The Spirit of Rebellion

'Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.'

Inscription on the tomb in Jamaica of John Bradshaw; an American educator, counselor, motivational speaker

Rebellion is a refusal of obedience. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing, a range of behaviors from civil disobedience and mass nonviolent resistance, to violent and organized attempts to destroy an established authority such as the government. Those who participate in rebellions are known as, "rebels".

At one stage in everyone’s life, being a rebel is a thing to flout; and because it is fashionable, it becomes their motto. Be that, as it may; many people believe that the questioning spirit is a rebellious spirit.

That to me is the belief of authoritarian men and women, and not that of the intelligent average human being.

The questioning spirit is the quintessence of the human mind, be it rebellious or otherwise; and without which, the human species will still be jumping from tree to tree.

If anything, questions show the mind's range. If one is to become aware, one needs to be a rebel; because with rebellion, awareness is born.

What happens when one does not know the truth and at the same time cannot believe the lies; when one cannot find a way, through fact or fiction, to give meaning to one’s own doubts? Without a questioning mind, we do not ever really exist at all.

Questioning mind

Without a questioning mind, we would not have had a Buddha, a Jesus, a Jiddu Krisnamurthy, or all those great thinkers who enriched the human condition, and the human mind.

Therefore, I hold that a little rebellion, now and then is a good thing; it is a good thing and as necessary to the humankind as storms to the journey of life. In fact, questioning denotes the sound health of the mind.

Sri Lanka is a nation that had to contend with a long period of rebellion – in the south and north.

I grant that both were, not the result of a sound mind, or the questioning spirit. They were, if anything, founded in ignorance, but not wickedness.

However, the question must be posed as to what caused a peace loving people, especially the youth who are normally prone to rebel, to rebel? The reasons are simple to find.

When every form of lie is, repeated by those governing to keep themselves in governance. When, lies abound about a nation being the heaven on earth to its youth and their elders, contrary to existing facts.

When those responsible for governance, their ministers, and a spineless public service believes in it and repeats it, contrary to existing truths; when governance is in anarchy and only benefits those few governing, contrary to what they may project; then, it must be said that, there is nothing for the common man worth preserving.

Thus, it is then, and only then will disobedience and rebellion, in the eyes of any one who has read history, becomes man's original virtue. In fact, progress and change arrives only because of such disobedience and the spirit of rebellion.

This brings to my mind a poem by Samuel Butler, the iconoclastic Victorian-era English author: “The worst of rebels never arm / To do their king or country harm, / But draw their swords to do them good, / As doctors cure by letting blood.” Thus, the spirit of rebellion craves for happiness in life. For, what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are, not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? The tree of liberty must be, refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Duped by duplicity

All people, at all times and always, cannot be, duped by duplicity; and every act of rebellion, only expresses nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

Rebellion, which is not the same as a rebellious spirit, though apparently negative since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive because it reveals the part of man that must always be, defended.

However, we must also raise the question whether the end justify the means? That is possible. Nevertheless, what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: that it is the means when, no more means are left; and something bears the aspect of the inevitable.

After all, patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels; and when scoundrels happen to rule; dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell raising, has to remain the true duty of true patriots. It is because, men or women seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

Hence, when men and women are bought and sold as politicians often tend to; and the rest retain but a quantity of life, which bleeds away, even as a form of wax: unthread the rude eye of rebellion and welcome home again the discarded faith of the spirit of rebellion.

For amity and everlasting love is not for those hungry for power, not for those who have not lost the use of all deceit; not for those who live by falsehood and not the truth.

They contemplate not the devout desires of the masses; and instead, expect them to live on the spittle of the power hungry. Thus, the spirit of rebellion is a moral law that gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life, and to every other single thing life means.

Recall how often in human history, the saint, and the rebel have been the same person.

When the heart and mind are in conjunction, that is how, sometimes, the heart answers the question, which is yet to be, posed by the mind. It is also the reason why, the heart finds love, and not the mind; because the heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.

When the heart of a saint and the mind of a rebel meet, rebellion is born. It is because, when the heart speaks; the mind finds it indecent to object. Freedom is always, and exclusively, for the one who feels differently and not necessarily for the one who thinks differently.

Misunderstood

When most of the greatest individuals in history were misunderstood and you too have spent so much of your own adult life misunderstood, you cannot help but believe that the majority of people know very little worth knowing about the heart or the mind; nor the spirit of rebellion.

The spirit of rebellion decrees that the most subversive people are those who ask questions: for any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers.

These men and women, men and women who question, were radicals for liberty; and they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of us understood to be the unchanging, the orthodox.

They were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see.

For them that question, pride is passion: for without pride, man becomes a parasite – and there are already too many parasites in our society to contend with. See you this day next week. Until then, keep thinking; keep laughing. Life is mostly about these two activities

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