Word: nonconformists
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DRESS. In many counties, the jury summons states that the appropriate dress is coat and tie. One who does not wear a coat and tie is often a nonconformist and therefore a bad state's juror. Conservatively well-dressed people are generally stable and good for the state...
...From the viewpoint of hagiography, the martyr is the ultimate Christian hero, the most noble of saints. Sociology, with a cooler eye, sees him as something else: a special kind of social deviant. As Sociologist Robert K. Merton points out, the "historically significant nonconformist," his own definition of martyr, often risks his life for a variety of motives, some noble, some not. There are cases, he notes, in which martyrdom may be little else than "an expression of primary narcissism" or "a need for punishment." Like Camus's Rebel, or Peter Viereck's "unadjusted man," the martyr...
...most daring scrutinizers is Father Hans Kűng, 43, a Swiss-born professor of theology at Tubingen University in West Germany. An acid-penned theological nonconformist, Kűng does more than re-examine the doctrine; he is the first important Catholic theologian to come right out and deny it. The Vatican is understandably unhappy, and for two months the sounds of its displeasure have thundered around Kűng's head; he has been under attack from the hierarchies of Germany, Italy and France. This week, with the American publication of his blunt book Infallible? An Inquiry...
...insensitive pachyderms. Only Berenger remains immune from this metamorphosis, for he is a special misfit, committed to nothing but pursuing his own harmless pleasures. At the end the whole world has gone over to the rhinos and he is left totally alone, musing on the sad fate of the nonconformist ("People who hang onto their individuality always come to a bad end"). Half-inclined to join the pack charging up and down the streets but now unable to change, he finally determines to pit his weak powers against an increasingly mad society...
...German, Grass is a nonconformist in more important ways. His country reveres specialization. Grass has exuberantly sprawled out as minor poet, polemical dramatist, artist, sculptor and jazz musician. He has persistently made fun of the Establishment and the past. In the matter of language, he is a total revolutionary. Too often in Germany, culture has suggested lofty abstractions and an aristocratic style. Grass has always liked to stand the German language on its head and shake it. The result is Rabelaisian horselaughs, horrifying images and earthy sights, smells and sounds that make his visions of yesterday as immediate...