Agree-culture … M Nadeem Nadir
On an official visit to an educational institution, the official encouraged students to ask him any question regarding their studies and stay at the institution, but he was requitted with dumb silence and dazed faces. The official left off the institution, complaining to the head that students don’t ask questions anymore.
In an interaction with the preachers of a proselytising organisation, an educator asked the preacher who was canvassing the audience to join his denomination’s preaching sessions and pilgrimages to foreign “infidel” lands: “Is teaching the students of a country which is educationally and morally bankrupt not to be prioritised over evangelising the people who are educationally and morally far better?” The preacher was all at sea struggling to parry away the question through liturgical generalisations.
Playing his trump card, the evangelist posed a counter but personal question – which defies the ethics of a public debate – to the questioner: “Has the questioner offered his Fajr (morning) prayer?” The counter-question trafficked the innuendos that if the questioner hadn’t offered his prayers, he had no right to ask any question falling into the religious purview.
The preacher started playing to the gallery and the audience too were eager to pander to him, whereas the questioner was pilloried for dissention. To add insult to injury, he was jeered at for displaying a clean shaven face among the majority of long-beard-supporting visages rejoicing at the pyrrhic victory of herd instinct. In time, the preacher’s tone grew satirical, which snuffed out the dialogue.
Group thinking promotes clique formation, excluding the avant-garde thinking. Psychologically, the desire to conform is driven by two main forces: normative influence and informational influence. Normative influence is the desire to fit in and be liked by others, while informational influence is the tendency to conform because we believe others have more accurate information or better judgment than we do. Both forces operate at a subconscious level, making it difficult for individuals to recognise when they are conforming, let alone resist it.
One of the most famous studies on conformity is Solomon Asch’s experiment in the 1950s, in which participants were to match the length of a line with one of three comparison lines. When placed in a group where the majority gave an obviously wrong answer, a substantial percentage of participants conformed to the wrong answer, despite knowing it was incorrect. This experiment highlights the strapping effect that group pressure can have on an individual’s perception of reality.
The traditional classroom layout in Pakistan revolves around a teacher-centred approach, where the teacher is sanctified as the ultimate authority. Students are expected to listen, take notes, and follow the teacher’s instructions without challenging the ideas. Over time, this dynamic teaches students that dissenting from the group’s or the authority’s opinion is either pointless or dangerous, as it might incur disapproval or even punishment.
From an early age, students are conditioned to follow a fixed syllabus with little room for exploration or questioning. The reliance on standardised testing reinforces this agree-culture, as students are rewarded for regurgitating “facts” and adhering to specific frameworks rather than offering innovative or diverse perspectives.
In an old PTV drama, Neeli Chirya, written by Ashfaq Ahmad, Dr Fahim, the protagonist, is disillusioned with his mother’s textbook parenting when he fails to desert his humanitarian values to yield to social mores. For a neeli chirya, it becomes hard to live with its individuality among exponents of agree-culture.
D J Enright’s poem The Rebel ends on the psychological paradox of agree-culture:
“It is very good that we have rebels.
You may not find it very good to be one.”
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