Just like in the Real Life!

It was an extreme example to make a point that a body that dresses the same, and follows the same rules, tend to be a much tighter group of people, then taking 6 people, putting them together, and telling them to complete a task.

You can literally take 12 people, divide them into two teams. One you set no rules for, the other you do.

Two things will happen. The first group will either fail a lot, or a leader will emerge and create his own rules and dress codes.

Verithrax, rather you like it or not, humans are the most effective when they are working as part of a 'hive.' Individualism is great and all, but group identity is far more important.

And to those who are going to argue this point, attack my Chinese heritage and how we value the community over the individual, I am tired of the military example, give me some spice :-p

Gyohoho, no. My experience is different. Completely different.

Only if you're dealing with, let's face it, small-minded people who do not value their and other peoples' individualism. In other words - people who work effectively as a "hive" are those people who WANT only to be a part of the aforementioned hive. Many philosophers believe that the more individualistic you are, the more "humane" you become, for example Max Scheler.


Damn those Chinese, all being so... small and yellow-skinned! And there's too many of them, I don't have enough fingers to count 'em all!
(don't take this paragraph seriously)

I am happy to know that you learn about real life from comic books.

I hate to tell you this, but all you non conformists have the same party line, and aren't really being individuals about anything. The best ones are those people who spend more money than your average person, just so they can look different, thinking that the choices they have are not coming from the same industry as wall mart.

You would have thought that people would learn from the experiences of those who tried to rebel in the 60s.

She's Navy. Our people are dying in the desert. She probably doesn't mind.

-------

Back on topic!

Yes, the ability to assimilate is a mark of maturity. The willingness depends on the individual situation. I think you have a very valid gripe about how things changed on you--there was no discussion and no issue that you know about up to this point. Your employers have either displayed a touch of thoughtlessness in not opening lines of communication or childishness in being unwilling to confront you with issues that do exist. That's a problem. Don't misread what I'm saying as defending their actions in this specific case. However, we're talking about piercings here. I think there's a certain lack of maturity on your end in coupling it with any form of self-identity or self-esteem. You should be the reason that you are confident in your own maturity, confidence, and profundity of character. If it's tied so strongly to a piercing, there's an issue.

Also, you can't expect piercing to both be and not be a statement of any kind. You just can't. Either it's worth taking note of, or it's not. You've already expressed, unprompted, on this very thread, that you're very aware of the image it projects.

your being paid for this job. i really think you should be ok with doing what they ask you too for a pay check. and if your not then quit

I think Cuber said what I wanted to say about Callia's argument; basically, I've seen no sign that people work better together if they're being made to look and act alike. Maybe if one's job is killing people; but it seems to me that people doing creative or highly skilled work tend to lose all shreds of productivity when they're forced to police themselves to stifle their individuality.


...I was kidding. But since just saying that isn't very entertaining, I'm going to actually go ahead and defend my position.

Comic books are a form of fiction, particularly one with highly mythological overtones. The societal function of fiction is, among other things, to provide models and context which we use to frame our real lives. This brand of fiction carries a particular ethos and worldview with it; and I believe that the ethos and worldview that comes attached to a comic book is vastly more humane, true, and pleasant than the ethos and worldview that comes attached to military propaganda and military life. The fundamental ethos of super-hero teams (In modern terms; that isn't really true for Golden-age and maybe even Silver-age comics. Then again, it kind of applies to the Justice League.) is different people who are both united in their differences and complementary in their ability to do good. I find this hugely more attractive, intelligent, and relevant to real life than herd mentality and the notion that being the same as the next guy improves your productivity as a worker or as a human being.
I don't go out of my way to be different just for the sake of being different. I simply find my right to be so inviolable, and think people defending herd mentality are either deliberately anti-democratic or completely alienated from a fundamental tenet of a free, democratic society, which is the basis of modern Western thought. The people who went off and founded Western civilization as we know it were nonconformists; they weren't happy with the way the Pope did things, so they went and founded their own churches. They weren't happy with the way the King did things, so they went and founded their own countries. They weren't happy with the way things worked, so they went and chopped some heads off, and regardless of how bloody and silly the whole thing was, we owe our civilization to those people. Conformism, the belief that assimilating oneself into a social group not because the ways of that social group are good, but because it's how everyone else does things and one must be like everyone else, strikes me as regressive and stupid - About as dumb as being different for the sake of being different, and vastly more dangerous.

Lots of people do... The score of Purple Haze and the rest of the album still sells rather well to this day.

I love how people jump from uniformity to "mindless drones." Just because an organized uniformed team makes in effort to maintain similar appearances and methods, does not mean they do not specialize. The military is a great example. In the US navy, you can sweep the floor, or maintain a nuclear generator. That range alone implies specialization. On an even smaller scale, a US Army squad is just as specialized. Each member has a task to do and fill.


And the upper level 'high thinkers' still work in organized teams with rules. Look at 'science' conventions, they all tend to dress similar, speak similar, and they do work as teams. Like at the number of co-authors in academic papers. Only in movies do the 'genius scientists' work better alone.

Being a person who works in a highly creative, highly skilled work environment, I have to disagree with you.

For example, being forced to eat lunch at noon instead of whenever we want, keeps everything running much more smoothly.


Purple haze is a great song, but the 60s hippy movement turned into the 80s Pyramid scheme/material girl movement, into the "WHY OH WHY DID I NOT GO INTO FINANCES AND WEAR A DAMN SUIT!?!?!" Movement.

However, that isn't in and of itself a good thing. That behavior is great when it allows people to run towards the guns instead of away from them, and better when doing so means the difference between other people having some freedoms, or none. Or, as happened where I grew up, the people who dressed the same and followed orders were the ones taking away your freedoms if you were lucky, your freedoms and your life if you weren't.

Indoctrinated standardization is good for some things and bad for others. It stifles creativity. Most of the nifty toys you play with were invented by civilians. Leonardo, the Wright brothers, Von Braun, Einstein were all civilians. Many of them were -in- the military at some point as specialists but I doubt wearing uniforms and following orders contributed to their abilities.



Speaking similar is a bit unavoidable. Every profession needs to develop a subset of the language to better describe the subject they work with. Dressing similar is obvious, everyone goes for what's most practical. And seeing my friends get their academic papers published, I can tell you that while true collaboration does happen, just as often the young unknown researcher writes up the whole thing, then the Important Expert adds a paragraph or two and lends his name to the paper to give it credibility.

It strikes me as amusing, at least, that a nuclear fission technician should be held to the exact same standards of dress and behaviour that a floor sweeper is subject to - And he isn't. In fact militaries try to make reasonably clear who is sweeping floors and who is keeping meltdown at bay; one of the primary characteristics of military dress is making hierarchy clear. General hierarchy is seen at a glance (Noncoms tend to dress differently from officers, for example) and specific hierarchy is visible before you're close enough to have a conversation.

Individuality does not imply working alone; being in a group does not imply being the same as everyone else in the group. The reason people in the same jobs tend to be similar is both that particular specialties tend to attract the same kind of person, and that some people find it more comfortable to adapt to their social group's average. There's nothing wrong with conforming; what is wrong is expecting others to, trying to force them to, or having silly notions about conformity being a sign of maturity.

There's a practical reason for that - Namely, that everyone is working at the same time everyone else is, which facilitates communication. It's like everyone in an office using the same operating system; there's a practical and perfectly reasonable reason why that is. Then again, plenty of work places have flexible hours and work fine, and mixed Windows/Linux networks are an IT solution that works for some companies. It's pointless encroachment of people's right to individuality (Like discriminating against piercings or beards or t-shirts with witty sayings on them) that bothers me, not standards and practices that have a real reason of being.

For some people it turned into the "I did some cool :censor: during the 60's, then I got married and raised a family. Far out" movement. Just because things didn't turn out exactly how the 60's generation wanted it to turn out doesn't mean that nonconformism is wrong or failed or doesn't work; the 60's movement did have a big, and I believe greatly positive impact on society. Sure it spiraled out of control of the hippies themselves, but that's what big social movements do.

I was going to argue, but if you read Verithrax's posts, he kind of gives all the examples to prove my point, and I see no point formulating an argument when he was so kind to do it for me.

Except that the examples he gives are far more reasonable, less severe, and completely different, than the examples provided by both you and Daganev. As such, they do not apply - it's like saying "you believe in punishing criminals, just as I do, therefore you also must share my view that death penalty is a good thing". I'm not saying you believe in death penalty, it's just an example of a rhetorical error.

Unless you really wanted to say "I'm right and you are wrong, nahnahnahnah, not listening!". But I think you're above such cheap tricks.

I think somebody needs to re-read the thread.

Oh good gods.

I'm gone for 7 hours and this thread goes from 11 to 50-some posts.

Everyone seems to again forget...IT IS NOT NECESSARILY A MARK OF REBELLION. Body modification has been going on for CENTURIES. It has been used as a ritualistic sort of procedure, it BEGAN AS a ritualistic procedure, in many tribes, the MORE you had, the BETTER you are. There are religions today that use it as a religious or ritualistic procedure...EVEN IN THE UNITED STATES.

I am not a social deviant. These people here are not freaks, or 'non-conformist'. It's not about a big uniform military squabble. It's not even about whether it looks nice. It's employers and clients acting upon stereotypes to judge people, and therefore making dress-code regulations banning them, which also leads to keeping these 'distasteful people' out of their work force. If a job wants me to take out my piercings every day before I go to work, that is just fine, I need the money right now more than I care about them being out for a few hours a day, and no piercing will close up in a mere 8 to 12 hours.

The simple fact that it is being regulated like that is stupidity. The fact that anyone cares enough to force someone to find employment elsewhere or regulate such things as that is stupidity. If piercings show I'm a social deviant to you, then all bleach blondes who tan too much must be whores, any guy with frosted tips and a manicure must be a raging homosexual, and we should all be judged and denied employment because of that? Everyone's too busy kicking us all into categories and deciding which categories are acceptable and which aren't. Why can't people be people and look like people without everyone getting in a huff about exactly what that person's definition of LOOKING LIKE A PERSON is?

Uniforms for work, fine. I understand needing to show off the company logo. Piercings aren't clothes, just because they can be taken out briefly does not make them just a routine piece like a bracelet or necklace that one puts on in the morning. And what, pray tell me, makes a little 16-gauge eyebrow ring different from an earring? Where is there a line that says that the human ear is a completely normal and acceptable place to pierce oneself, but you can't put the same size stud in your nose or have a piercing in your tongue, or lip, or where ever you feel you like to have it? Body piercing in the US isn't new, pretending it's a new teenage fad is silly. Are you seriously LISTENING to yourselves when you talk?

How many of you guys defending Sylphas' office had to wear school uniforms as a child, out of curiosity? (It's standard practice in pretty much every English school, even primary schools, but I'm told that's not so in America.)

And I must disagree with you.

I work in a highly creative, highly skilled work environment called a research lab. Being forced to eat lunch at exactly noon would me over nine ways to Thursday, because it would interfere with time-based expermients that I -just- happened to start about 20 minutes late, or something in the procedure went bonky. Thus, having flexible breaks makes everything run more smoothly. It is a matter of situation.

Now, my opinion on body piercings. They\\'re the exact same as my choosing not to have any, the same as my decision on what I do (or don\\'t do) with my hair, eyebrows, neck, and other aspects of personal grooming. With something like an eyebrow stud/bar/ring/whatever, I could hardly call this offensive. Sure, being a librarian with a metal face might be construed as a little overboard is one thing, but as with EVERYTHING there are acceptable limits. I am strongly opposed to most forms of down the line \\"This is what you can and can not do\\", especially with such personal things as body piercings and style of dress. I will openly acknowledge that most of the extreme cases presented in this thread are indeed \\"over the line\\", and some limits are very much necessary, but some, i.e. Sylphas and Ark\\'s, do not sound to have an air of unprofessionalism. There is no reason to outright banish harmless aspects of appearance (especially for apparently nonrelated reasons as convincing you to not wear jeans...) just because a few people like to take the illogical extreme.

Disclaimer: The below may be found to be highly controversial, so if you have a tendencey to not have an open mind and/or have issues with people who think differently from you, the following may not be for you. Yes, it is masked.



May or may not have been the best explanation of why I think people act the way they do, but in summary: I know I at least listen to myself talk.

Quick edit: I've also had plenty of work experience in which certain aspects of dress and behavior were indeed heavily mandated. Such a job would be that of a lifeguard, during which when I was on duty, I was expected to be wearing my identifying shirt (bright red with the white cross on the back) and be wielding my rescue float-thing at all times. However, there was no question or complaint about my choice of sunglasses, which I hold to be a form of personal expression and hold them in a similar (but not quite as emphatic or strong) vein as discreet facial piercings.

I talked to my favorite anarchist librarian (ex Workers Party militant, ex punk rocker) and her advice is, get the female librarians up in arms. Convince them that 'today it's my piercing, tomorrow it's your earrings'. Get them to march in a fury towards the managerial offices. Hide behind the sandbags till the fireworks die down.

Well I haven't said anything either way, but the closest thing I needed to wear in High School (was implemented my sophomore year) was a nametag on a lanyard. They were real pricks about it, and it was made out of cheap materials and we got yelled at if they were cracked, and had to pay for a new one. In college it was completely different, it was so easy to have your keys on your lanyard. I stuck my ID card in my wallet though.

It's just a different mentality, in highschool the administration expected no one would comply, and thus made problems for themselves by being so hard-ass. In college it was all on you. Don't have your keys, heh well you can't open your dorm door. Don't have your ID card, well that's got your meal plan on it, sucks to be you, be more responsible.

Back to dress code in high school, there were tons of little rules we had to follow, but as long as your clothing fell within them it was alright. I don't know if my old grade school has a uniform now or not though.