The alternative media is overwhelmingly populated by people who don’t follow the rules. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:
“The mark of an educated mind,” taught Aristotle, is “to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” And that’s what I’ll be asking of you today. Because as certain as I am that I’m substantially right on this, I’m also sure that its acceptance will take quite some time. But I do want to plant its seeds as best I can.
The Cult… Is Us
Doubtless you’ve seen or heard stories about religious cults and the people born into them. They all focus upon the same set of writings and explanations, all repeat the same phrases, and all approve or disapprove of the same things.
If you’re inside such a structure, it makes sense and holds together. Stepping outside the structure, however… that becomes terrifying.
And so I’ll ask you to think, please, of the place rules hold in our world. They are everywhere. They are everything. No one would try to imagine anything else. Rules are, were, and ever shall be. Only a crazy person would think otherwise.
And so the walls of our cult stand, and it is we who maintain them.
What Rules Are
Rules are edicts, not processes. They’re mechanical, not organic. They are binary, not broad or rich.
Rules do not envision thought; they envision only the polarized termini of obedience and disobedience. Rules do not open space for the consideration of principles and possibilities; they open only enough space for orthodoxy or heresy.
Obedience and cognition are opposing models of human behavior.
Rules demand that we abdicate our personal will.
Stalin said a good leader must learn how to ride a horse in two directions at once.
I love the Orwell quote about contradictory ideas such as 2 plus 2 equals five.
The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.
George Carlin