I have a confession to make. It is one I don’t lightly admit in public. There is something about me that sets me apart from most of the people in America, Europe, and throughout much of the world you know. My secret behavior is likely to make you think much less of me.
It stems from when I was a young kid. I am not sure how young. Young enough not to remember the details. My mom, who read newspapers the way today’s Gen Zers devour Tic Toks, told me about a news story that has had an indelible influence on me until this day.
As a result — and this is really hard for me to admit, so please bear with me — every night I do something rather bizarre. Or, more to the point, I don’t do something virtually everyone else does. I never sleep with a pillow or any sort of headrest. There it is! It’s out! That’s what the news story my mom read said to do. Stop using a pillow, and being all-of eight or so, I did.
I know, I know. I am a freak. A bare head on a bare mattress! You are undoubtedly thinking, how is that possible, Jim? Doesn’t your neck hurt? Do you only sleep on your stomach? What does your wife think of your strange proclivity?
To be clear, I sleep on my back, stomach, and both sides. I am a 360° sleeper. I sleep just fine and have the same aches and pains of others in my age group, probably fewer. As for that last question, you’d have to check with my wife. I would guess that given the lengthy litany of my foibles, flaws, and failures, my not sleeping with a pillow ranks pretty low for her.
Why am I confessing this eccentricity of mine? Because of the very reason I am reluctant to confess. It confounds people. In the past, when people have learned of my sleepy-time perversion — usually when they are putting me up for the night — they often say helpfully, “maybe you haven’t tried sleeping with a pillow. Maybe you would like it now that you are an adult.” I have tried. I hate it. I’d rather sleep on the floor.
I have a relative who, if we were staying overnight, used to make a big production out of providing me with a pillow, “just in case you change your mind,” as though, after decades of one constant behavior I would, on that precise occasion, unaccountably feel compelled to abandon it to adopt a whole new one. I am convinced that she and those other solicitous pillow-pushers hoped I would once and for all join the normies — the majoritarian race of pillow users — to just give in, to give up my weirdness. To try to fit in for once in this one way.
And that is the point of my telling you all this. Our need to conform and our need for others to conform is so powerful that people feel they have to convert me. Some people refuse to believe that I don’t sleep with a stupid pillow, as if I would lie about such a thing. Perhaps you yourself are quietly judging me. A few people have reacted as though my private choice is somehow a showy affectation as though I — I of all people! — was playing the contrarian, trying to stand out by not fitting in or that I was trying to be difficult.
Then there are those who learn of my depravity and get defensive about their own pillow usage as though I am judging them for their choice. I could care less, of course, although I admit that it does rankle me when I see entire families strolling through the airport lugging their favorite pillows. Sorry if that’s you, you pillow fetishist!
This all raises a question. Why must we, as a species, have so great a desire to fit in and conform that even perfectly personal and irrelevant behaviors, such as pillow usage, can separate an individual from the herd? Why must we all be expected to conform to the collective in even our most private and intimate behaviors?
There are obvious evolutionary benefits, such as providing mutual protection and other needs, to existing in a collective. But, humans being human beings, in a world of limited resources and rampant narcissism, we see other collectives as competitors rather than as partners for collaboration and expansion. We even develop and display unique markers to identify our membership in a particular collective. Perhaps this collective over here purchases My Pillows to signal their loyalty to a political cause while this other collective would rather lay their heads on a rock than give that guy a penny. And let’s face it, for many, that rock-for-a-pillow is a more rational choice than no pillow at all. Meanwhile, we pillow dissenters have no means to signal our loyalty in any direction. Pity the pillow infidel.
And, of course, this compulsion to conform, to be one with a collective, extends to the workplace. (You knew I was getting there.) It’s partly why so many organizations consist of silos and feature little cooperation let alone collaboration. It’s why an individual who diverges from cultural assumptions that pervade so many work cultures is often ostracized, or worse.
I have already elsewhere addressed conformity and its resisters: the pathetic contrarians, the selfish individualists, and the mighty, mighty iconoclasts.
Now I want to address the benefits and the risks of conformity. Many people, by the way, associate conformity with a lack of risk, but as I often point out every choice — even the choice to do nothing — is a risk. The status quo is a risk.
Certainly as with every significant behavioral decision we make, in the long run, the choice between conformity and apostasy does not have to be one of extremes. After all, conformity offers many comforts and other benefits, such as stability, a sense of belonging, camaraderie, and an impulse toward team building. Conformity fosters internal cooperation and can spark us to action through external competition. When your group works together to best another group, the win can be exhilarating. It’s why we enjoy sports so much. The competition brings us an emotional release one way or the other and is a source — even if fleeting — of community.
On the other hand (and isn’t there always another hand?) conformity also promotes groupthink — that phenomenon where people collectively lose perspective and make foolish and irrational decisions together that they never would have made apart. Conformity is inclusive in that conformists stick together, but that very inclusivity is itself a form of exclusivity. You pillow-droolers may be a large and diverse club, but your diversity does not include me or those few other freaks who may choose to go pillowless.
And while competition can drive teams, it also all-but eliminates opportunities for cooperation, compromise, and even collaboration among different groups.
Because of the groupthink that conformity fosters, innovation becomes difficult, and progress becomes nearly impossible. The status quo prevails in the face of the need for change.
Worse still, because conformity is inevitably exclusive, it can lead to asshole behavior.
Think of a schoolyard where all the kids are wearing similarly snazzy sneakers. Here comes little Randy wearing his dollar-store bo-bos! Tough luck for Randy. If he went to my school, he’d be unlikely to get out of there still wearing socks.
So conformity has its value, but too much conformity or, worse still, mindless conformity can be quite dangerous. As for my bizarre repudiation of pillows, I don’t do it to be different, nor do I reject the pillow because of some tendencious moral stance. I do it because I have never felt the need. I don’t judge you for conforming to the vacuous compulsion to cradle your oh-so delicate pate every night like a precious egg in a styrofoam carton, so don’t judge me.
Please?
What behaviors do you have that don’t conform to the norm? Do you ever assume that those who don’t conform are “just being difficult?”
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