Collusion for Conformity

Throughout recorded history, there is evidence that every society that has evolved has had as part of its culture a panoply of rules and regulations for the behavior of its citizens. Many of these regulations, such as rules against homicide, theft, and overthrow of the government, were as important for the survival of the various societies that have existed in the past as they are today. However, in addition to these rules that are immediately essential for the survival of a society, there have been others regulating interpersonal and private behavior that at their best have only indirectly affected the strength of a society.

In ancient Greece and Rome, there were strict sanctions against private behaviors such as celibacy and divorce, except under unusual circumstances where sterility could be shown as the reason for a divorce. It seems likely that sanctions such as these were important to maintain incentives for population growth at a time when the magnitude of the population correlated highly with the economic and political stability of a given society. Rules like these have undergone alterations over the centuries so that today celibacy is no longer forbidden and divorce has become a common occurrence, and in fact the norm in some areas of our country. Rules more basic to the integrity of a society such as those against homicide and dishonest or coercive behavior (i.e., fraud and extortion) have remained essentially unchanged.

Despite the presence of legal codes and strong societal response to “inappropriate” behavior, certain members of every society have transgressed both the major offenses that create direct insults to society, and the minor ones that are of questionable harm pending the level of sophistication and cohesiveness of a community. These individuals who have openly or in other more covert ways flouted the values of the majority who have shaped their societies have been traditionally labeled deviant by scholars who study the behavior of such groups.