New Rules

...because the old rules no longer apply

Photo by Nick Page on Unsplash

There was a time when there were rules in place and, for the most part, people like us obeyed them and things worked.
(cases where things did not work are rampant, but not germane to this article)

We have entered a new world and as unpleasant as it might be, things like morality and integrity, might have to be redefined to better suit the predicament we find ourselves in.

As long as we remain attached to old rules, we will continue to lose ground.

I have worked with close quarters combative instructors that taught real world applications for fighting skills, and they all agreed on the idea that there are no rules in a fight for your life.

We are in a fight for our lives, yet people keep clinging to ideas that are going to get them killed. The opposition is not observing protocol, and there is no rational reason why we should.

It is a lovely fantasy that we will be able to maintain our peaceful, non-violent state in an increasingly violent, ugly, and brutal environment.

Violence, ugliness, and brutality do not need to define you, but they do need to become part of you, because you will find that, however non-violent you think you are, you will respond violently when you or your loved ones are threatened.

Morality is becoming more flexible in our new world. Behaving in a manner consistent with old world morality when the power structure is coming at us with ever more immoral attacks will guarantee that we are defeated.

Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd and whale wars fame said that, “if you are waiting for humans to respond in a moral fashion then you will wait a long time because they are not, inherently, moral.”

I’m inclined to believe him. There would be no question about innate goodness if we were innately good. It surely would have manifested itself by now if that were the case.

Instead, we fight like devils to maintain what little goodness we have, and we easily slip back into our natural animal state when we are confronted with a threat.

Praying, meditating, and embracing religious doctrine are all efforts to hold who we are at bay, and they work as long as we only face low level threats.

We can be pretty peaceful and forgiving of someone who cuts us off in traffic, or takes the parking place we wanted, but the moment the threat escalates we start to see the animal come out.

The entirety of our domestication has revolved around the process of becoming less like the wild animals we are and more docile and subservient like the pets we keep.

Are we so far gone that we have forgotten the lessons that we have been taught.

“If someone puts their hands on you, make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.”
― Malcom X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Have we become so “peaceful” that we are unable to comprehend what is being asked of us?

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
― Frederick Douglass

As we have seen up to now, there is no protest that will save us, there is not going to be an organized resistance to those who would oppress us, there is not going to be a lovely world full of happy people forming communities, none of these things will be coming.

What is going to come is a knock down, drag out, ugly, violent, and bloody street fight on steroids, and we’re all going to be caught up in it.

So, go ahead and manifest joy and peace, manifest the world you want to believe in, just be sure you’re okay doing it with a busted nose and a black eye.

---