Humans unfortunately have a tendency to accept the status quo. We’re like the arcade machine aliens from Toy Story, seemingly pre-programmed to respond in certain ways. After all, common advice says if you “keep your head down, do what you are told, and wait your turn,” you will likely advance over time. If you break with convention or buck the system, however, you can count on being ostracized and ousted. As Voltaire once said, “Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing the new road.”
But could it be that society needs dissent? What if thoughtful disagreement was actually a springboard to new ideas, fresh thinking, and better solutions?
As the cover story of the July-August 2010 issue of Ode magazine argues, society needs dissent to produce new artifacts and pioneer new solutions. When we disagree with commonly held beliefs or voice dissidence, we unlock the door to a whole new set of possibilities. “The reality is we need dissent,” Carson de Dreu, professor at University of Amsterdam, told Ode. “Without dissent, society would come to a halt; we wouldn’t change or create or innovate.”
Ode lists other great dissenters including author Henry David Thoreau, suffragette Lucy Burns, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and “tank man” in Tienanmen Square. Modern society would no doubt look different today were it not for these paragons’ alternative visions. As Ode’s Jeremy Mercer writes, “Enormous benefits await when somebody is brave enough to disrupt this coveted social harmony and challenge prevailing conditions." Turns out, the “road less traveled” has been trod by more than just Robert Frost, and those travelers are the leaders who shape culture the most.
No matter what you do or where you live, opportunities abound to thoughtfully resist conventionality. How do you respond to dissenters where you work, live, and worship? Have you ever opposed the status quo and been marginalized or ostracized? Have you ever opposed conventionality and reaped great reward?
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Mike said:
I think dissent is in the eye of the beholder.
Progressive Christians often position themselves as dissenters/the cry in the wildnerness on issues relating to the environment and homosexuality, when I think it's more accurate to see them as comfortably entrenched within the secular culture's status quo. I wish the global warming folks felt the same way you do about dissent.
Recent news: The climate-gate fiasco was recently blessed by an "independent" review, but no so sure it's what it seems:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527
Posted: July 12, 2010
Justin said:
Jonathan,
http://inthesetimes.com/article/109/the_big_
Here is an article in line with what you are writing about with respect to dissent. The subject is the mass media and the recent death of Harvey Pekar, "Popular artists, then faced with the corporate control of the popular media, have a choice: like Harvey Pekar, they can say exactly what they think about the times in which we live and thus remain at the margins of culture, at best only a cult figure, or, like Letterman, they can swallow their reservations and move to the spot-lit center of the culture, while remaining at the margins of the discourse about what is really going on."
The main theme of my review of your book was along these lines. I think in your dissent on these issues, you may eventually face the same dilemma depending on how far you go with your criticism.
Posted: July 14, 2010