Conform or Be Cast Out: The (Literal) Demonization of Nonconformists

Introduction

Humans are social animals. We live in groups, we cooperate, we form communities, we help each other, all in the name of making life better. But as G.K. Chesterton was fond of pointing out, humans are also contradictions. For all our love of community and social activity, we are also individuals, each with our own thoughts, feelings, preferences, philosophies, and opinions about the world. It is this tension between the individual and the communal that continues to drive much political debate in the United States, and indeed around the world. On the one side, you have the individualists, the libertarians, the free thinkers, the nonconformists, under which category the present author, in the interest of full disclosure, must admit to falling. On the other side, you have the collectivists, the nationalists, the socialists, the communists, and those who believe that the bonds of community and charity must be prioritized above individual rights or welfare, by force if necessary.

Much to the dismay of people like myself, for the last several thousand years, the collectivists have been winning, and one of the reasons they have been winning is their overwhelming superiority at using language and storytelling to reinforce their worldview among the undecided. They do so with such skill that most people don’t even realize that their thinking is being manipulated. Think of the word selfish and what comes to mind? Someone who treats others badly, and who is likely to lie, cheat, and steal to get what he wants. In reality, the self is a wonderful thing that should not be neglected, but should be nurtured and developed to the maximum of its potential. But subtle collectivist thinking has, over time, given the word an intensely negative connotation. The author and philosopher Ayn Rand tried to point this out numerous times in her writings, but due to the clumsiness of much of her philosophical writing, her message came out garbled to all but the most devoted readers willing to work hard enough to figure out what she really meant.

Collectivist messaging can be found pretty much anywhere we care to look for it, but perhaps the most audacious example, and the focus of this book, is the way in which individualists, nonconformists, and people who refuse to do as they’re told by the rest of society, have so frequently throughout history been demonized. The word, as it is most commonly used, is strictly metaphorical. To demonize someone is to paint them as a bad actor, as someone with malevolent motives, or at the very least as someone acting against the common interest of society. We see metaphorical demonization every day in politics, in current events, in religion, in polemical writing of all types. Indeed, it’s hard to find any public figure who is not, to some degree or other, demonized on a regular basis. You can be sure, however, that the bulk of the bile and hatred society has to muster is lobbed in the direction of those who are a bit different than the rest. The people who hold unpopular opinions, live unconventional lives, refuse to do as they’re told, and fail to toe the party line risk not only public censure and vilification, but often death threats and actual attacks on their person as well.

Demonization in the metaphorical sense is far too common to be the subject of a book that has any hope of being coherently organized. A history of demonization would encompass the entire history of the world. But there is a specific subcategory of demonization that seems wholly fitting for in-depth study. I’m referring, of course, to demonization in its original, most literal sense. By this I mean that, on multiple occasions and through a variety of movements across the centuries, the powers that be, whether housed in the church, the secular government, or merely people in positions of great influence, have classified nonconformists as being, or else acting in the service of, actual demons.

It sounds so extreme that it’s hard to believe, and it’s equally hard to believe that society as a whole would be willing to swallow such obvious propaganda, and yet it happened, again and again, not only in primitive, superstitious backwaters, but shockingly recently in our own country. In some ways, it still continues today.

Before moving on, I should clarify that I am not arguing that all nonconformity is necessarily good. Murder, rape, theft, and other kinds of violence are all acts which cut sharply against the established mores of society, and these are obviously terrible crimes which should be discouraged and condemned in the strongest possible terms. But even though certain types of nonconformity are destructive to peaceful living, other types can be either harmless or downright advantageous. After all, it has always been the oddballs, the weirdos, the trend-buckers, the eccentrics, and even the so-called madmen who are responsible for the truly great breakthroughs in art, music, science, and philosophy. Without nonconformity, there could be no advancement. Everyone would just go on doing things the way they have always been done, and no one would have the drive or self-confidence necessary to upset the proverbial apple cart in search of some tastier fruit.

If this is the case, which it pretty obviously is, why then should society at large be so quick to condemn those who march to the beat of their own drum? It is likely that the answer can be found in the dingy backwater of prehistory, when continued existence depended on small tribes of people working together in order to solve the extremely difficult problems of how to get enough food to eat while not being themselves eaten by predators. The famous libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek, in his final book entitled The Fatal Conceit, devotes a good deal of space to exploring this notion. The collectivist impulse, he argues, is embedded deeply in the human psyche, because it is through collectivism that we emerged out of the primordial soup of life and into something vaguely resembling civilization. When people live in very small groups, say a family or a tribe, it is advantageous to work as a unit. There is no private property within the nuclear family, but everything is shared and employed towards the primary goal of keeping the family alive and well. In tribes, there is a chief and everyone does what the chief says, for the good of the tribe. A nonconformist in a group of individuals trying to function as a coherent unit tends to gum up the works, just like a rogue spring or gear would utterly destroy the mechanism of a finely-tuned watch. Everything has to function in concert, or else the whole thing falls apart, and so nonconformity must be punished, and severely, lest the family or tribe suffer as a result.

This collectivist system works pretty well, but only for the reason that, in a small group, everyone can be held accountable. If someone shirks their duty, it is immediately obvious to all involved, and corrective action can be taken. But when you expand the group size past a certain point, this system is no longer tenable. In a large society, it becomes impossible to know every individual member on a personal level, and therefore it is impossible to know whether everyone is following the plan to the best of his ability. It’s impossible to know what people are really capable of, what their needs are, who’s shirking, who’s legitimately in need of help, and who’s trying to game the system to secure maximum benefit for himself. As accountability breaks down, so does the central plan as designed by the chief. The collective system of the tribe must give way to a market system where individuals pursuing their own interests create a functioning society without even meaning to. This is what Adam Smith called the Invisible Hand of the marketplace, a spontaneously generated system that allows for individual action with little to no need for group identity.

In a market system, the nonconformist no longer threatens to bring the whole machine crashing down. Someone who acts strangely or unpredictably may ruin his own life, to be sure, or he may stumble upon unimagined riches and success. He takes the risk, and he bears the consequences, and if he fails, there are thousands more like him to keep society running.

Yet, throughout this restructuring of society from small tribes to complex cities, we have carried with us that primal distrust and fear for those who refuse to live their lives in a conventional way, and far from reveling in the diversity that markets allow, too many of us still seek to squash disobedience good and hard. The best way to do that, it turns out, is to represent difference itself as the literal stuff of nightmares. Use fear to bring people in line; it’s the oldest trick in the book, probably because it still works after all these years.

In the following chapters, I hope to demonstrate how nonconformists have been consistently represented as the servants of Darkness through the centuries, and how even today we continue to hold onto attitudes demonizing those who wish to live, love, and work in unfamiliar ways. It may be that through greater understanding of this phenomenon, we can start to let go of some of the fear we feel towards the nonconformists, and start to treat them with the tolerance, and indeed fascination they deserve.

Chapter 1

From Serpent To Satan

When discussing a topic that spans much of human history, it can be difficult to know where to begin. There have been nonconformists for as long as there have been human beings with complex societies, and this certainly goes back to the invention of writing, if not even further. I could try to find the first example of a nonconformist in history or literature and see how society treated that individual, or I could try to find the first example of a nonconformist being punished for his actions. Instead, I’m going to take the easy way out by starting at the beginning, as defined by the most influential book in western culture, The Bible.

The Book of Genesis, and especially the story of the Garden of Eden is well known to almost everyone in the Western world. God created the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, and plopped them down in paradise to do whatever they wanted, with one major exception. Whatever you do, God commands, don’t eat from this one tree planted in the center of the garden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. All the other trees are fine, but don’t touch that one.

Of course, as soon as God turns his back, a serpent appears and convinces Eve that her interests run contrary to God’s commandment, and that eating from the tree would make Adam and Eve more like gods themselves. God is just holding them back as helpless dependents out of spite. Eve is quickly convinced, and she and Adam eat from the tree. Immediately, they realize that they are naked, feel ashamed, and seek to cover themselves with makeshift clothing. God comes back and finds out that his orders have been disobeyed, and after a stern lecture, kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden. That’s why life is hard, bearing children is painful, and snakes don’t have any legs, apparently.

That’s a simple enough moral: do as you’re told; don’t try to rise above your station; don’t listen to talking snakes. Nonconformity is punished in the swiftest and most terrible fashion, and the serpent, the tempter, is primarily to blame, but we’ll get back to him in a minute.

Another story from early Judaism, though less well known, carries a similar moral. According to some scholars, Eve was not the original wife of Adam, nor the first created woman. She was a second attempt after the first one, called Lilith, went wrong.

In the myth of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, it is told that she was created independently of Adam, unlike Eve who was created from the rib of Adam. Thus, Lilith did not want to submit to Adam, something that led to an argument regarding who should lie underneath during sex. Finally, God had to intervene and he attempted to force Lilith to submit to Adam. But Lilith spoke the secret name of God, Shemhamforash, and managed to escape. She escaped out of the Garden of Eden into the wild lands where she encountered demons, like Samael and Asmodeus.¹

Nowadays, Lilith is generally referred to as a demon herself, queen of the vampires, and mother of all dark and evil things. Her crime? Once again, it is nothing more than disdain for authority, nonconformity to the expectations of others, and a refusal to allow herself to be dominated. These generally admirable traits are literally demonized in the story of Lilith, leading to her becoming an adopted mascot in some circles of modern feminism.

Before moving on, it’s important to note that warnings against disobeying the gods were nothing new, nor were they unique to Judaism. The mythology of the ancient Greeks is full of cautionary tales about what happens when humans fail to live up to divine expectations. This is not surprising, given the fact that gods were, by definition, powerful, being the forces behind nature itself and causing everything from lightning and earthquakes to wars and even love. It’s only natural to fear and obey something that has the power to reduce your village to ash, or worse, to make you fall in love with someone who doesn’t love you back. But to the Greeks, at least, obedience was not necessarily seen as inherently virtuous, just prudent.

To the ancient Greeks, the gods were to be honored and obeyed not because they were good, but because they were powerful. They could make your life better, or they could ruin you without even trying, so it was best to stay on their good side. By the same token, however, if you could manage to pull one over on the gods and get away with it, more power to you. Zeus, Hades, and Ares were not heroes to be loved and adored. They were just as ruthless and petty as any human warlord. This is why there are plenty of stories of particularly crafty humans, and sometimes non-humans, beating the gods at their own game, and the best of these stories is that of Prometheus.

Prometheus was a Titan, the Titans being a race that preceded and were ultimately conquered by Zeus and the other gods of Mount Olympus. Prometheus was uncommonly sympathetic to human kind, having observed the way they struggled to eke out an existence, and he figured that they could use a little help from above. Noting the usefulness of divine fire, one day Prometheus took it upon himself to give humans the gift of fire making, allowing them heat in the cold, light in the dark, and finally some decently cooked food to eat. When Zeus learned what Prometheus had done, he was furious. Fire was one of the gods’ main advantages over the humans, and with a single action, Prometheus had elevated an inferior race one step closer to Mount Olympus. As punishment, the poor Titan was chained to a rock and doomed to have his liver eaten by eagles, only to have it grow back to