Play By the Rules, Get Played 🤷🏽‍♂️

I’ve never been one to do something like the next man.

I just don’t listen.

Ask anyone who’s tried to govern me: bosses, parents, police, coaches, friends, teachers, girlfriends – theres only one thing I’m sure to do, and that’s whatever I want.

Instead of following the pack or fighting to be at the front of it, I’ll just find my own way, or skip the line if I have to.

And people hate it.

That part used to tick me off. People got all fussy about my rule-breaking, and I didn’t understand what the big deal was.

Who cares that I did something my way? Why does it bother you? Pay attention to your own business.

Oh, I have to do something “because you said so”?

Who died and made you king?

Rules are dumb anyway …

Long story short, I stopped caring. 

Stopped caring about rules in the bar, rules in the gym, rules in the street, rules on social media, DEFINITELY the rules that are unspoken, and DEFINITELY the rules that exist to protect feelings.

Minding others was holding me back, and I wanted more.

No, I don’t have “aura.” 

There’s nothing badass about this. It’s just an absolute refusal to submit.

Obedience to flimsy and shallow guidelines that hold me back from what I want is not an option for me.

If that’s raining on people’s parades, I want downpour.

And that’s becauseI don’t want anything to do with normal.

Breaking rules is the key to avoiding normal. A normal life is one governed by fear and submission. It signals an inability to risk take.

Deep down, you don’t want normal. So why do you accept it? You encourage it!

Shake things up – I’m challenging you. Push that boot off your throat, and see the wonders that it produces.

Many great things come from shakeups. For creatives, breaking the rules is a rite of passage.

For an idea, concept or action to be groundbreaking, it must break the foundation it lies on.

It’s this concept of destroying in order to build.

I say rules are merely a guideline to help direct your actions — they don’t have to be followed, but they can be observed.

And you don’t always have to break them. The risk of doing away with rules entirely comes with consequences.

But somebody’s gotta do it.

Fortune has a way of favoring those brave enough to learn what the consequences are, anyway.

And why not? It seems destroying is the clear choice for progression, especially if you get what you wanted.

As long as your intentions are not evil …

What is evil anyway?

You and I probably have different ideas on what that even looks like.

The people who run the world sure have a differing opinion of it.

German philosopher Nietzsche had this idea about good and evil.

Mostly, its that our understanding of what evil is can be subjective, making it prone to abuse and corruption See:

• Crusades

• Manifest Destiny

• Redlining

• Black Codes

• Gaza 

• Trail of Tears, etc.

Rules for thee, not for me …

Nietzsche believed that evil actually stems from weakness.

That checks out.

The way I see it, people become evil when they’re worn down by the rules they live under — not because they believe in them, but because they feel forced to follow them.

Over time, their obedience curdles into resentment … and that resentment breeds malice.

So, if you’re a goody-two-shoes, following rules just because you’re told to, you’re weak.

You’re normal as ever, and you don’t even know why.

Worse, you’re a few slip-ups away from becoming bitter, resentful, and evil.

Exaggeration? Maybe. But keeping a smile with a boot on your throat only lasts for so long.

If you want to follow rules because you truly believe them, more power to you.

Stand for something – that’s the way it should be. Breaking rules just for the sake of breaking them is a form of weakness, too.

But to submit blindly to any man, rule, nation or authority is to forfeit autonomy, abandoning freedom entirely because of fear.

That’s crazy if you ask me.

The core of this philosophy is that one should simply do what they truly believe is aligned with their spirit, destiny or divine instruction. 

As a rule-breaker, I realize my destiny is to be an outlier.

Someone that doesn’t belong. Someone so radically different than anything or anyone that has ever existed.

Someone with a clear vision of the future, and a destroyer of all things that contradict that vision.  

“The kids live tomorrow 'cause today, the party just died”

This tracks with Nietzsche’s idea of the “Übermensch”, an ideal individual who creates his own values, lives beyond traditional moral categories, and affirms life with all its contradictions. 

AKA, a mf who does what he wants and owns the consequences that come with it. 

Übermenschen don’t ask what is “good” or “bad.” They ask: Does this strengthen me? Does it affirm life? 

Anything that stands in their way, including convention, morality, sentiment and weakness can (and should) be confronted or destroyed in the name of affirming one’s destiny. 

The things I believe in, many of them being things I will not write about here, are typically radical and explicitly contradictory to the things we see as normal practice currently.

To be honest with you, I am disgusted with normalcy, and I deeply resent many societal standards we currently maintain.

Human behavior has become abhorrently greedy and destructive. And in the name of what? Consumption and complacency?

I’m eager for a clean slate.

“Burn the whole village, we start over, it's really that time”

Much of the work I do is parallel to this idea of a rebuild. Something’s gotta give, and I fully intend to contribute to the downfall. 

I, too, crave destruction.

Not out of hedonistic pleasure, or for the thrill of chaos, but for the sake of rebirth. Redemption through sacrifice.

Destroy to rebuild.

We know this concept well – change through sacrifice is written in our DNA by the billions of ancestors who suffered for our peace. 

And this suffering is too often in vain.

In this restricted world of rules and hierarchy, we stand on piles of bones and call it stability.

We shed the blood of others and call it progress.

Blood, shed in the name the system and its half-baked efforts to maintain status quo. Go figure.

Rules to maintain normalcy. Their rules – their freedom – is our suffering. 

Are those the rules you want to follow, good boy or girl? 

I hope not. And if they are, you ain’t coming on my ark. That’s for sure. 

So this post is for the rule breakers.

The ones who knock down the pathetic castle in the sand, not because it’s fun to destroy stupid things, but because it’s necessary.

You have a vision for something better, and a clear plan for building it.

You don’t care about preserving the norm, and if normal stands in the way of the final product, it’s as good as gone.

Forget sand castles.

What we’re building has far more integrity than a pretty facade – the kind that won’t waver to the crushing blows of an ocean’s wake – and one that resists the threat of normalcy. 

Somebody has to be the first to strike the match, unafraid to incinerate everything proven for the sake of something new.

Why shouldn’t it be you?