Why alignment feels safer than truth

Why alignment feels safer than truth

Friction and the Fear of Standing Apart

Friction works because it exploits a fear older than any technology:
the fear of standing apart.

Most people do not align because they are convinced. They align because misalignment feels lonely. From childhood onward, belonging is taught as survival. To be out of step is to risk attention, explanation, or ridicule. Even when no punishment follows, the anticipation alone is enough.

Modern systems understand this instinct intimately.

When a process works effortlessly for “everyone else,” resistance begins to feel not principled but awkward. The question quietly shifts from is this right? to why am I the only one struggling? Friction reframes dissent as personal failure.

This is why so many people abandon perfectly sound objections. Not because they are disproven, but because sustaining them requires emotional energy. To stand apart is to answer questions that should never have been asked. To justify preferences that need no justification. To carry the subtle burden of being “that person.”

Over time, even thoughtful individuals learn to pre-empt friction by adjusting themselves. They adopt defaults they distrust. They accept systems they would never design. They mistake adaptation for wisdom.

What is lost here is not efficiency, but plurality. When standing apart becomes costly, diversity collapses inward. Systems grow smoother — and narrower. Innovation gives way to optimisation. Meaning gives way to compliance.

The antidote is not stubbornness. It is companionship. When even two or three people acknowledge the friction together, its psychological weight changes. What felt like isolation becomes pattern recognition. What felt like personal inadequacy becomes shared insight.

Standing apart is frightening. Standing apart together is merely difficult.

And that small difference is where real change begins.

*“Standing apart is frightening. Standing apart together is merely difficult.

And that small difference is where real change begins.”*

In the final piece, I’ll look at how even naming these forces — carefully, precisely — begins to weaken them.

This turns the pair into a triptych, not a one-off.