Harnessing Anew the Power of the Roberts-Mosley-Westmoreland Diagram of High School Society

Today it’s my privilege to explore with you the oft-misunderstood intricacies of human relationships and communal patterns using the deceptively simple, but epochal, Diagram of High School Society, [1] developed by Charles “Buster” Roberts, Tim Mosley, and Mark Westmoreland at our desks in Mr. Wilbanks’ Economics Class while we were supposed to be doing other stuff.

I still remember drawing little boxes on a sheet of notebook paper [2] and realizing we were on the brink of a transformative discovery. After much thought and sometimes heated discussion, we arrived at five categories of human behavior and personality, before cleverly connecting the boxes with lines, thus intellectually and visually answering, at least in part, a question that had long haunted us: “Why aren’t we be more popular with girls than we, in fact, are?” [3]

Like all landmark sociological studies, the diagram offers a sweeping over-generalization of a complicated reality, in this case Gilmer County High School in the third quarter of the 20th century. The whole of human interaction, it turns out, can be crammed into five boxes connected by lines. Let me see if I can communicate this simply enough for laypeople to grasp.

There are five kinds of people in high school. [4]

Natural Conformists: These are the lucky few who, with genuine integrity and faithfulness to their true selves, tick off all the boxes of popularity. Good-looking, athletic, smart (optional), clever, socially adept, good dancers, maybe even musically talented. You know, the people we hate even as we wish we were them.
Natural Non-Conformists: These folks are equally comfortable in their own skin but march to a different drummer. They are free spirits, artists, even rebels, who, truth be told, threaten the social assumptions of the masses. Even if you don’t want to be them, you can’t help but admire them and wonder, “Do I have the courage to be so different?” The answer is no.
Effort Conformists: Pretty self-explanatory. They’re popular, too, but like ducks, they’re paddling really hard beneath the surface.
Forced Non-Conformists: For whatever reason, often unjust, these folks can’t possibly work hard enough to be popular. They just don’t fit in, so they sit in Economics Class and draw diagrams of high school society.
Conditionals: Even forced non-conformists dislike these people. Conditionals have no real sense of self; they simply go along with whatever group of people they’re with. “You believe the world is flat? Wow, so do I!” They’re the ones who really would jump off a cliff if their friends did. And they’re not even really friends, by the way.

So there you have it.[5] If social media had been around in the 70s, Buster, Tim, and I would be famous. But no. The light we so bravely shone on the human condition was soon hidden under graduation’s bushel, only to be revealed again at last by me. You’re welcome.

“But why bring this up now?” you ask. “Or ever?”

Simple. Because of the Apostle Paul. Our text for Sunday is 1 Corinthians 9:16-23, in which Paul, author of nearly a quarter of the New Testament and the greatest evangelist the world has ever known, proclaims, with no apparent irony, “I have become all things to all people …” Good grief. I know a Conditional when I hear one. Can it possibly be a good thing to be ALL things to ALL people? Did we learn nothing from high school? What was Paul thinking?

Answers to these questions await you Sunday, along with wonderful and welcoming people, glorious worship, beautiful music, and the divine mystery of Holy Communion. Come for the possibly pretentious ponderings of the preacher. Stay for the amazing grace.

Still paddling after all these years,

Mark

[1] Italicized to emphasize title and importance.

[2] I don’t remember which of us actually drew the boxes. We may never have a definitive answer.

[3] In retrospect, Tim, a running back on the football team, was actually pretty popular, and Buster would become the school’s star student and go on to graduate from Georgia Tech with a degree in electrical engineering. That leaves … hmmm.

[4] Adjusted for inflation, which we learned about in those moments we actually paid attention in Mr. Wilbanks’ class, there’s now something like 27 kinds of people in high school.

[5] At this point, you might be experiencing the dizziness that accompanies epiphany. That’s OK. New understanding can be shocking, but it’s good.