Do You Conform or Rebel?

By Roy Masters

July 27, 2025

We tend to think of “conformity” and “rebellion” as opposite forms of behavior. Yet rebellion and conformity, in their usual form, are actually two sides of the same syndrome. Both are responses to pressure that keep the victim reacting to, and therefore “conforming” to, the pressure source.

There is a third way of dealing with pressure that involves neither rebellion nor conformity, which allows a person to fully develop his innate potential, without outside interference.

Injustice drives people to rebel­lion—injustice in politics, in the home, in education, in the dog-­eat-dog business world—in a system based on legality rather than on fairness, common sense, and decency.

And yet the usual form of rebellion is not a rea­sonable response; it is an unreasonable response to unreasonable pressure, and in our rebellion we are all overtly or quietly going mad.

There is a creative rebellion, a rebel­lion without emotion, judgment, or re­sentment, a rebellion that consists sim­ply of the poised observation of what is. But few know about this correct rebellion, because early in life we get sucked into a destructive one that works against our best interests.

Even the most quiet, sticky-sweet people are secretly violent, which manifests in their victims as expressed violence. What I am saying is that society is made up of the obviously rotten and the apparently good, each type perpet­uating the system that produces rebels and conformists.

Rebellion arises against cruel author­ity, but behind such authority stands hypocrisy. The real sinners are not the rebels but those who drive them to re­bellion—the wolves in sheep’s cloth­ing: cruel parents, teachers, preachers, bureaucrats, and the downright crimi­nals hiding behind the cloaks of station and legality.

Rebellion can never free you so long as strong emotion is involved, simply because the emotion which converts your discernment of the injustice be­fore you into a judgment of it, causes you then to become secretly subject to the injustice. The hostility that accom­panies your judgment transfers to you the character and behavioral disorders of those against whom you would rebel.

For example, when you resent (judge) another’s judgment of you, in the process you become like the one who judged you: judgmental. Being judgmental then prevents your effec­tively rebelling. You cannot correct the system because you are reflecting it­—beginning to be what you were rebel­ling against. Hostility causes you to struggle between the no-win choices of rebellion and conformity.

“rebellion and conformity, in their usual form, are actually two sides of the same syndrome”

As you fail to affect the system for good and as it affects you for ill, your pride, your ego, feels your failure. It steps in and tries to counteract the ef­fect inside you with more emotion, of hate or “love.” That only complicates your dilemma. Your ego does not want to see that you are like those you despise.

Refusing to face this truth, by denying facts and rationalizing, you are now rebelling against the truth in your mind. Again, resentment is at work. The same thing is happening in you that you despise in others.

You see, they are victims too. Long ago, as children, your tormentors were made to doubt the Truth within them, and as they fell from grace, the spirit of pride entered and compelled them to overreact in the extreme to injustices, real and imagined, so as to evolve their “beast.” Rebelling and conforming kept them so preoccupied they did not have to see what was taking place.

An im­planted identity does the same thing to everyone. Resentment, judgment, rebellion, and servitude fixate your mind so completely that all you can think about is getting even with or ahead of those who put you down, from whom you learned to become unjust.

Suppose I wished to make you do something you ordinarily would not do. Taking your rebellious nature into ac­count, I would forbid you to do this or that. Perhaps I would act angry to pressure you, fully knowing you would react by doing just what I have forbidden, which is what I secret­ly wanted you to do.

Anyone can con­trol you in this fashion and you will not detect the deception. Indeed, efforts to persuade you of it will fail, because pride, being the enemy of Truth, rebels against all realization.

Even if, as your manipulator, I told you what I had done to you, you wouldn’t believe me because you would rebel still, against the explanation, rather than accept the truth. And what, may I ask, do you ac­cept when you rebel against Truth? More of the enemy’s will, of course!

So beware of the wicked ones who have discovered (through their own ex­perience) the helplessness of the victim in rebellion, and have learned to ac­quire power through intimidation. All manipulators, whether they realize it or not, are part of an ancient conspiracy against mankind.

The same spirit that in one manipulator establishes doubt and rebellion in you, inhabits another who appears as a buddy—a friend and comforter of “your” cause. It often hap­pens that enemy and “friend” occupy the same body, typically in a schizoid parent who fluctuates between ex­treme moods of rage and “love.”

The cruel, bad mood establishes the mad, rebellious nature; then the kind mood turns around and reinforces the self it put inside you.

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