I think cultures of conformity produce vast quantities of shame, both in people who simply can't conform and people who do conform, but underneath, they're not feeling conformist.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the negative effects of conformity on individual identity and self-esteem.
Jonathan Franzen's quote suggests that cultures which prioritize conformity can lead to feelings of shame among individuals. Those who cannot conform may feel inadequate or ashamed, while those who do conform may feel internal conflict and dissatisfaction, creating a societal pressure that harms personal authenticity and mental well-being.
In practice
In a discussion about the pressures of social media, this quote could illustrate the adverse effects of seeking validation.
Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination.
The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn't covetous, he wasn't envious. But without money he was hardly a man.
Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.
If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life.
To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.
Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.
Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.
Though an atom is invisible, unthinkable, yet in it are the whole power and potency of the universe.
There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.
Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.
Jesus Christ out-socialists the socialists. He says that in His Kingdom he that is greatest shall be the servant of all. The real test of the saint is not preaching the gospel, but washing disciples' feet, that is, doing the things that do not count in the actual estimate of men but count everything in the estimate of God.
We all have a fundamental right to live free from fear, free from crime, and free from disorder - but while we share that right, we also share the duty to secure it.
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