The Art of Defiance:

faulty advice by conformists
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  Topics Covered:

Find something you like to do

Rebellion is a phase in life

It's easy to criticize

 

Find something you like to do

The argument's flaw, obviously, is the smug assumption that we want to achieve happiness in life. With any job one accepts, one is really contributing to the same miiccrocompetitive system. All jobs are equally pointless in that sense. A conformist enjoys some jobs more than others because of his flawed view of the meaning of life. The defiant's criterion for choosing a job consists of maximum payout for least risk and effort. Different defiants will choose different jobs not because of some equation involving personal gratification, but for other reasons, primarily because they are skilled and experienced in different ways, making the effort required for a particular job variable among them.

A defiant must not think of himself as a productive citizen or as a contributor to society. On the contrary, he must think of himself as a parasite, and derive pleasure precisely from doing jobs that are pointless, inefficient, and nonsensical. For he is not here to help society, but to bring the system down once and for all. Deriving enjoyment from parasitic behavior serves as a constant reminder of one's struggle against society, of one's strategy, and of one's purpose, thus enhancing one's effectiveness in all thoughts and actions.

Rebellion is a phase in life

Often, one hears that rebellious behavior is a stage all adolescents go through, part of growing up. It's another very clever argument because its function is to make you think you're part of society, just like everyone else. However, all I see nowadays in terms of rebellion is piercings, tattoes, or listening to funky music. I don't see any real rebellion or even criticism voiced by today's teenagers. Be assured that if you rebel, you are not part of society. You'll be doing something no one else is daring to do. You'll be the only one strong enough to resist among hundreds of millions of people. Just look at how well schools are able to appease young students, turning each one into a despicable conformist. You want to let society tell you and everyone else that they are all going through a stage of rebellion?

It's easy to criticize

The critic needs those he can criticize. Alone, he is nothing because he can create nothing and has nothing to say without something to criticize. And even when he does criticize, he is doing nothing productive. All in all, criticism is pretty lame. Everyone can do it, and none of them achieve anything.

Conformist, you see, have no understanding of strategy. The flaw in every one of their arguments is the same. They assume no goal, and therefore their argument is always an opinion, lacking in logical basis. Because there is no goal to them, producing means doing things right away. It is like a nineteenth century mathematician using pen and paper to calculate pi to as many digits as possible. He scoffs at the critics who speculate about computing machines that could produce the results much faster, since they don't do anything productive. In the context of today's society, the defiant's strategy involves doing absolutely nothing productive, by the conventional definition of the word. His criticism is focused on that on which all future progress depends, society's organization.

What may be harder to see is the value of all this building up of defiant emotions and thoughts, the seemingly pointless repetition of arguments and feelings that constant criticism entails. You see, simply having a new and correct idea is meaningless. If nobody pays attention to Einstein's theories because he is Jewish, then the theories don't matter. They may well end up burned and forgotten. In the case of defiant thought, it must be remembered that some ideas are more fundamental than others and must be given more attention. Also, some ideas are more relevant and important and must be given more attention. One cannot forget, however, that one's philosophy is, to a large degree, a matter of repetition of ideas that one is exposed to. Living in a society in the information age, tons of irrelevant ideas are pumped into one's mind every week, and defiant ones are not among them. Therefore, to assume the defiant philosophy, one must continually repeat defiant ideas to oneself. Whether you're in the supermarket, in class, or watching a movie, you must see how defiance applies everywhere, how society is one huge system, all of it interrelated, and all of it to be defied as a whole.

This said, defiant criticism is highly difficult, not easy. It requires a full-time dedication of one's self to achieve.