Conformity and obedience were a must before you could receive love from god. The paradox of my religion by birth also taught we had a loving father in heaven. So which was it? Love first or obedience then love… The quandary was real and confusion second nature. Does he only love us when we obey self-appointed prophets, seers and revelators? Why would a loving father in heaven not love us for not being obedient to another man?

You follow the rules, conform, your family and peers are doing the same. Follow through with obedience garners praise and adulation from your tribe. Which grooms obedient behaviour with reward… the reward being so-called love. Many years ago I was admonished by a childhood friend to “Be grateful for the country you live in and the freedoms you enjoy by conforming to the status quo…” I was stunned by my adult friend and his naivety in what it takes to gain freedom.

Being raised a Mormon and my friend a converted Mormon it sadly made sense. Conformity Wikipedia definition: is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms. Norms are implicit, specific rules, shared by a group of individuals.

My friend asserted his belief of conforming onto me because his conformity was working for him. Curiosity has gotten me into trouble and it has gotten me out of trouble. The word is used to describe a frame of mind: the scientist, astronomer, teacher, historian, geologist, climatologist, physicist, inventor, philanthropist… and on and on.

Einstein said “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

Curiosity lead to self-expulsion from Mormonism. I simply had to read literature which had been banned or labelled evil anti-mormon propaganda. My search found it to be the opposite. Instead of (anti) I found comprehensive historical narratives which filled in holes and misunderstandings.

“The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.” –R.D. Laing

I lost my mind when I purposely lost mormonism. As thousands can attest when curiosity leads to an exit from your normal, from a belief, a construct your entire world has been built upon. When this comes crashing down the normal is sodden, the normal falls to pieces… Defiance sets itself against the machine of conformity and the madness propels the curious with an exit from normal. I respect the conformist as much as the non-conformist. It takes both for society to move progressively forward.

With the conformist society remains, with the non-conformist society must change. I once was a conformist and it felt rewarding and praise-worthy. I am now a non-conformist and this journey has little reward and zero praise. I think both have their reward the difference is timing…