Towards a philosophy of rebellion in the face of impossibility

If you thought rebellion is a phase you go through, on your way to being a proper, normal, well-behaved adult who dutifully does the things everyone is supposed to do, then you did not rebel enough; indeed, you probably did not rebel at all. What did you refuse? What did you risk? Did you really say no to anything?

When I was young, I was assigned a "therapist." He said to me, "Do you realize how much you're bucking?" He thought I could be intimidated by being told that my refusal was not "practical." I told him to take a walk.

It's alright if you're a mediocrity, for most people are conformists who have little courage, and who mainly want to be comfortable. Is it? They use art for reassurance. They want to be happy. They don't have the courage to will to be as unhappy as is needed to do something. That may sound like crime; it isn't. It may sound like "violence"; but it isn't violence. It may mean not recognizing "the way things are in the world." So what? Who says the way things are in the world is the way they have to be? (The answer is: bosses, all the bosses). Things could be absolutely different than they are, even if they seem to be that way everywhere, so that, as Margaret Thatcher said, "there is no alternative." (And who says that?). Someone says that to refuse everything is a "death drive." If so, that can be put to use, in a way that is worldly, that can be practical. Levinas said that "metaphysical desire" affirms that "life is elsewhere." Imagination is the power of free spirits or minds to invent and so create possibilities that are only that, that at present are realized nowhere. It is possible to negate everything, the entire world of your experience, all that is known, and without that meaning suicide or anything like it. That "there is no alternative" is not a decisive ruling you must obey, but a challenge. This assertion conceals the thought that there can be nothing new; all that is ever possible is repetition of the same. That idea is disproven by every birth of a new person. One doesn't need a divine savior, found doubtless in a God who is a man or worse, a man who is a God. It only requires the imagination and courage that starts by saying no. There are forms of saying yes that are only possible, that only mean anything, after saying no. All life ends in destruction, but there is also creation. For that, you must be prepared to be treated like that most hated person, the rebel.