“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” ―
Members of society that have been successfully conditioned, conform. They resign themselves, lose themselves, and succumb to sameness, uniformity – homogeneity. Groomed to follow. Conditioned to conform. Programmed to please, consume, and accept the status quo. Taught to be submissive, follow orders, and obey authority. Operating on auto-pilot as cogs in the rat race wheel greased by the desire to fit in, while begging to be accepted. Miserable, empty, stagnant, and stuck. As a result, they become reliant on the very system that oppresses, controls, and abuses them and the masses.
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” ― Aldous Huxley
“The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity.” ―

- Similarity in form or character; agreement.
- Action or behavior in correspondence with socially accepted standards, conventions, rules, or laws: conformity to university regulations.
- State of things being similar, or identical.
- A point of resemblance; a similarity.
- The ideology of adhering to one standard or social uniformity.

- Subject to or dependent on a condition or conditions.
- Prepared for a specific action or process.
- Psychology – Exhibiting or trained to exhibit a conditioned response.
- Prepared for a specific use.
- Exhibiting a conditioned reflex.
“A fair and just society offers equality of opportunity to all. But it cannot promise, and should not try to enforce, sameness.” ―

But what really happens when dissenters break out and challenge authority? Question the official narratives? Speak against those in power and the ideologies they push? They are often silenced, outcast, censored, called conspiracy theorists or crazy, denied being accepted, marginalized, and certainly not given corporate-owned media coverage and airtime.
Through the mass media’s repetition on television, radio, print and social media. Through the illusion of “choice” of media outlets and channels — when in fact they are owned by a select few, — only five to six media conglomerates in the United States. The grooming, brainwashing of what’s accepted is also embedded within society, culture, institutions, schools, and government. Expectations are carefully scripted within narratives and deliberately woven. Roles and desired behaviors, deliberately constructed. The conditioning becomes seamless, stealth, and unnoticeable, like the fish in water, “what water?”

An outlier, a rebel, and a renegade do not exist within the limits; they break the boundaries and the norm. It’s the only way to survive from being swallowed up and engulfed by mediocrity. A rebel goes against the grain and prefers not to be corralled. Does what’s not popular and lives beyond the dominant culture ideals.
- To refuse allegiance to and oppose by force an established government or ruling authority.
- To resist or defy an authority or a generally accepted convention.
- To feel or express strong unwillingness or repugnance.
- One who rejects a religion, cause, allegiance, or group for another; a deserter.
- An outlaw; a rebel.
- Of, relating to, or resembling a renegade; traitorous.
- To become a deserter or an outlaw.
- A disloyal person who betrays or deserts his cause, religion, political party, friend, etc.
- A common vagabond; a worthless or wicked fellow.
- break with established customs
- One whose domicile lies at an appreciable distance from his or her place of business.
- A value far from most others in a set of data: “Outliers make statistical analyses difficult” (Harvey Motulsky).
- Geology A portion of stratified rock separated from a main formation by erosion.
Snap out of the endless brainwashing machine spin-cycle. Stop rinsing your brain with their waterboarded indoctrination. Deviate from the clones and drones, the conditioned sameness, uniformity, and conformity. Outliers spawn originality. Innovative ideas emerge on the edges. These ideas live outside the box and beyond the lines of control and societal boundaries.
Revel in your independence and uniqueness. Discover who you are and not who you “should be” according to their “conditions” and “program”. Take personal inventory of where you conform and where you rest on the ledge as an outlier. Time to break out of the conditioning and the programs you’ve been trained to believe. Break up with this dysfunctional conditioned fantasy. The act of rebellion challenges the system, disrupts conventional thinking, and is a catalyst for growth and change.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ―
Will you be the aberration? Are you willing to take a risk and step out of the crowd, the herd, and the herd mentality? It’s time for each of us to be the outlier in a world of conformists. It’s time to detach from the the status quo, the puppet strings, and be bold enough to walk on our own towards an improved reality that we co-create.
What possibilities exist outside the bounds of conformity?
Let’s pioneer this together and build something different ― outside the boundaries.
Join us by visiting Medel.la to sign up for pre-launch updates.
~ Melissa A. Curtin