In a previous post, I introduced non-conventionalism, the idea that for many social conventions—and many more than people typically think—there are no good reasons to conform, and sometimes there are even good reasons to go against them. This contrasts to conventionalism, the view that all conventions in society, or one’s part of it, are justified and worth conforming to—or provide justifications for conforming as such.
As I see it, there are at least seven objections to conventionalism, each of which provide corresponding arguments for non-conventionalism.
1. Conventionalism is arbitrary
The first is highlighted by the fact that for any convention, there is often a counter-convention somewhere or at some point in human history. I experienced a lot of these when I lived in France. For instance, some French think it’s rude if guests don’t assist their hosts with the cleaning after dinner, but Americans often think it’s rude if hosts let their guests do any cleaning at all. French customers often leave stores 10-15 minutes before their closing time, but some Americans think it’s rude to expect this before closing time. And I could give a myriad more examples of conventions and counter-conventions.
This conventional conflict can underscore a dilemma: when any convention has a counter-convention, then either there’s a good independent reason to conform to the convention or there is not.
If there’s a good independent reason to conform to the convention—as safety is a reason for sticking to one side of the road—then a non-conventionalist will conform to the convention for that reason instead of a conventionalist one and will claim convention offers no reason by itself for conformity, contrary to the conventionalist.
On the other hand, if there’s no good independent reason to conform to the convention—as is having one’s hair short or long—then there’s no good independent reason for conforming to the convention as the conventionalist does. But in that case, conventionalism entails arbitrariness without any good independent justification.
2. Conventionalism stifles joy
My most practical objection to conventionalism is that it stifles joy. For example, my sister married a man 10 years older than her, and if she conformed to any conventions prohibiting this, then she would have needlessly lost a tremendous amount of joy in her life. I can give countless more examples where this is the case too, examples where not only is conventionalism arbitrary, but it’s harmful in precluding good outcomes.
3. Conventionalism stifles creativity
From a societal perspective, much progress, scientific innovation and even beauty—in many visual and musical forms at least—has depended on creativity, but creativity itself requires producing something new, perhaps by definition.
As such, creativity often involves breaking convention, and it has certainly done so in socially tumultuous ways: consider the belief in the heliocentric solar system—which Galileo was persecuted for—or belief in the rights of African Americans—which Martin Luther King was persecuted for—or many other now widely accepted examples of societal progress that were non-conventional or heretical in some circles.
What these examples show is that creativity constantly requires questioning and re-evaluating prevalent ways of thinking and behaving at the time; however, conventionalism can discourage this.
4. Conventionalism obscures what matters
Conventionalism can also cause people to lose sight of what really matters. Again, if someone opposed my sister’s marriage to her husband merely because he was 10 years older, then they would be valuing some arbitrary social convention over the wellbeing of my sister, something which—to my mind at least—entirely loses sight of what really matters. Likewise, non-conventionalists can point to other examples where devotion to convention eclipses other things that matter too.
5. Conventionalism creates imaginary superiority and inferiority complexes
Additionally, convention can create completely imaginary senses of superiority or inferiority. For instance, at various points of time, the ruling classes of society could have looked down on you if you didn’t look like one of them, and often that meant looking like this:
Or like this:
Or maybe even like this:
And while I admittedly can’t be certain of this, my strong suspicion is that all of these people would have thought their ways of looking and behaving were objectively superior compared to others—especially others like this:
Yet, so far as I can tell, all of these patterns of looking and behaving are just arbitrary conventions, and they would constitute nothing more than imaginary standards by which one group plays make-believe in assuming their superiority over others.
Of course, if those patterns are associated with idiotic or harmful behaviors, as is sometimes Ali G’s case, then those patterns are blameworthy. But again, it would be blameworthy only for these independent reasons, not because of convention—contra the conventionalist.
In any case, these imaginary superiority complexes that are erected by convention sometimes justify another objection as follows.
6. Conventionalism can create social division, conflict or other harms
Conventions can serve as the basis for creating conflict, divisions or other harms. Many civil rights movements are examples of this: people struggled against conventions predicated on the imaginary superiority of some groups over others, be they whites over blacks, or men over women, and so on and forth.
7. Convention can be used to justify immorality
In that respect, if conventionalism were a valid position, then one could have appealed to past conventions to justify immoral behavior at the time, be it racism, sexism or some other then prevalent moral aberration.
But despite these objections, many people carry on with their lives while oblivious to just how many conventions constrain them, how arbitrary these conventions are and how harmful they can be.
Instead, I think conventionalism has been and continues to be a needless deadweight on human progress, happiness and innovation, and one we ought to break free from.