麻豆约拍

FOLLOWING SUIT聽

Good morning.聽 If you pride yourself on not following fashion, you鈥檒l probably be depressed to know that the odds are stacked against you succeeding.聽 According to recent research from France, when we try not to conform, we end up looking very much like everyone else who鈥檚 trying not to conform.聽 I don鈥檛 pretend to understand the theory behind the findings, but apparently it鈥檚 something to do with the laws of statistical physics.

Of course whole industries are dependent on encouraging people to follow fashion and it would be a curmudgeonly person who can鈥檛 see that trying the latest trend can be a lot of fun.聽 Of course at a deeper level some degree of conforming is essential to bind society together.聽 The world would be a chaotic place if most of us didn鈥檛 obey traffic laws and respect other people鈥檚 property.聽 But there is a worrying side to conforming.

One of the many background articles about the Cambridge graduate accused of the murders in Hong Kong was written by an ex pat banker who knows the culture there well.聽 He was writing - not about the crime itself - but about the prevalent atmosphere in the city.聽 鈥榃hatever you want,鈥� he wrote, 鈥榠s available at a price.鈥櫬� Another commentator said it鈥檚 a place where it鈥檚 easy to lose your moral compass because - not all - but many of the people around you are behaving badly.聽

It is easy to sit half a world away and moralise, but we鈥檙e all capable of losing our moral compass if the pressures around us are great enough.聽 The writer of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament put it like this: 鈥淭here is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.鈥澛� St. Paul put it more poetically: 鈥淲e have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.鈥澛� But I don鈥檛 think either St. Paul or the writer of Ecclesiastes thought we shouldn鈥檛 try.

Lord, help us to think for ourselves and stay true to our beliefs.聽 May we dare to be different and not conform simply to please those around us. Amen.