The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.
-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
This blog entry kind of follows on from my last and, yes, I still have some Part 2s to write. Yikes!
Also, I do admit this current topic is more than a pet peeve of mine and I've been arguing it with people for years. Onward!
Here's a radical concept for you: Not all rules are good rules; not all laws are good laws. Disobedience and deviance from the norm are often essential to human progress. And humane progress.
Making the world a better place -- which is what this humble blog is devoted to -- often involves enduring inconvenience, sacrifice, insults, threats, misunderstanding, incarceration, being seen as a nut/troublemaker/malcontent, a sense of isolation, despair, self deprivation, self criticism, being ostracized and... well, you get the picture.
But there is also nothing more fulfilling than having the courage of your convictions, especially if it will benefit others now or in the future. It brings a certain inner peace with it amidst any turmoil that may have resulted.
Here is a point that is very close to my own heart and experience and, to be honest, I need to get it off my freakin' underdeveloped chest: The world would perish without rebels and "troublemakers."
There is a fairly simple way to prove this.
I have known some people who were VERY conservative in how they lived their lives. I mean the types who would put getting a fat 401K ahead of any risk taking or real self-actualization -- ahead of, in essence, really living. (It's that fear thing again.) Now, I know the arguments and what I say may not apply equally to all people.
But these play-it-safe folks always have the same dull drumbeat: You need a secure job to live. Well, there is some commonsense to that -- especially if you leave it in that narrow context. And to "normal society," it doesn't matter if you are, say, a crooked lawyer or bomb designer: If you have a nice suit and decent bank balance, you're a "respectable citizen." Now, even if you take much more harmless jobs, decent jobs, POSITIVE jobs -- nurse, fireman, charity worker -- they ALL have one thing in common: Today's jobs (and everything else) exist because people who lived before us took risks.
You know, crazy, unorthodox, nutty people like artists and writers; scientists and astronomers; inventors and "insane" theorists. People who were often total outsiders in their time.
Let's break it right down. Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the great geniuses of history. A brilliant mind. An extraordinary artist, anatomist, designer, botanist, cartographer, engineer ... the list goes on and on. There weren't many guys in his day who were designing helicopters [see above illustration]. Think about the awesome creativity of that!
Still, if they'd had 401Ks in the 15th century, I'm sure there would have been friends and neighbors tsk tsking Leonardo and telling him to give up the airy-fairy nonsense and plan for his future.
But Da Vinci WAS the future. Without his "crazy ideas" and solitary courage, progress in the arts and sciences would not have moved nearly as quickly as it did.
My point? It is the creative minds and the courageous outsiders who are responsible for all the choices we have today. Without those minds, modern history would have ground to a hideous halt and you'd probably have a choice between plowing a field behind a team of oxen, or staying home in the cabin to bake bread in a stone oven.
And black Americans would still be lynched as a matter of course, and women would not have the vote, and we'd probably still be in Vietnam.
Our options and our true human rights were bought and paid for by the rule breakers and law breakers who went before us. And they're still out there doing our dirty work. The renowned ones and the anonymous ones. Maybe we should, at the very least, welcome them in from the cold.
Some of the finest people I have ever encountered have been arrested numerous times. There are many of them. Here are four: Noam Chomsky, the late Howard Zinn, the Reverend Dan Berrigan, and Norman Solomon. And you'd be crazy if you called any of them less than respectable, peace-loving, selfless members of our society.
Look these people up. You'll see for yourself. They are all pacifists. They are all the kindest of the kind, and the smartest of the smart. And, yes, they have all been locked up for "breaking the law."
Here's another radical idea: "Making a living" involves many dimensions. In the 21st century the phrase immediately brings to mind the idea of going to your job every day and feeding your family. Fair enough. In my mind, making a living is also about enriching oneself. Looking at the interesting ideas of others. Developing my soul and my mind. And being resourceful enough that I don't have to cling to one job like it's my only lifeline. To me, making a living is not just about income or accruing tangible assets.
That gives me a real security that money can't buy. And it has carried me through some very hard times. It has worked!
Many of us live pretty well and we have good times. But we are creatures of infinite potential and we should not let that be overly restricted by convention. Now, here is another key point: You can make a living for your soul without sacrificing a decent income. These things are not (necessarily) mutually exclusive! You don't have to go broke to stage your own little rebellions of the mind and soul. Free yourself up!
Don't just "think outside the box" (if I ever find the dude who authored that phrase I'm going to smear him with honey and tie him to an ant bed). Why? Because we shouldn't have boxes in the first place. We are over regimented. Over directed. Over conventionalized. Our creativity and our sense of conscientious objection have been muted by mundanity, fear and habit. Suppressed. By people who don't want us to think too creatively and maybe start coming up with alternative ways to behave rather than sticking to the behaviors that make them rich.
Idea: Bunjy jumping isn't risk taking unless you try putting some little cuts in the cable first. Risk taking is FREEING YOUR POTENTIAL. And not in some dumb-ass self-help book kind of way. For goodness sake, you can invent your own life!
Next time you take a "safe" career path or settle into a job that's limited to 40 hours per week, or assert your rights as a minority or take a dissenting view at a political rally, just remember that it was people who didn't take the comfortable route who gave you that option -- or the option to go in another direction. And it is this same kind of people who will lead our real economic, altruistic and environmental progress to a better world.
All of my life I've been considered a "rebel" to some extent, which I feel is rather silly. I haven't even been arrested yet! It doesn't take much to get the label. I mean, I'm hardly building a fortified compound. I just don't choose to live a life of quiet desperation, as Thoreau so eloquently put it. I prefer the road less traveled. It's more rewarding. More interesting. Hard at times, but life's like that sometimes anyway. Right?
And being a "rebel" got me from a lousy high school education in the tough western suburbs of Sydney, to conversations and interviews with some of the most brilliant and creative minds around. And you can do it to. In your own way. What's your "crazy" dream?
Remember: Jesus Christ was a law breaker. Crucified. Gandhi was a resister. Assassinated. Martin Luther King Jr. rejected the laws of segregation. Assassinated. John Brown was an abolitionist without peer. Hanged, 1859. And Emily Davison, became the most famous suffragette of them all. Accidentally killed during protest action, 1913.
They didn't take the easy road. They followed their conscience. They all had plenty of enemies and rebuked the laws of their day. But really their only "crime" was that they blazed trails. Today we see them as they really were. And we accept them. We even canonize them. We understand their actions as legitimate and right, and their "lawful" persecutors as wrong.
So blaze your own trail. And make it a good one. Take others into account. Help them see what it is you're doing.
Even if you have to put up with being called crazy and advised to get a job with a good 401K. Leonardo would be proud of ya!
Take care, and take care of someone else,
Adrian Zupp
PS: Don't worry: I will definitely be talking about Thoreau at some point soon. How could I not?
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