Opinion | The Future of Nonconformity (Published 2020)

For those growing into adulthood during most of the twentieth century, therefore, the backdrop to life was the loss of faith in coherent systems of thought and morality. Sophisticated people knew they were supposed to rebel against authority, reject old certainties, and liberate themselves from hidebound customs and prejudices. Artists rebelled aga... See more

American political discourse is deteriorating into two opposing echo chambers. They both betray a conformity in opinion and intolerance towards dissension that could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be identified as "liberal". The furious blows between these political tribes is unrecognizable as a free marketplace of ideas. And the conformit... See more

I think today the variance of weirdness is increasing. Conformists can conform like never before, due say to social media and the Girardian desire to mimic others. But unusual people can connect with other unusual people, and make each other much weirder and more "niche." For instance, every possible variant of political views seems to be "out ther... See more

What’s puzzling, given how carefully people toe their respective party lines, is that there is no minister of propaganda nor a ministry of truth enforcing any explicit stances. We expect this degree of ideological conformity to be the product of a centralized power handing out punishments and rewards. But, as far as I know, there is no single autho... See more

There is a growing federation of independent thinkers and writers not subject to mainstream media’s increasingly narrow range of acceptable thought.

Second, given the nichification of everything, whether by subject matter or sensibility, I am not surprised that the New York Times is finding it difficult to sustain an opinion section purporting to represent all sides of an issue. This isn’t the pre-Internet era, when only a few publications had the reach to plausibly claim they had a duty to sho... See more

While Mr. Goldhaber said he wanted to remain hopeful, he was deeply concerned about whether the attention economy and a healthy democracy can coexist. Nuanced policy discussions, he said, will almost certainly get simplified into “meaningless slogans” in order to travel farther online, and politicians will continue to stake out more extreme positio... See more