Pretend Rebels Vs. Real Rebels

There’s a pirate motif around here if you haven’t noticed. As Steve Jobs said, we also like to ask, “Why join the navy when you can be a pirate?” 

Everyone loves a rebellious spirit. 

That said, there are levels to being a renegade. A level that I’d argue shouldn’t even qualify is when folks disavow social norms and claim to be a renegade, but are simply avoiding the uncomfortable parts of reality and use “rebellion” as a cloak.

I remember one such “rebel” from my childhood who dropped out of high school. He decided “school is bullshit” and was committed to being a rebel character in our neighborhood. School is hard, annoying, and ineffective at times, but it’s surely not bullshit. In his case, he was not being an inspirational renegade crusader against the injustice of authority. He was lazy. 

You see, the real levels of being a bonafide rebel include a certain level of mastery over the things that these rebels detest. Great pirates, for example, understand commerce, scaling their economy, intricate technique of sailing, and even marksmanship. Being excellent at those things is nerdy until you put the pirate patch on. 

Similarly, Picasso was a rebel who broke the mold of the art world… right after he mastered classical training with brush and canvas. If Picasso didn’t know how to paint a masterful normal painting, his work would have just been lazy in his time. 

I get that you want to stick it to the man and be a rebel who doesn’t take shit from anyone. My best advice? Take lots of shit from the people that you need to learn from because a pirate without some traditional mastery is just a poorly-dressed sailor with bad body odor.