Did the Roots of Rebellion Grow Out of the Conforming Culture Yes or No Explain?

¶ … roots of rebellion" grow out of the "conforming culture"? Yes or No. Explain.

In my opinion, rebellions, new ideas, revolutions always have the roots into the conformity of an era, may it be a cultural, a political or an economical conformation. There are several arguments to be presented in this sense and the argumentation will aim to emphasize the intrinsic relationship between the rules that a conforming culture is trying to establish and how eluding these rules creates the exact premises for a cultural rebellion.

First of all, we need to consider the fact that, from a certain point-of-view, a conforming culture has several important characteristics. Their identification and enumeration will help in creating the premises for a rebellious response. The first characteristic is the set of rules that the conforming culture imposes on society. These are a set of general characteristics that define culture at a certain time.

Further more, these characteristics are 'conforming'. Let us have a brief look at this term. Conforming has several expressions. It has an impact on religious life, with a certain exacerbation in this part. It also means that the older generation, usually over 40, defines what conformity may refer to. In this case, it has impacts on fashion, on music, on film as well.

Finally, as it has been pointed out, conformity gives way to a "homogenized character"

, in terms of social life, but not only. In my opinion, this homogenous character included all cultural manifestations. The homogenous character of conforming cultural may be considered one of the main spurs for rebellious movement within and one of the main sparks of rebellion roots. We will further examine how these characteristics impact or help grow the roots of rebellion.

We may start with the homogenous character of conforming culture. Homogeneity in itself is a factor of rebellious attitudes. Homogeneity somewhat denies the individual existence of the individual and transposes it into the society and the social rules that are applied there are directly transposed onto the individual universe. It is interesting to see that a heterogeneous society has less chances of spurring rebellious acts, because the existence of the individual, with his own set of rules, applied within a given societal context, is not strongly denied.

In the case of homogenous societies, you may grow rebellious out of the need to decline and devalue a set of rules imposed by authorities that you may or may not fully recognize or support. It is the case here that the rebellious act comes from the need to decline authority, as it is imposed onto a homogenous culture.

If we take the example of the 60s cultural rebellion, the persons imposing the homogenous set of rules ranged from parents to the government and the president. These elements determined that long hair was bad, loud music was no good and that the rules that had applied in their times were excellent and very actual. Further more, looking at the homogenous characteristic as applied for that specific period, the authorities expected everybody to apply the rules and, thus, to wear the hair the certain measure determined, listen to no other music than that which was accepted, etc.

The result was the 60s cultural revolution that included everything from rock bands, the birth of heavy metal (Deep Purple and Black Sabbath at the beginning of the 70s), long hair, the hippy trend and the sexual revolution. The revolt was caused, besides other things, by the homogenous cultural conformity in which the youths were living and which they happened to reject.

Going back to the first characteristic we have defined, the set of ground rules, the fact that someone imposes a set of rules which are not mandatory for the correct functioning of the mechanism. A set of rules, usually subjectively determined, is what usually causes a revolt/rebellion in the first place. It is the psychological revolt against anything imposed onto somebody.

Referring again to the example previously presented, the set of rules that the authority was trying to implement and impose, a set of rules covering vast aspects of everyday life, cramped the youths' capacity to think for themselves and create their own set of rules (or rather non-rules). The 60s cultural revolution was, among others, a revolt against what had been decided without any consultation and against the implications of authorities (parents, government) into their everyday life. Of course, it also had a political component, as a rejection of the war in Vietnam, but from a cultural perspective, it was a fight against people telling them what to do.