24 Strata of the Human Instrument

"GENETIC MIND"

Conformity is defined by Crutchfield as ?Yielding to Group Pressure.?  This can be real (invoking the physical presence of others) or imagined (such as the pressure of the social norms and expectations).  Social Norm:  Expectations about what behavior, thoughts, or feelings are appropriate within a given group within a given context.  

Kelman (1958) suggests 3 types of conformity:

1. Compliance ? A change in behavior without a change in opinion (going along with the group).
2. Internalization ? A change in behavior and opinion.  ?True Conformity.?
3. Identification ? Adopting the group?s views because value group membership.  This often temporary.

Why do we conform?

 Laboratory studies suggest that conformity is driven by two factors, one a cognitive desire to be right, to make the correct judgment, to get the right answer etc.  Secondly, we are motivated by our feelings of wanting to be liked and approved of.  We do not want to feel embarrassed.  So, in the original Asch study when 70% of the subjects went along with the majority, they wanted to be seen as right and they didn?t want to be laughed at by the others.  Asch tested the accuracy of this belief with a study that was a reverse of his original one.  In this case, the majority were professional and there was one ?confederate? who when she gave the obviously wrong answer was ridiculed and laughed at.  In another version of Asch?s study, professional were allowed to write their answers down.  In this case when they knew that they would not be embarrassed, they did not conform.  In another very different study it was demonstrated that when professionals thought they were quite good at a task, when they knew that they were right ? finding hidden figures- they were less likely to conform. 

Poem of Conformity

Too many people hiding behind a brick wall
In the shadows of darkness
Afraid of the light?
Afraid of themselves
Forever conforming to the standards set
By other people living
Behind the same wall
Why are people too afraid to act out
What is deep inside them?
There are few of us that are
Strong enough to break through that wall
Never afraid to be the people that we really are
 

In order to truly define inequality it must be viewed as both a word, and a part of our society that is deeply embedded in our perceptions of the world. The idea of inequality lies in the mindset of those who accept inequality as a part of their life, while the term inequality describes a very undesirable equation, which uses race and gender to unevenly allocate opportunity

Webster's Dictionary defines inequality as "the quality of being unequal or uneven: social disparity; disparity of distribution or opportunity; an instance of being unequal." Inequality means all these definitions, but one cannot look at a dictionary and expect to find inequality completely defined, for inequality comes in many forms that cannot be defined in a dictionary. Inequality spans all social dogmas: gender, race, economic, political, religious, physical abilities; all these categories have some form of inequality present.

Inequality means different things to different people: whether inequality should encapsulate ethical concepts such as the desirability of a particular system of rewards or simply mean differences in income is the subject of much debate. Here we will conceptualize inequality as the dispersion of a distribution, whether that be income, consumption or some other welfare indicator or attribute of a population.

Poverty reduction, the World Bank?s overarching objective, takes place inherently within a broader process of distributional dynamics. Obviously, poverty and inequality are very closely linked ? for a given mean income, the more unequal the income distribution, the larger the percentage of the population living in income-poverty.

Inequality is often studied as part of broader analyses covering poverty and welfare, although these three concepts are distinct. Inequality is a broader concept than poverty in that it is defined over the whole distribution, not only the censored distribution of individuals or households below a certain poverty line. Incomes at the top and in the middle of the distribution may be just as important to us in perceiving and measuring inequality as those at the bottom, and indeed some measures of inequality are driven largely by incomes in the upper tail (see the discussion in the section Inequality Measurement). Inequality is also a much narrower concept than welfare. Although both of these capture the whole distribution of a given indicator, inequality is independent of the mean of the distribution (or at least this is a desirable property of an inequality measure, as is discussed in the section Inequality Measurement) and instead solely concerned with the second moment, the dispersion, of the distribution. However these three concepts are closely related and are sometimes combined in composite measures such as those proposed by Amartya Sen (see section on Brief Overview to Theories of Growth and Distribution).

Related Link

Crime and Inequality

(Non-Sovereign)

The mind has an inclination to surrender to, and believe in, the language of externals.  It can lure the unsuspecting into believing images and ideas, real or imagined, for the sake of holding individuals in bondage to a lesser truth.

The evolution/saviorship model is critical as a component to the Grand Experiment because this is where the human instrument develops a sense of unity and belonging.  Because of this, the feelings of inadequacy and insecurity are developed and nurtured by the "hierarchy."

Each individual must know them self to be free of all forms of external reliance.

When we feel entitled to certain niceties of life, we tend to take their service for granted.

Ascribed (another word for Entitlement) status refers to what a person is and how others relate to his or her position in the community, in society or in an organization. In an ascriptive society, individuals derive their status from birth, age, gender or wealth. A person with ascribed status does not have to achieve to retain his status: it is accorded to him on the basis of his being. Ascribe means to give credit to.

The creator is not absent. The intelligence of the creator is not absent. The creator is in all things and in all places. The creator is discovered in every step one takes, each time one emerges a victor of a lesser state. The creator, because the creator is in all things, all things are equal. Self-discovery is the key.