Conformity and courage

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By Scott Shepherd

For about five months now, two lines of Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" have been going around my head: "If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, / But make allowance for their doubting too." The climax of the poem states that if you can indeed do this (and a dozen other things), then "Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, / And ― which is more == you'll be a Man, my son!"

(I'm sure that by now some well-meaning censor has "corrected" the final line to "you'll be a [person], my [child]" in the same way as Roald Dahl's books are now being "fixed" but let's put this to one side for now.)

The reason I've been thinking about this poem is that last September a friend sent me a screenshot from Facebook, where an article I had written had garnered hundreds of likes and dozens of comments. I don't use social media and I didn't actually know that The Korea Times shared my pieces on Facebook, so I was genuinely surprised to see the reaction. Yes I know the numbers aren't that high in this internet age and I'm sure many of you dear readers have millions of Facebook friends and billions of Twitter followers, but for me it really was a shock to see that so many people had responded to something I had written.

And I'm disappointed by how I reacted. Because I liked the feeling of seeing that screenshot. I liked it that people seemed to agree with me and I liked it that people were paying attention to me. As soon as I got home I signed in (with permission) to someone else's Facebook account and started reading. Some commenters made fair points, others apparently misunderstood or didn't read the article, and a few were obviously trolls. It stoked my curiosity. A few moments later I looked around and realized that I had spent hours trawling through comments under my old articles.

I've always told myself that my goal writing for The Korea Times is to do some good: I want to write what I believe to be true, I want to advocate positive change, and I want to avoid stoking up anger or hatred, though I'm not sure I've always succeeded.

But as I read the comments, I found that my high-minded desires were completely obscured. I just cared too much about how people reacted. And I found that the worst thing ― worse than seeing people disagree with me (fair enough) or insult me (I can ignore them) ― was the sight of the odd article that had garnered no reaction at all: just a few likes, a few shares, no comments. I hate how I reacted because I don't want to seek the approval of others, especially the approval of strangers.

Since that time I've been thinking a lot about the impact of social pressure on me and on wider society. Because whatever ism or ology we subscribe to, I think we can all agree: we in Korea live in an image-conscious society.

A flurry of headlines from the past few months bears this out. The Korea Times reported in January that Koreans spent more per capita on luxury goods than anyone else in the world last year. And the people impacted are younger and younger ― even children now have the opportunity to buy overpriced bags and coats.

These kinds of purchases are usually viewed as a status symbol, a sign of success or power. But to me it seems more like an act of capitulation: you've been beaten into submission by a relentless advertising strategy.

Don't get me wrong: if you truly want to buy an expensive bag or coat, perhaps as a treat or something, then that's your prerogative. But what word properly describes someone who spends over a million won on a child's bag? Senseless? Profligate? Tragic?

Maybe all three, maybe none.

It's not the act so much as the motivation that saddens me. It's one thing to buy a pricey coat because you really like it, and it's another thing entirely to buy it because you think you need it to fit in with everyone else.

And this isn't limited to luxury goods. The Korea Times reported earlier this month on the pressure young people face in terms of expectations about jobs and qualifications. Or take Korea's levels of cosmetic surgery as another example of the money spent and physical pain people experience for the sake of conformity to beauty standards. And how much of the money we spend on phones is really just about fitting in?

Social pressure has kept masked a lot of faces that would otherwise be breathing free. And conversely, someone told me today that she felt pressured to take off her mask at her workplace because everyone else did too. No-one said anything to her; it was just the desire to fit in. Wearing a mask when you don't fear COVID, not wearing one when you do: both cases seem equally sad.

I should emphasize that I'm not advocating rampant individualism, a shamelessly self-centered life spent ignoring everyone else. Nor do I mean that we should refuse to do things for the sake of others ― quite the opposite. Both wearing and not wearing a mask can be an act of kindness.

No: what I'm talking about is conformity against your own judgement, doing something you don't think is right because you don't want to stand out or because you're scared of being judged.

Sometimes our favorite stories suggest that if you stand up for what is right, you'll always be vindicated. You know the kind I mean: a few heroes fight alone against terrifying odds, making great personal sacrifices for truth and justice, and by the end of the film the bad guys are all defeated and the protagonists retrieve everything they had lost and probably get a nice romantic kiss to boot.

Maybe that does happen in real life sometimes, but it's certainly not as common as Hollywood would have us believe. That's the whole point, isn't it? We conform because we're scared of the alternatives. As the most extreme example, take Ismail Mashal, the Afghan professor who defied the Taliban and continued promoting education for women despite the huge pressure to stop. He was arrested at the beginning of this month and no-one has heard from him since. He stood up for what was right and it doesn't look like it will end well for him.

I'm not sure many people have the kind of courage he showed. I suppose that's fundamentally why I'm writing this column: it's actually an open letter to myself. Because even though I don't think I have Mashal's courage, I want it. I don't want to conform. I want to be able to trust my own judgement and act in accordance with my own beliefs. I'll continue to strive for truth, positive change and peace in my writing. And as much as I value you, dear readers, and you, beloved comment-writers, I don't want to let your reactions (or lack thereof) get to my head.

So feel free to comment away: write insightful or rude or banal responses under this article. If I do read the comments, I'll try to treat the experience as a character-building exercise. And I gently exhort you, however the pressure to please others presents itself to you, to do the same.

Dr. Scott Shepherd (scottshepherd@chongshin.ac.kr) is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently an assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.