The story of the Spur Posse is a story of subcultural conformity. We should note that conforming and obeying are distinct phenomena. People obey superiors but conform to peers. Conformity typically includes imitation; obedience does not. To obey is to comply with an explicit requirement; to conform, with an implicit one. Finally, when accounting for our actions (especially questionable ones), we readily acknowledge our obedience but minimize our conformity. The reason is that we tend to see obedience as a social strength and conformity as an individual weakness.

   But however we view conformity, we do conform, and sometimes to fine effect, as when small-town businesspeople conform to each other’s high standards of honesty or when, according to community precedent, almost every able-bodied person assists in a local disaster relief effort. But suppose our peer group is a mob or a gang. Suppose our peer group is the Spur Posse—or their parents, whose casual “boys will be boys” attitude perfectly exemplifies the flight from adult responsibility. Suppose our peer group is Charlie Company at My Lai on 16 March 1968. Suppose it is merely a standard congregation of people occupying “some local pocket of human society,” as C.S. Lewis puts it, “inside which minimum decency passes for heroic virtue and utter corruption for pardonable imperfection.” All too few of us dare to be a Daniel under such circumstances. Peer habits and expectations are too strong: they pressure us not only into acting but also into failing to act. Hence the existence of “happy families” in which nobody challenges incest or mentions alcoholism, and “groupthink”—an eerie phenomenon in which cozy groups of decision makers “tacitly conspire to ignore crucial information” on the ground that it doesn’t fit what the group already assumes. 

Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin - Cornelius Plantinga Jr.