Does Peer Pressure Keep Us From Succeeding?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Does Peer Pressure Keep Us From Succeeding?

This is an article by Trent Hamm on The Simple Dollar blog I read despite lack of time since it caught my eye and kept my attention. It hit home on a crucial point I think is highly underrated in Objectivism: the need for acceptance. We all have an inner need for acceptance and we need to accept this as part of our needs, just like sleep and nourishment are needs.

Interestingly enough, this need sometimes results in a trap where a person betrays a part of himself—another need—that he thinks he is protecting: his certainty that he is thinking for himself. Peer pressure will do that. From the article:

A few years ago, I used to spend a lot of my free time with a small group of friends. We did a lot of things together - road trips, games, and so on - and I had a lot of fun with them. What I later realized after the group broke up, though, is that we were all keeping each other from being successful in life because we constantly imposed a pressure on each other to do things that weren’t leading to success.

. . .

The years I spent hanging out with this group were fun, but they set me back greatly. I spent several years with these guys disdaining things that I saw value in, and eventually it was that conflict (and the start of my own family) that more or less caused me to move on.

This is an obvious case, but I’ve come to observe that in many cases friendships and social interaction prevent us from making good choices.

. . .

Peer pressure can be a dangerous thing, even in a subtle way. You might watch the “big game” on Sunday just so you can talk about it around the water cooler on Monday morning, but deep down football seems boring to you. You might spend way too much on a gadget to impress your friends, but you barely use it other than to show off. You spend hours with your friends shopping for clothes and buying piles of them, but you just yawn and grab whatever’s handy in the morning.

. . .

The big step, though, is to realize that the only person that you fall asleep with and wake up with every night is you. If you’re making choices that are drowning a passion of yours because of others, stop. If you’re buying things because others are convincing you to buy them, stop. If your image is your most valuable attribute, stop.

. . .

If you’re passionate about something and really want to try it or explore it, go for it! Don’t listen to the people surrounding you who try to poo poo what you’re most passionate about. Explore it, learn about it, and grow in it - don’t bottle it up because of what others say or think. This may lead you to making new friends and going new places, but that’s a good thing - it’s a sign you’re growing and understanding yourself.

I have made some selections in that quote, but I really wanted to reproduce the entire thing.

I would even extend this last paragraph to ideas and philosophy/religion. If you are really passionate about some ideas that are different than Objectivism, then I say go for it! Learn and become what you want to be. It's your life and your mind and your heart.

The blinding quasi-religious experience I had with my first reading of Atlas Shrugged had its roots in reading for the first time that the acceptance of those around me was not the whole story: that there were other people in the world who understood the overwhelming importance I placed on thinking with my own mind and the terrible loneliness I felt from not being seen that way. I knew these new people would accept me because they had experienced the same alienation and bewilderment I had felt up to that point with my peers. Ayn Rand was a master in conveying this.

I know others have felt their first time reading Rand in this manner, too.

The ironic thing is that the new group of people who gather around this soul-shattering experience often form a petty mind-controlling clique that can rival any backwater church for peer pressure and intimidation. What once looked like liberation was actually a cage of bars labeled morality and reason.

I am not saying that morality and reason are not important. On the contrary, they are of utmost importance in life. What I am saying is that adopting them is the most selfish experience a person can have and his need for acceptance should NEVER be manipulated in their name by a group of individuals. If anything is evil, that is.

There has been one overriding emotional desire I have had in making OL—to make real that initial experience I had that I was not alone in the world—that it was a GOOD THING to think for myself, even if I was wrong. The root of my tolerance of disagreement stems from this.

There is a difference between disagreement when a person's standard is reality and logic, and when a person is simply preaching. The one who uses reason in an innocent manner is always open to new evidence. The preacher is never open and will hate your guts if you prove him wrong beyond repair.

The ones I seek and take great pleasure in are those who think for themselves. I don't care if they disagree with me. I accept them without reservation and often love them. They are good.

May OL never become a hotbed of peer pressure.

Michael

[studiodekadent]

<PUTS ON SOUTHERN PREACHER VOICE>

AMEN!

No honestly, I agree with all of the above.