to realize what is happening, the indi­vidual will stand up to the group and continue to go his own way. But "no man is an island," and few individuals can stand to be ostracized by their fellows. Therefore, the odds are probably greater that the ambitious young man will take the edge off his ambitions and slow down his efforts in order to stay in the good graces of his group.

(This type of group pressure is certainly not confined to the business world. It is demonstrated in every group in one way or another: community, social, civic, church, or educational classroom. In fact, some of these may affect an individual's outlook and approach to life to a far greater extent than does his business or work group.)

Actually, a certain amount of conformity is a very necessary thing. Without it, we'd have no civilization. And the lifetime conformists in our population are, in one way, society's stabilizing elements. The conformists are the ones who remind us to "Take it easy—Rome wasn't built in a day" (ignoring, of course, the fact that it was destroyed in a night!). The conformists say, "Understand your neighbor—be tolerant of him" (without under­standing that tolerance is no virtue at all unless what you are tolerating is worthwhile). But when conformity assumes such importance that it begins to interfere with free and original and different thinking, it begins to stifle individual initiative. And this is where the danger lies.

The person who goes out of his way to refuse to conform, how­ever, is, in his way, just as much a conformist as any "group-think" advocate. If he is taking a negative attitude toward every­thing, just to avoid conformity or just to oppose the group, he has also surrendered his freedom of thought and action. He just says "no" to everything, and you can depend on it.

Fortunately it is not necessary to adopt such an extreme in order to retain or regain your own freedom of thought. Many of the social or implied pressures to conform are not really pressures at all. They don't exist anywhere except in the minds of the individuals who think they exist. To take just one fairly common business situation, let's consider the age-old institutions of the office party and the company picnic.

There are four types of people who attend such company gatherings: The boss, who feels he should at least put in an appearance, since it is an opportunity for him to demonstrate his interest in his workers. This may be the only time in the year that he does demonstrate an interest in his workers, or it may not.

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