My dad used to express his disapproval with me for as long as i can remember by stating “well, you chose to rebel!” Damn right i did. He was a moron, and totally wrong. It’s still one of the stupidest things i can remember anyone saying. In his book, all rebellion of any kind is bad. It’s unfortunate for him that he had a rather astute son who at 8 years old pointed out that Christ was the original rebel. Error. It did not compute, and was therefore disregarded.

When i was at school i was negatively labelled a “rebel”. Some friends thought it was amusing; others looked down at me for it. They still do. Teachers and parents always looked down on me for it.

For a long time i kind of agreed with them. But i quickly reached the age of reason and realised how utterly wrong and clueless they were despite all their supposed years of earned wisdom and experience.

The article i wrote about people-pleasing really stirred things up and there was a lot of response. The last time i saw my dad, i had walked through the door and he launched into a unprovoked tirade about me and my friends for no reason other than he felt like beating someone up. Cue the same vicious bullshit about how all people actually love working 9to5 in an office, how i’m wrong because i’m rebellious, why the world will tell me to fuck off and that i’m clearly unhappy and need help.

Unsurprisingly, i tuned out. Unfortunately he was speaking to a man who just walked 14 miles down a dual carriageway in the cold dark rain overnight after having not eaten for 2 days, simply as a test of character and willpower. As i heard the muffled bullshit, i was tuning into the real message, which was “you should give up”. He was telling me to give up. It’s funny when you hear that, as i perfectly calm.

So i asked him straight out a few days later. His answer to “do you want me to give up?” was simply “yes, give up.”. No fucking way. Never. Not in a million years. I could make the best movies in the world but my dad would still class me as unsuccessful if i wasn’t being paid a selary and working at a desk.

That’s when character kicks in. You can say what you want, do what you want and try as hard as you like, but i refuse. I will not do as you ask.

And that’s the problem with people-pleasing. So many people you meet won’t want you to succeed and will try and stop you for lots of different reasons. They will demand you give up and do their best to convince you with their weasel words and “concern” for you. Maybe you’re at this conclusion before i write it, but if you’re a people-pleaser, you’ll give up to make someone else happy. If you think it’s a good idea to give up on what you want to make some other inferiority complex-caged apathetic failure comfortable, well it’s time to really reconsider your life.

Rebellion isn’t a bad thing; it is the agent and momentum of change. It is totally essential and even vital to our very survival. Mutation is nature’s rebellion and evolution itself is based on natural selection and competition between members of species adapting and behaving differently to others.

To understand why rebellion is important we need to look more broadly at the human condition. Greek philosophers loosely divided the world into dual groups – in one iteration, there are those who thirst for knowledge (thinkers) vs. those who just want to be entertained (followers).

But more generally, we are defined by our attitude to the new. There are those who love new things (neophiles) and those who are terrified of them and do their best to resist them (neophobes). Our species is grouped into those who are part of the existing order and seek to preserve it, and the rest who go against the existing order to do things differently.

Some are built to be the existing order, some are built to go against it. Both are essential.

Neophobia is the fear of new things or experiences. It is also called cainotophobia. In psychology, neophobia is defined as the persistent and abnormal fear of anything new. In its milder form, it can manifest as the unwillingness to try new things or break from routine.

Now contrast that with the opposite:

Neophilia is defined as a love of novelty and new things. A neophiliac or neophile is an individual who is unusually accepting of new things and excited by novelty.

We all have a mixture of both neophobia and neophilia in us but generally one side dominates, just as one side of our brain dominates to make us left/right-handed and logical/creative. A rebel is someone who goes against the existing order, meaning they are doing something new or in contravention of the old, so we safely class them at neophiles. Those who resist and demean rebellion as a whole are complaining about disruption to the existing order, meaning they can be classed as neophobes. It’s difficult to generalise but in any rebellious situation the conflict is a form of outrage perpetrated against an authority or control structure (parents, governments, church etc.)

Actually let’s be more scientific about it and consult the dictionary. If i’m a rebel, what am i?

rebel adj. reb-uhl; v. ri-bel] noun, adjective, verb, -belled, -bel•ling.
–noun
1. a person who refuses allegiance to, resists, or rises in arms against the government or ruler of his or her country.
2. a person who resists any authority, control, or tradition.

–adjective
3. rebellious; defiant.
4. of or pertaining to rebels.

–verb (used without object) rebel
5. to reject, resist, or rise in arms against one’s government or ruler.
6. to resist or rise against some authority, control, or tradition.
7. to show or feel utter repugnance: His very soul rebelled at spanking the child.

If you look back on history, anything important or massively significant has taken the form of a rebellion of some kind against tradition or convention. It is the natural mechanism for change, adaption, evolution and/or innovation. All great political, technological, spiritual and creative leaders were rebels, and their philosophies, works and legacies were founded on rebellion.

Christ was the original rebel. Ghandi, MLK, Newton, Mandela, Mohammed, St Paul, Columbus, Einstein, Thatcher, Henry VIII, Charles Darwin, Che Guervara, Hitler, Freud, Voltaire and so many others rebelled against what they knew and what was the order of the day. All were rebels. Anyone who has ever changed anything in human history has been a rebel. No-one who has maintained the order has ever seen prevalence.

Some things are meant to be rebelled against. Bad laws (e.g. Nazi governments), institutional racism, politicised medical advice (e.g. thalidomide), corrupt authority figures, military oppression, unfair decisions and more. All of these require rebellion rather than preservation of the existing order. Indeed, preserving it would be immoral and harm people.

When you look at parent-child relationships, they are predicated on rebellion – a child must disconnect emotionally, practically and financially from their parents to successfully become independent. The teenage years are about testing and resetting personal boundaries, and with growth comes conflict. In many ways you have to fall out with your parents to leave home and become your own person.

Our objective in rising children should be that we are aiming for them to be better than us in every way. Just look how some parents resent and put down their kids when they do better than them. Our kids should rebel against us to be their own person – sometimes it is the *only* way they can become their own person. In many cases childish rebellion is simply the sheer thrust to survive and be worth something.

Many of the “rebellious” kids you know were either suffering or gifted. A child in turmoil reacting to their environment manifests their emotional imbalance by acting out, commanding attention, withdrawing and many other signs they need to be noticed and helped.

Our education system (and other institutions) is built as a temple to academia and doesn’t cater for individuality or the creative sides of our nature. Children who are gifted don’t fit well into a system where everyone is grounded into becoming the same as everyone else. ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), dyslexia and autism are just some learning conditions that need specialist attention, but the wider picture is that we need to teach all kids to be rebels.

If we value diversity, breadth, multiculturalism, individuality and uniqueness, children need to learn to dissent, rebel and create their own world that is differently from everyone else’s. We need to celebrate rebellion for what it is – a wonderful challenging force built into the design of nature to help us evolve.

Rebellion is beautiful. We need more of it. It’s essential. Without it, we would still be apes.

So let’s assume you are rebel. Well done. You should be very proud because you’re different and you stand out. You’re your own person and you believe something in the existing order is wrong, deficient or could be improved. You’ve got a heart bursting with frustration at the old and a spirit of dissent to forge a path with the new.

The most critical thing is that you need to understand what your rebellion is about. Is it to get a reaction, or just because you are genuinely different? Is your defiance based on being angry with someone or something? That doesn’t invalidate it but it means your energy needs to be channelled more appropriately so it is positive rather than focused on things you cannot change. It needs to be reflected back to you to get you what you want and build the world you want to live in.

The difference between acting out to get the attention of your parents or authority figures and being individual is very blurred, and definitely not helped by the abject lack of education and nurturing we get in the formative years when our own unique identity is forming. Being your own person who is defiantly different to their society, and someone who is going out of their way to not make the same mistakes as their parents involves a conscious choice. It is something planned and contrived.

Acting out is a reaction – it is something you automatically and unconsciously do in response to being deprived or provoked in some way. Someone or something else causes it and is in control, so to speak. Anger is a feeling, as are jealousy, frustration, despair and need. Rebellion in the spirit of feeling that aims to get a reaction from someone else or drives you to get something else to do or think something is bad news. It sucks the life out of you and leaves you to drown in the resentment you were storing up in the hope that it would poison the other person you are rebelling against.

Rebellion in the 21st century is not what you think. Swearing, tattoos, new age mysticism, political dissent and apathy are standard mianstream. The trends of fashion, celerbity culture, political laziness and more are the things that need to be rebelled against. Being a rebel in this day and age means rejecting consumerism, being religious and entrepreneurial.

The poor image if rebellion as a concept comes from only one source – the discomfort of those who want to preserve the existing order. They whinge, denounce, complain, label and do almost anything they can to prevent it. They resent and seethe, and on one basis – because you are not like them, you are challenging them, and you make them afraid. That is their nature. Don’t try to people-please them or keep them happy, because it will always involve you being suppressed and silenced – i.e. an unnecessary sacrifice on your part. Mum and dad won’t like it, but so fucking what?

Your rebellion is essential and to deny it is irresponsible. Your silence and inaction is a crime. If we don’t rebel, we stop moving. We stop evolving. You have a duty and responsibility to stick up your middle finger and do things differently or we will all end up the same, and never improve. The simple fact is that the more free we are to rebel, the more advanced we are as a culture.

Anyone who denounces rebellion or disapproves of a “rebel” is someone who wants you under control. That’s your enemy. Fuck em. You are never going to convince someone who belongs in the herd to walk away from it. You will never convince a neophobe to adopt your neophile philosophy or values. Of course they will complain, label and put you down to try to make you adopt their values and be like them – and that’s the argument. They want you to be like them to reassure them they are ok as a person. Just accept you are different kinds of people and seek out your own.

You will upset people. Their inferiority complex will run riot. That doesn’t mean you should curl up, bend over or people please. The choice is whether you are in control of your life or whether they are. You own you. You were born to be different and do things differently for the good of everyone. They were born to be a nameless formless brick in the wall of the existing order – both of them have their place and can’t survive without one another. The purest state of nature and the animal kingdom is freedom, and a self-balancing form of self-regulation. Animals don’t whinge about change or put down others, they simply play their part in the natural mechanism of the world. Some adapt and rebel, some form the herd.

You are going to upset people. GET OVER IT.

If you take to heart morons who denounce “rebels” and “rebellion”, punch yourself in the balls for being so gullible and thoughtless. You have been dumb, and it’s time to correct yourself.

If you’re a rebel by nature, celebrate it. Don’t make yourself acceptable for other people who aren’t your kindred and just don’t get it.

It’s time to re-educate yourself in the wonder and value of rebellion. It’s time to channel that repulsion, disgust, outrage and motivational energy into something a lot more positive. From this moment on, you accept yourself and start standing out as you were meant to, and proudly. IF you’ve lived a cutesy innocent life never travelling anywhere, pushing the envelope or doing anything risky, you need to start reading, listening and experiencing the anti.

Here are a few suggestions to get you going.

Listen to:

• The Sex Pistols
• Rage Against The Machine
• Bill Hicks
• George Carlin

Read about:

• Alternative culture
• Malcolm X
• Che Guevara
• The LA Riots
• Tiananmen Sq

That will keep you going long enough, and the exercise is about critical thinking. There is another side to the coin and to the story you’ve been sold. Don’t swallow what governments and news services tell you, seek out the alternative viewpoint. Don’t listen to “friends” who want you to be like them, and parents who want you to live their dreams for them. Be your own person with your own mind and thoughts. Fuck how things are now and create your own world. Be unique. Challenge and question everything. Brush off frightened complainers who want to get you under control. Don’t do what they tell you. Never let anyone get you under control.

Extend your middle finger upwards and repeat after me.

“NO.”

Word is born
Fight the war, fuck the norm
Now I got no patience
So sick of complacence
With the D E F I A N C E
The mind of a revolutionary
So clear the lane
The finger to the land of chains
What? The land of the free?
Whoever told you that is your enemy

Amp up and amplify
DEFY
I’m a brother with a furious mind
‘Cause I’ll rip the mike, rip the stage, rip the system
I was born to rage against ‘em
Action must be taken
We don’t need the key, we’ll break in

“Know Your Enemy” by Rage Against The Machine