If Frederick Douglass had settled for the life into which he was born, he would have lived out his days as a slave. If Martha Berry had accepted family expectations, she would have married, produced heirs, and dismissed her dream of carrying out an educational revolution. Not every protest is valid, nor does every rejection of conventional wisdom make sense. Nevertheless, history teaches that occasional rejections of what we have been taught are vital to the health of the culture. Life in a democracy is never smooth.
Good people can disagree, and often do.
And not everyone is good. Sometimes the claims of the community do indeed override the interests of small groups, and then again, the opposite can happen. And while most of what we are taught at home and in school is valid, we are sometimes taught nonsense. It is no minor paradox that I also encountered some of the most enduring and morally uplifting lessons of a lifetime in those very same places. The best way is to compare what one is thinking to what people have thought for the past 2,500 years, to hold to the conviction that community interests must be balanced with individual interests, and to be ready to question what one is taught.