corrosion of conformity

The problem with looking for like-minded non-conformists is that they're all over the place. Conformity goes a long way towards keeping everyone on the same page. Conformists naturally find each other. That is arguably the central point of the conformist impulse. We don't want to impede social functionality by having a whole other viewpoint. This is bad for both survival and the likelihood of reproducing, such that evolution has made most of us conformists.

I've always been opposed to the fundamental notion of conformity. It's by definition constraining. Why shouldn't everyone be different, of course. Should this, shouldn't that. This is just how evolution works, and how socializing works. The reality of it is that socializing is of critical importance to most of us, such that evolution selects for conformists.

I didn't like it, because my viewpoint was different. I was different. I don't have the impulse to conform. I adapted to this fact by adopting a worldview deeming conformity a bad thing. It's something that has its pros and cons, but what is good or bad, should and shouldn't? It was something that would have benefited me, were my brain not wired differently.

Some people are calling this autism now. If you aren't trying to imitate the behaviors of others from an early age, this can cause a wide array of development problems. It is essentially this dysfunction of our instinctual impulse to stick together. To be gregarious, to form a herd, to find a sense of social connectivity. It is a way of thinking differently. 

A way of thinking differently, how? Just differently. In all sorts of ways. I question the utility of calling it autism, but we should be calling it something.