Snowflakes and the New Conformity

When I was in high school, my teachers regularly warned about the dangers of conformity.  They feared that the nation was becoming too materialist and hence that we students might be tempted to join the ranks corporate executives garbed in grey flannel suits.

What could be more enervating than this fate?  What could be more drearily boring?  We, the upcoming generation, were thus advised never to lose our idealism.  We must stand up for truth and justice and not allow our country to slide into self-satisfied vacuity.

The current generation of college students has been steeped in similar guidance all of their lives.  They too believe the liberal mantra that it is up to them to save jaded adults from a burned-out conventionality.  The young must lead.  They must exploit their superior wisdom to join the vanguard of a brave new world.

The paradox at the heart of this recommendation is that the idealistic young are now more conformist than in my day.  My peers were asked to avoid the quagmire of excessive acquisitiveness.  The current crew is invited to do the same, but also to become combatants in the battle for social justice.

The irony is that this liberal agenda is more conformist than the materialist one.  The budding businessmen and women of yore at least had to be innovative, if they were to get ahead.  Today’s left-wing political agitators have merely to chant time worn slogans and wave vitriolic posters.

Progressivism is not progressive.  Its minions have not had an original thought in nearly a century.  They always want the same thing, which is to say, more government control.  Accordingly, down with the oppressors and up with bureaucratic regulations and programs.

Reality is somewhat different.  Ours is a mass techno-commercial society.  A market economy and democratic institutions of this sort demand an independence of thought and a willingness to take risks.  More people need to become self-motivated experts who are able to make competent decisions in a world filled with uncertainties.

University-bound snowflakes revel in the opposite.  They cannot stand uncertainty.  When confronted with ideas different from their own, they melt.  Instead they demand ideological uniformity.  Subversive concepts are offensive and therefore forbidden.

Somehow this regimentation is supposed to promote freedom.  With the poor and minorities protected by social justice warriors, these folks will be liberated to carry on without interference.  They will thus be spared elite oppression.  Well—not entirely.  The weak too will have to toe the politically correct line or face remediation.

The truth is that the professionalized jobs of the future require self-direction.  Technical and social experts must be able to make independent decisions.  They cannot rely on bosses to tell them what to do.  Even less can they depend on all-encompassing regulations imposed by benevolent politicians and bureaucrats.

The world is becoming a more complicated place, one that requires personal flexibility.  Doctors, engineers, as well as police officers, need the courage to make autonomous choices, as well as to engage in the life-long learning essential to honing their skills.

Snowflakes demand the reverse.  They do not believe in courage.  Instead they want safe places where they can be protected from micro-aggressions.  Nor they do not want to learn from others.  As far as they are concerned, the already know what they need to know.

Our overwhelmingly liberal colleges have therefore ceased to do what they ought to do.  They do not foster a marketplace of ideas.  They do not ask students to deal with differing opinions.  No, they specialize in the new conformity.

When colleges disinvite speakers because mobs of student agitators threaten to riot, they are teaching the young how to be model storm troopers.  When professors rant about the allegedly fascist tendencies of president Trump and then grade students down if they disagree; they promote a mindless orthodoxy.

The saddest part is that this is not about to change.  College campuses are so dominated by political correctness that dissent can find no space to take root.  In other words, the snowflakes are safe.  The intellectual chill is so pervasive they need not thaw out.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University