Pushing Boundaries: Is It Good to Rebel?

My day-to-day life is unlike that of most people I know. In fact, the only people I know who live even remotely similar lives are people I only know through the internet. I have unintentionally created a reputation for being a breaker of stereotypes and that breakage often either makes people feel uncomfortable around me or it makes them like me. Recently, a friend of mine asked, “Why are you not like other people? How do you know that what you’re doing is good?”

Of course, the conversation we had was much more complex than that, but I felt that her question is one that many people wonder about me and others that they see as different. Her concerns, while driven by her discomfort with something I did, is an entirely valid concern. How do I know that what I do is good? How are my decisions made? Are my choices the right(tm) answer to the problems in my world?

To be quite honest, I can’t really answer those questions as objectively as I would like to, but I can certainly get as close as possible.

Most people feel bound by the norms that exist in their social environments. Oftentimes, those norms are pragmatic elements of their world which helps keep them and others in a kind of organized peace. Sometimes, though, those norms are maladaptive or unnecessarily restrictive. Sometimes, those norms serve no purpose and they’re just there for no clear reason. It is the norms that seem maladaptive, unnecessary and purposeless that I am often caught deviating from.

I don’t really rebel just for the sake of rebelling (though, I often joke that I do). Instead, when I’m confronted with something that I feel is unnecessarily restrictive, I usually have to think about it. Thinking about it may not take long, but the process I’m using takes some effort to describe, so bear with me:

Things are never a particular way just because “that’s just the way things are.” When I was an inquisitive little kid, it bothered me tremendously when my parents or teachers answered a question with, “just because.” I had a fair enough grasp of the world around me that I knew things were not ever caused by “just because.” As an adult, I learned that “just because” is an enemy to science and reason and healthy social matrices. “Just because,” in the context of a socio-cultural setting, is an assumption.

When something seems to have no rational explanation, it is worth questioning. So my very first step in deciding what to do in a situation is questioning things that appear to have no rational explanation.

When questioning things, especially assumptions, the first place to send your brain is to its own database. Some things are easy to instantly test and falsify, even if you do so in your head. Hat etiquette is a great example of something that is instantly testable. Will the room explode if a guy leaves his hat on? Probably not. Someone may comment on it, though.

Using the scientific method to an explanation used to justify a social norm is not only useful, but it can tell you a little about how a norm developed. Of course, as with any scientific approach to a question, the more the experiment can be replicated, the more valid the outcome can be considered. The thing is, hat etiquette dates back a few hundred years. At one time, the hat served a variety of purposes, including the protection of one’s head when walking by tall structures, where things were commonly tossed out the window (like waste). Along with that purpose, some men would hide weapons in their hat. Removing one’s hat, then, made the person not only look cleaner, it showed one’s host that you weren’t carrying something to use to harm them. It was an act of submission. Since a lady’s hat, due to other social rules, was often seen as less dirty and served a different set of purposes, decorative hats were allowed to stay on and broad hats, like sun hats, were removed when indoors.

Just testing a social norm isn’t enough, though, to see if it is reasonable to follow it. It is important to consider the reasoning behind a social norm as well. Going back to the hat question, most people will say that someone who leaves their hat on indoors lacks respect. They often don’t know why that is. Occasionally, someone will say it is because you don’t need a hat when indoors. In this day and age, though, we don’t need clothes indoors, either, but we don’t instantly strip once we enter a friend’s house.

For some norms, the situation may stand up to scientific scrutiny and it may seem entirely logical, but when you investigate further, you find inconsistencies. Back in the day, when a man was expected to remove his hat as an act of submission, there was also an expected way in which he had to do so. The hat, when removed politely, needed to have the top part facing away from the person and the inside facing toward the person.

Sadly, I can’t tell you exactly how the habit evolved, but it appears to be the case that it had to do with privacy. An individual may be keeping something in his hat that is important, but he didn’t want his friends to know about it. But if the concern about the hat really is about ensuring that there’s nothing dangerous in the hat, wouldn’t it also be important for the host to be reassured of this by seeing what is inside the hat?

When reading about hats and social norms of the early 19th century, it appears to be the case that removing one’s hat is an act of submission, but showing the inside of one’s hat is an act of trust. Of course, in a day of baseball caps and skullcaps, these things may not be relevant.

If I was still alive in the Wild, Wild West, and if I happened to be a guy, I might think that removing my hat when I went indoors was a rational thing to do. Submitting to my host for poker night with my buddies (or whatever it is that they did on their average night) probably was a very pragmatic thing to do. But the explanations for the behavior of the past could only partly hold true in this day and age. While some hats may have the ability to hold guns and knives, the hat is not the most convenient place to keep those things and, even if it were, the kinds of hats that would make that convenient are not commonly worn. The explanations that there may be for wearing a hat are not entirely sufficient to justify the reactions people have to it.

Lastly, there is always another people element to dealing with social norms that doesn’t exist in most other things that we need to use critical thinking for. When it comes to social norms, something may be impractical, but it is not really worth the battle to fight over it. If I were a guy going to a formal party and I happened to have a hat on, taking off the hat may still be more pragmatic than having to deal with the insulted host and possibly giving them a lecture on the history of hat-wearing. Not only would the host be insulted, then, he also may feel as if he’s had an unnecessary confrontation. Basically, there are more worthwhile battles todeal with. In order to decide if the thing I’m wondering about is a worthwhile battle, I often ask myself questions about it:

1) Is this a worthwhile conflict to bring to this social setting?

a) Is it going to hurt someone’s feelings if I break the norm?

b) Are the benefits of keeping an undisturbed social setting greater than those gained by questioning this norm?

2) Is this social norm harmful to someone?

3) Is this social norm very inconvenient?

4) What can be learned by not following this norm?

5) Are there ways that this social norm plays a role in peaceful social interactions?

6) Is there a reason for me to believe, based on behavioral science, that my actions in this situation will positively affect others?

I like to have a positive influence on the world around me, so that motivation often trumps everything else when I make decisions. I’m a firm believer in what I call ‘positive chaos.’ Positive chaos is my way of facilitating total social entropy. I like to disrupt things in a way that I think is an overall benefit to the world around me. I recognize, though, that the gain from my actions is often at the cost of some sort of disturbance in others. For example, if I spell out some positive message with the letters on the keychain display at the store. While the message might make someone smile that day, someone else still has to do work to reorganize those keychains and put them back in their proper places.

Someone may be disturbed by my openly (and perhaps loudly) confronting another over a racist comment, but the ability to teach someone something about themselves that they can change is positive.

I often say and write and do things that others find disruptive, eccentric, novel and disturbing. I usually have some reason behind it. I can only hope that others notice them.

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