Why You Shouldn't Be a Contrarian: Nietzsche's Three Metamorphoses
No one likes conformists.
You know, those people who always support "the current thing" and go along with whatever is the most widely accepted way of thinking and behaving. They seem like they don't have an ounce of critical thinking in them. No authenticity whatsoever.
In this quite understandable dislike for conformists, another character type, the contrarian, has gained popularity. Especially in the age of social media, where quite a few people have built massive online audiences based on their contrarian point of view.
This rise in the popularity of contrarianism shows that people are overlooking one important fact.
Being a contrarian is not much different than being a conformist.
We see a lot of people reject widely accepted opinions, beliefs, and values just for the sake of rejecting them. But that's not what authenticity is. If the main reason for rejecting or opposing something is that it is accepted and supported by the majority, that's still an act of conformity. If you are doing this, your life is still shaped by someone else's values and beliefs. It is just that, instead of following those values and beliefs, like in the case of the traditional conformist, your life and identity revolve around opposing them.
We need critical thinking. We need the courage to go against what the majority thinks and believes. We need the spirit of rebellion. But this is not the final stage of our development into authentic individuals.
I would like to try to relate this to one of Friedrich Nietzsche's most intriguing ideas: The Three Metamorphoses.
In the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche (through the character of Zarathustra) presents us with three metamorphoses. Three transformations from one state to another. There are two things important to note before we continue.
-What Nietzsche is laying out here is not a developmental theory. He is not saying that everyone goes through these three stages or that this is the only way to live. He is rather setting out a path that a person could follow. More specifically, the type of person that he is writing for.
-I am not attempting to say that Nietzsche's three metamorphoses entirely overlap with what I'm saying about conformity and contrarianism. This fascinating idea from Zarathustra explores so much more than that. More than most people studying Nietzsche for years and decades can understand. This will not be an extensive analysis of the three metamorphoses, but I will instead try to use one specific part of them to make my argument against contrarianism.
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