rebellion and reflections
Aug. 18th, 2012 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliWas pondering a post I read for a long time. . . about contempt for not being a good girl and questioning all the authorities you were told to question, and how you have to be transgressive to be cool, man, and the conformist rebellion. . . how you really should rebel for real against all these mindless pushing of rebellion.
I said at the time that this is kinda of incomplete, but I have been pondering it since. It does, after all, not matter which part of the weather vane you ride on -- pointing into the wind or out of it, you are still at the mercy of wind.
If you rebel against a subculture, and it changes to do what you do, should you rebel against that? Why or why not?
The only way out is to not care about whether something is rebellious or conformist. Which is no easier than dropping any other habit. (Much easier to pick up a habit than to drop one.) The best way is to look for another rule that you can use, by which you can judge things. (Not, "Be yourself." What your self is will be determined by what rule you chose and how well you follow it, so that's not a rule.) I ponder what a pope observed, that the truth will make you free because the only way you can avoid being ruled by impulse is to have the truth so that you can judge them against the standard and choose on that basis.
In the realm of aesthetics, of course, it's not just the Truth. There's also the Beautiful. And in the aesthetics arena, it is particularly important to shake free of conforming to rebellion or conformity, because the time lag between when you write and when you publish is such that what's trendy now will not be trendy then. 0:)
I said at the time that this is kinda of incomplete, but I have been pondering it since. It does, after all, not matter which part of the weather vane you ride on -- pointing into the wind or out of it, you are still at the mercy of wind.
If you rebel against a subculture, and it changes to do what you do, should you rebel against that? Why or why not?
The only way out is to not care about whether something is rebellious or conformist. Which is no easier than dropping any other habit. (Much easier to pick up a habit than to drop one.) The best way is to look for another rule that you can use, by which you can judge things. (Not, "Be yourself." What your self is will be determined by what rule you chose and how well you follow it, so that's not a rule.) I ponder what a pope observed, that the truth will make you free because the only way you can avoid being ruled by impulse is to have the truth so that you can judge them against the standard and choose on that basis.
In the realm of aesthetics, of course, it's not just the Truth. There's also the Beautiful. And in the aesthetics arena, it is particularly important to shake free of conforming to rebellion or conformity, because the time lag between when you write and when you publish is such that what's trendy now will not be trendy then. 0:)
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-19 10:29 am (UTC)If the person is rebelling because he thinks the status quo is inherently evil, then if the culture changes around him, his choices are to either embrace it, or push even farther (ie, how the environmental movement pushed into whacko areas like global warming when society embraced their reasonable ideas - they were in danger of being swallowed by the mainstream, so they had to go farther out on the edge).
However, I think there are also those who function as devil's advocates. Their goal isn't to support any specific ideal, but to keep any culture from having a hegemony on society at large. In their case, if they risk becoming mainstream, they MUST find a new cause. Gotta keep the pot stirred to prevent heat death of society.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-19 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-20 12:40 am (UTC)