RIFLE RANGE BOY: Easier to go with the flow...

The Conformist (Italian, 1970)

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

With rhetoric like "you're either with us or against us!", there is a pressure for most of us to conform. The daily bombardment of an overdose of information in the social media puts its followers in a quandary. The urgency to submit to the flavour of the moment and to be on the right side of history is quite confusing.

No man is an island. Living in a society, we are all interdependent. When one's own survival is dependent on goodwill and patronage of the others, he would not want to offend the others' sensitivity; he would just conform or at least appear to.

In the current world climate and the country's political scenario, the need to follow the majority is very real. Merely following the tide is, of course, less tiring. Fighting back and arguing your stand may sometimes be an act of futility. Arguing with stupid and zombies is never easy. It takes a certain kind of resilient to debate with people who set with their beliefs and are not ready to accept other opinions. Perhaps, they are fearful of losing the favour of the majority.

Go with the flow...

This timepiece flick from 1970 is set in the trying times of the 1930s Italy when Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Party members were overrunning the country. It tells of a disturbed man from the upper crust of society trying to be 'normal' in society. He tries to conform to the trend of the times without for a moment, taking a step back to ponder whether the action that he is about to do is the right thing to do.

As in the observation of Plato in the Cave Allegory, people create their own perception of the world and are hellbent on living on that conviction. They resist any challenge to that belief because reassessing their stand merely is too taxing. It is easier to go with the flow...

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