Meditation for June 2nd, 2016
Rules to Boredom
Laws, rules and guidelines are the way we as a society creates order. We learn and follow these rules in school which carry on to the work life. Almost every company has an employee handbook that states the regulations and expectations the company has for its employees. Then we drive home where there are speed limits and other laws that need to be followed.
The whole society and its politics is contingent on making laws or trying to erase laws. Some states are at odds with the federal government because the laws they want to enforce are the opposite of the federal law.
Rules and law are the reason people are unable to be creative or think outside the box. Things need to be a certain way or a person is unable to find away to solve an issue. When the guidelines are unclear, a person becomes frightened that they will make someone upset if they guess wrong on how to handle any given situation.
We have accidentally made robots.
This is also a problem because if someone tries to live outside the norm, they are judged and treated as a pariah. The only options are get rid of the subculture (the old way) or make that subculture mainstream and market the shit out of it (the brand new way, suckers!). We want people to be socially recognizable in their values and morales, so if we find that we aren’t recognizing the lifestyle, we become uneasy and seek law.
Everyone wants to make a sign. Everyone wants something written down so that it is permanent. Everyone wants to take away privileges and put up defenses against the possible spreading of unsavory actions into everyday life. People need to know that something is going to be done about it.
People are so into rules that they will talk about how there used to be rules that were better than the new rules. People will talk about how things are donewhere they’re from. Some people even try to bring the cultural commandments to their new homes. People want a social basis they can understand and be comfortable in. People have a hard time going from one set of rules to a new set of rules. It blows people’s minds to go from a set of rules and guidelines to being told that they can come up with solutions on their own and that they are trusted to do so. They literally can’t.
Too bad it’s destroying art. Things have to be a certain way. Old timey music can’t have mandolins, metal can’t have any interesting parts, punk has to be identical to all the other punk songs ever written – no exceptions, rap and hip-hop has to sound more like other genres but not as good, indie rock has to have a banjo part in every song, painting needs to look like an illustration – usually with an early twentieth century scientific illustration feel, comic books should be about zombies or the apocalyptic end of the classic superhero as we know it, books should be a series of short stories and never be a novel because no one actually reads anymore, tv shows should be very specific genres and every episode must end with a cliff hanger and a death of a character you really liked, or if the tv show is really good, it’ll be cancelled because people love Kardashians and drag queens more than smartly written shows, comedians should joke about racial, sexist and other under privilagism and joke about the insanity of how entitled millennials are.
What if there were no trends dictating what is good and what is bad? Would things actually be interesting?
Fear of breaking the rules is the reason our next president of these United States will be a money & power hungry narcissist.
Or Donald Trump.
Prayer
Eunomia, Goddess of legislation,
There’s nothing written about this particular situation.
What do I do?
I don’t know what to do.
There is nothing in the handbook about this.
The boss is busy over there so I can’t ask her.
At my old job I had to do this, this and that,
But here I have no guidelines for any of this.
Whatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoidowhatdoido.
I asked the grumpy barista guy,
But all he said was make it up as you go.
I don’t feel that’s a good philosophy.
Maybe if I close my eyes this situation will go away.
Or someone else will fix it.
Amen.
Craft
Play Risk with someone. Instead of moving your armies, use UN resolutions.
Fun!
Goal
How do you respect laws and the boundaries of other while not becoming a trend-following, uncreative welp? How do you find ways of solving problems without guidelines or fear of authority? How do you erase everything you thought you knew about anything before trying to create something?