The Art of Defiance:

defiant personality traits
back to index page

  Topics Covered:

Arrogant

Narrow-minded

Anti-social (without friends)

Reticent

Resentful

Critical

Parsimonious

Emotionally insecure

 

Arrogant

One of the greatest assets a defiant can have is arrogance. You are superior to everyone else. You are right and everybody else is wrong. It is important to think this way because it is true. You are not content with anything. Everybody else stops because they are modest, they find contentness at some point. Only you surpass all limits, stop at nothing, attain the extreme. Of course, society wants you to think that arrogance is bad. If someone criticizes your arrogance, tell them you have no intention to be arrogant at all. Your only objective is to be the most arrogant of arrogant, not just arrogant like everybody else. The reason it is better to think you are greater than you really are is because then you will become so.

Narrow-minded

You know, some people will have read this far, and they continue to think that all this is just paranoia. Everything has its pros and cons, some good things and some bad things. To say that something is either all good or all bad is narrow-mindedness. The error in this line of reasoning lies in the fact that the world is aimless and that is the quality defiants criticize. You see, as soon as we make the slightest concession, as soon as we say, 'ok, I agree with this part', that is accepting aimlessness right there. Since we criticize the foundation of society, everything about society is bad, nothing about it is good. It is a one-sided, narrow-minded view, something everyone believes to be bad, which leads many to believe in aimlessness without even realizing it.

Anti-social (without friends)

Everyone sees friends. They are too weak to be without them. You see only enemies. Everyone around you is accepting. (It sounds strange that I should know, but I know because of statistics. I also know that not every one of your classmates has the same birthdate.) If you have friends, they are really enemies. It seems logical that you should all team up to defy society as a team. You are probably not lucky enough to have such defiant friends. Just learn to be defiant on your own, but the ultimate goal is find allies and defy society as a group. Otherwise, there would be no purpose in me talking about defiance. There is the grave danger that if you team up with defiant friends, they will only last a short time. They'll grow up and change their mind. So, in general, teaming up with friends is not a good idea. Defiance has to be given your complete devotion. If you can tell that your friend is ambivalent about defiance and extremity or if he has even a single other priority, don't waste your time trying to form a team. If he changes his mind, he'll change his mind and devote himself, and then he will come back to you.

One of the difficulties of achieving defiance is that it is a team philosophy, yet you have to do it all alone. You have to expect to have to wait another five or ten years until you find someone who is strong enough to be your ally. Until then, you are a lone soldier caught in enemy territory. As much as you'd like to have people who fight on your side, it cannot yet be reality, and you have to keep marching home, where you can regroup. (The mark of the person who only thinks he is defiant is that he forgets why he is marching home, and fails to prepare himself for the time when he will no longer be a single individual fighting the whole world.)

Reticent

Don't talk about your defiance to anyone. It can only make you less defiant. In all human communication, especially in talking, the ideas that gain dominance are those that are frivolous and easy to produce. If you try talking about defiance to someone who is not defiant, they will simply flood the communication with irrelevant ideas. People can spit out ideas faster than their flaws can be identified, so if someone isn't completely serious about everything in life, every communication with them about defiance will make you less defiant. So I'm saying talk to them, if you think it's wise, but not about defiance.

Resentful

Society teaches you that you should be cheerful. Well, don't be. There is nothing as valuable to the defiant as the incessant state of dissatisfaction with the way things are. Whenever something bothers you or angers you, blame it on society. Blame it all on society because society is the problem you have. Without a grudge against it, it will just remain a problem because you won't have the motivation to change it. You can pretend not to see the problem with it, but that doesn't lead anywhere.

Besides that, resentment is a source of energy. It can help you achieve great things. But simply blurting and acting things out, thereby releasing the tension early, you're not tapping into the bulk of the source. You have to build the resentfulness up inside you. Whatever the reason, all resentment is good, and all society is to blame. The object of the resentment is to create more and more of it.

Critical

People all so worried about sounding intelligent when they speak, that they don't know how to criticize what matters. You see, all the criticism you hear in the world is an illusion. They are trying to teach you to criticize their way. That way, every time you criticize something, you'll be criticizing based on false assumptions or only an insignificant detail of the whole. There is only one valid criticism, which is the criticism of everything. My criticism is based on the single absolute goal in life. There is no other motive. The aim is not to improve an inherently imperfect world, it is perfection itself.

One of my worst bugbears is how they keep claiming to want to keep improving. They keep asking you for your suggestions on how to improve things. The extreme phoniness is enough to make me want to say 'shut up, I don't even want to criticize it.' Don't worry, I won't tire of criticizing. If you don't feel ready to criticize more and more with each crticism you make, you're not doing it right. It's not about venting your anger, you see. You're trying to fuel it. Most people criticize a detail, and then realize it's all so hopeless and pointless and stop. You're trying to criticize the root of everything. You will not tire until every last shred of miiccrocommpetitiiioon has disappeared from this planet. The strategy is the one of maximum efficiency: Resist indoctrination. Find others who were able to defy. Collaborate to change the world. Eliminate the unknown.

May the consequences of this lie beyond our imagination, for it is the unknown, not the known that we seek

Parsimonious

The defiant walks rather than bikes, bikes rather than takes the bus, and takes the bus rather than drives. He is concerned with efficiency and parsimony. He avoids all unnecessary consumption. Luxury is illogical not because it brings pleasure, but because it results in aimlessness. Pleasure derived from luxury can be a means, but never the goal. There is, however, a distinct difference between the defiant who indulges in pleasure and the conformist who does the same. For the defiant, however much he indulges in pleasure, it is a transient phase. It goes away with experience and age because he devotes himself fully to the goal. He has no wants, not because of self-denial, but because he feels free to indulge in every pleasure and cannot help, but abandon them one by one out of boredom and pointlessness.

Emotionally insecure

Arguably the strongest asset of the defiant, emotional insecurity is the root of what gives the defiant the flair that no conformist can understand. The conformist is good at taking it easy, relaxing, and fitting in. The defiant is worried, he is gravely concerned, thereby seeing beyond what is obvious and unnoticeable by conformists. If the defiant is emotionally insecure as well, it gives him an added emotional energy that takes him beyond ordinary limits. It is best to view emotional insecurity as a gift to be treasured.