The Freedom in Breaking the Rules
Yesterday, I was driving back home from lunch. There's been these stupid traffic delineators placed for seemingly no other reason than to annoy people. Delineators for drying concrete, ACTUAL road work, etc. are all fine, but these ones are just... there. Serving no other purpose, no construction or road work in sight. So, I ran one over. It was one of those "what will happen if I do this?" scenarios. I had a huge grin on my face hearing the SNAP under my car. I know I wasn't the only one who did this as there was plenty of flattened cones around it. The rest of the way home, I was smiling and chuckling to myself. I think I finally realized how much freedom I genuinely had.
Had there been a cop there, would there have been consequences? Sure, probably, maybe get a traffic violation. However, I think this brings to light just how arbitrary most rules are, and how meaningless many of them are. Hell, with a big enough bank account, you can worm your way out of pretty much any law. What is a $50 traffic ticket for someone who makes 1,000x that in a day?
Through most of my life, I have always been someone who lived on their own terms, "thumped to their own tune" as my mom would put it. I have notes from teachers in my yearbook about how much they admired that quality in me. I barely understood social norms, so I largely stopped trying to engage with it, and often just mock its absurdity. I wasn't afraid of being "cringe" or "uncool". What was seen as "cool" was just bland conformity peddled by lowest-common-denominator marketing.
As I got older, I tried to suppress my rebellious tendencies. I didn't want to cause trouble for my wife or daughter, I was afraid of the consequences. I started to question the kind of example I was setting. Standing up for what is right will often mean pissing a lot of people off. Running over the delineator reminded me that all this shit is basically made up.
Rules aren't always about right and wrong, but a matter of who/what the rule maker(s) is trying to protect. I think it became pretty obvious, or at least should be obvious, to everyone who the rules were meant to protect when Mangione zero'd the united healthcare CEO. When you have a guy killing a man who's policies lead to the unnecessary deaths of thousands every year gets the full force of the law thrown at him, versus a white-supremacist blowing away black people attending church getting a couple years in prison, you should know who the law serves.
Playing by the rules is a reason I think we got ourselves into this mess in the first place. When you are playing by the rules, but the other side isn't and is screwing you over on top of it, then why should you play by the rules too? A large reason why our protests aren't doing much is because we are doing them on a weekend, and for one night only. I understand the concern of resources and looking out for one's family, but how much worse does it need to get before you realize there isn't going to be a convenient way out? Do you think the civil rights movement was successful because they kept abiding by the rules of the system? Fuck no. They broke EVERY Jim Crow law they could. Many were harmed, many saw jail, many were killed by our own government, but guess what things actually changed.
We abide by rules and keep quiet for the sake of other people's ego. Why should you keep quiet when your MAGA aunt starts spouting conspiracy theories? She'll probably be so stunned that anyone would dare embarrass her. Why should you comply with corporations who are trying to ever increasingly encroach on your personal privacy? Why should you spend hundreds of dollars per year on streaming services when there is perfectly free alternatives? Wink wink
I sometimes see in political debates, these conservative talking heads start clutching their pearls when you insult them, making you out like the bad guy. Screw them, double down, embarrass them. Make them regret the day they interacted with you. They didn't care about making a mockery of other people who didn't make a career out of being a grifter.
The point I'm making here is, stop playing by the rules when all they are meant for is to make you miserable and keep you in-line. Stop appeasing garbage people, stand up for what is right, protect others even if its inconvenient for you, fight back against the machine. You have a lot more power than you realize, now do something about it.
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