New Thought for New Times
Rebel Reject Create Now! The world is full of rules. Rules are designed to make behaviour uniform. I hate uniforms. But you know what I hate more than uniforms? Negative people. People who are anti everything, criticise everything but never bring anything of their own to the party.
One of the risks of being a maverick thinker is being one of those people. Let’s face it: it’s EASY to criticise. Nothing is perfect and holes are easy to find. Those of you who are old enough or into cult films enough might remember the slogan and t-shirts that were spin-offs of a cult film: Obey, Conform, Consume.
I used to love that slogan (and had the t-shirt) but lately, its cynicism and inherent negativity bother me. Which is why I decided to come up with a slogan of my own to match it and take it further.
Nothing you do in life is wasted it is all just fuel for future ideas. Why write off a perfectly good idea just because it doesn’t sit well with your future self? So, I thought about it, and I realised that what I wanted most was something catchy, edgy and POSITIVE…
REBEL REJECT CREATE!
Was the result. On the surface, it may seem like something only outsiders and mavericks might be convinced of, but I’ll take you through each word and explain how it works.
REBEL
One of the cornerstones of a good person is obedience. We obey the rule of law, we follow instructions, respect our parents and do what we are told. However, this completely ignores the fact that our world is changing so fast that these authority figures have no idea of what the current reality feels like, how it works or what it is going to do next. Obeying the rules is the fastest way to get left behind in a fast-paced world. So, you must rebel. You have no choice. You need to break some rules, ignore advice, make your own way and sail by your own lights. Scares the pants off a lot of people!
REJECT
Again, on the surface, this might seem extreme. However, this is not a ‘Throw the baby out with the bathwater’ kind of statement. Rather what it implies is that you need to reject your own beliefs and ideas as well… you must NOT conform. Question everything… especially your thoughts and assumptions. When we do not question, we repeat the same behaviours. Expecting new things to come from old behaviours is insane. We need to change, so you need to reject the past, the old ways, the old habits.
CREATE
After Rebel and Reject you might be feeling that this is some kind of Nihilist creed. But it isn’t, because when you step in the ambiguity and complexity that results from rebellion and rejection, you will find ample room to create new answers, approaches, processes ideas and methods. It’s the only way you can… you must let go of the known to discover the unknown. Otherwise, confirmation bias and your expectations will hold you firmly in place as if you were bound there. Make the space, relax your attachments, your judgement and follow the inherent logic or the intuitive flow of what you see in front of you, of what you feel inside. Rule number ONE is that there are no rules… so, what do you want to be today?
In a world where change is accelerating massively and many ordinary people are in very real danger of being disempowered, unemployed and broken, it has never been more important that we challenge the status quo and start finding new ways of doing things. Not just work, but relationships, relations, trade, making, thinking, being.
If AI is going to free us to be the best US we could ever be, we need to start understanding what that looks like. We have been imprisoned in the rigid thinking that created the factory assembly line. We have been treated like mindless robots for over a century. That may seem like a long time, but it is a blip in the full history of humankind.
Reclaim your humanity, escape the assembly line: Rebel, Reject, Create!
