Disobey

by Johnny B. Truant

"Success" means nothing more than playing a certain game well enough to receive whatever high accolades exist within that game. The problem with my early attempts at following "the usual rules" to achieve "the usual success" was that those weren't the rewards I wanted.

I wanted a different kind of success. Freedom. Happiness. And yes, some money to make the way a bit more interesting. Different rewards, different game. Meaning I'd have to play by different rules -- applying different stimuli in order to receive a different response.

The second half of that Operation Ivy quote is, "You can't ignore the structure because w...

In other words, you can't ignore the structure… but you can weigh it, measure it, and decide just how disobedient you can get away with being.

All of us, every day, inherit problems we didn't create. Motherfuckers get greedy with oil, and everything we buy gets a lot more expensive. Motherfuckers get uppity in another country, and we and our friends and family are expected to leave home to fight and die. Motherfuckers make management mistakes in distant offices, and the house of cards collapses, leaving everyone to scramble to make a living and feed our families. Motherfuckers botch a drilling operation in the ocean and fuck up the environment for the rest of us. Motherfuckers go crazy and shoot up a McDonald's, or a bank, or a school. Motherfuckers do dumb shit, and we have to deal with it. Every day, we're asked not just to take responsibility for our own actions, but for those of everyone around us. Every day, we're asked to deal with problems we didn't consent to create. We're told to clean up messes we didn't make. We're told to toe the line in conditions we had no hand in. Well FUCK. THAT. SHIT. I'll make up my own damn mind, thanks.

You're on your own, baby. I'm sorry. Being a good and reasonable person in a good and reasonable and awesome life has nothing to do with following rules. It has to do with assessing rules, and guidelines, and norms, and prejudices, and ways of doing things, and established procedures, and prerequisites, and prejudices, and suppositions, and paradigms, and doing what the Oracle in The Matrix advised one do in the absence of proof or instructions: To make up your own damn mind.

Every person you know who has done something one way gives you a piece of data, not a decision. Look to your mentors, parents, friends, and people you respect for input if you must, but then compile that data and make a conscious decision. Ultimately, the choice is yours.

I'll proudly be weird, and show others how to do the same. I'll proudly wave the flag of the minority. I'll hold a book, hold a torch. Give me your screw-ups, your freaks, your huddled masses yearning to be fucking awesome.