The Rebel

Everyone wants their cake, and they want to eat it, too. Well, here’s news for you. It doesn’t work that way, in the real world.

There is a great fascination with the artist, the rebel. But nobody wants to come close to that person. They want to be voyeurs. They live life, and I mean the great majority, vicariously. (Look it up. Do not succumb to being dumbed down.)

The great majority are culturally and psychologically conservative. They like the known and the familiar. It seems safe. But they are also bored and dissatisfied with it. So, they crave the contact – from a safe distance – with a rebel, or an artist.

They don’t want to live the life of a rebel, or an artist. They have no courage for that. But they want to be close to rebels and artists – from a safe distance.

Well, here’s news. Aside from issues of compassion and courage, which are central – and which the majority in the modern world eschew, and run screaming, quietly, from – and which are the core issues of whether you are a decent, just, caring, compassionate, or in any way moral or ethical human being – and virtually no one wants to deal with those things – there are some central, essential facts, to be considered.

The central gist, aside from how moral or amoral you may live – and most people, despite their good nature, are amoral – is as follows.

And I quote: from a letter recently sent:

What part of artist, rebel, or bohemian did you not understand? You want the romantic image of the artist, but prettied up, wrapped in a suitable package of unthinking and unfeeling conformity. Here’s news. It doesn’t happen.

You are living in a dream world.You take the conformist slob, who never thinks, and barely feels, or you take the rebel. You don’t get both.

You live life in a state of perpetual numbness. And you disdain me for not being so?! You are hollow. You, yes you, are The Hollow Men. Your compassion, morality, ethics and spirituality are all hollow. You are compassionate when it is convenient. When it costs too much, in terms of comfort and convenience, you jettison your broadly propounded and highly touted compassion, good-heartedness and ethics, like so much trash, swept overboard, with nary a thought. You care about yourself. Period. Your compassion, your morality, your ethics, your spirituality, are all, completely hollow. You, are selfish. Admit it. And you pretend to criticize the rebels, the free-thinkers, the people who do not agree with your convenient and self-serving mythology? You hollow, deceitful, shell of a human being. I would hate you, but I have compassion, even for the deeply misguided, and the delusioned.

“We’re been trodded on the wine-press much too long
Rebel, rebel.”

The compassion, morality or ethics of the majority, despite their natural good-heartedness, is razor-thin. Their lack of courage turns their basic good-heartedness into an unfeeling and unthinking amorality, where they would just as easily cheer Chairman Mao, Mussolini or Stalin, or Hitler, as they would Churchill or Thomas Jefferson. They have no morality, because they have no spine. That is the terrible, honest truth.

The majority have compassion, morality or ethics, when it is convenient. When it is not, they pretend. That is the way of this world. As the Old Testament says, They are leaves in the wind.

If we are wise, or even, have some common sense, then we will encourage and inspire people to use their common sense, and exercise their compassion for more than just show.

As Bob Marley said, in his greatest prophetic piece, Babylon System:

Rebel, Rebel.

Yes, it is as simple as that.

Rebel.

JTR,
February 14, 2021

Post-Script:

Listen to this song, I urge you. Of all the wonderful, beautiful songs I have ever heard, two songs speak to my heart more than any others: Black Sabbath, Lord of This World, and, Triumph, Fight The Good Fight. (More the latter than the former.) The third would be, Bob Marley, Babylon System.

“Babylon system is a vampire
suckin’ the blood of the sufferers”

“Rebel, rebel”

• Bob Marley, Babylon System

Get it! Hear it! Assimilate it! Digest it! Know it, viscerally. And rebel, rebel.