Interesting to think that if you are a non-conformist your role in our civilization's survival is to evangelize your new behaviors while trying not to get yourself killed, imprisoned or banned.
The lesson I think is that society needs to tolerate non-conformists because they may very well be it's salvation some day. Even if society feels those people are completely undesirable there are ways to separate them without throwing away their accomplishments (Galileo was put on house arrest in 1600 but still allowed to continue his work)
I don't know where this idea of "either you're a conformist or you're not" came from, but it's wrong. Like anything, there's depth to the idea of conforming. Some people who nonconform do it in ways that happen to match what other people have done because it's a logical progression. Some people nonconform by acting as randomly as possible. Of the people that quote unquote conform, I doubt many think of it as conformity. In fact, I'd go further and suggest that if many of those people were convinced of its being conforming, they would take certain steps to change.