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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

> As a person who has lived half his life in a society where being "well rounded", conformity, and obedience to authority are considered a child's primary virtues, I must confess that I am quite partial to the American style, tradition be damned.

My observation is that the value placed on conformity is the US is astounding. Just take a look at the undergrad girls on any university campus. They all look so alike; it is almost as if they were wearing uniform, it's staggering. Also: the importance of "rules".

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Compared to most other parts of the world except Northern Europe, I would say that American campuses teem with diversity. I agree with you that there's not enough diversity, but there's still a lot of it.

Just take a look at the undergrads in a Chinese/Japanese/Korean university. It's as if they belonged to some sort of military organization.

The relative ethnic homogeneity in those societies is a factor here, I think. I might be harder for an outsider to appreciate the diversity of what superficially seems to be a very similar group of people.

Teenagers and young adolescents are desperate to fit in everywhere though, I'm not sure I would take that as a sign of the society as a whole. I would want to see how this compares to university outside the US, as well.

I never noticed the overbearing desire to fit in when I was at uni in Britain and Germany.

There is this idea that conformity is valued highly in East Asian cultures, and I have never been there and consequenly can't tell if this is true. But in America there is this talk of freedom, individualism and stuff, and it just simply isn't so.

What part of the US are you talking about? This hasn't been my experience at all (DC metropolitan area).

I'm in Flatland Northeast, and other foreigners here have made the same observation.

Clothing choices is one of the least consequential places for there to be a lack of individualism, and I hardly think it's a good proxy for judging how a group values freedom and individualism in areas that matter. I know a lot of people (myself included) whose dress is influenced by prevailing trends, but whose ideas, values, priorities, etc are not (or are to a much lesser degree).

> There is this idea that conformity is valued highly in East Asian cultures, and I have never been there and consequenly can't tell if this is true.

Conformity is highly valued in all human cultures. It's what makes a culture a culture, what stabilizes and maintains it. The difference is more that Americans like to delude themselves with self-aggrandizing rhetoric, but don't have the experience and training to actually put it into practice.

Were you by any chance forced to wear a uniform in high school? I'm wondering if this practice makes people a little more rebellious clothing-wise in university. I'm not sure if it's more prevalent in other countries than the US.

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