Respuesta :
John Stuart Mill is arguing against conformity. The human being, through its faculties of "perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference", only excercices those faculties when going against custom, against what is known as received wisdom. If someone merely follows the dictates of custom, then he is not thinking, or judging, or making moral choices: he is, so to speak, on autopilot, or simply following the herd. He is not asserting himself as an individual in full command of his humanity. In our daily lives we face many situations where we follow preestablished behaviors: at work, in the street, when dealing with our family. But it is only when we depart from what is expected from us that we become individuals, when we reject the well-worn path of custom and make personal choices.
Mill thinks that people will become independent thinkers if they observe reality , evaluate it and act upon it according to their own conclusions. People should make their own decisions and justify them. To achieve this, they have to try by themselves. People will not become independent thinkers if they imitate what others do, or if they copy what other people believe in. For example, today people believe in what commercials on TV tell them. Commercials belong to public life and their aim is to make people believe they will be happy if they get expensive goods. Happiness is part of private life. There are a lot of teenagers who think they will be happy if they get the latest smart-phone. They cannot think by themselves or arrive at the conclusion that happiness should not be associated with material things. When they believe in the material idea of happiness, they are buying a false idea. The idea the market makes them believe in.