Defiance

de·fi·ance – a daring or bold resistance to authority or to any opposing force.

I am including this definition because the word has become something of a guiding principle for me over the past year or two; the flag of my disposition you might say.  I didn’t consciously decide to flip my proverbial middle finger at anything in particular; something inside of me simply woke up from a prolonged sleep.

Though you may ask, ‘defiance against what’? Well, that would be a fair question, and one that will require a bit of a digression to address. The word is certainly one that we’re all familiar with and witness its more universal meaning daily in the headlines, but this particular word, unique among all others, simply demands something that entails consequences, something personal. I would say, in fact, that defiance means nothing if it isn’t a personal matter. My own particular version is meant to be a death stare into the eyes of what we all face eventually. It’s a defiance against age and decline, against conformity and submission, against stagnation and apathy. For me, the word has come to mean something of a street fight, pitting me against anyone or anything that intends to limit or otherwise define who I am or what I want to become.

In that sense, I find it distressing to see so many people my own age having already begun their inevitable slide into a sort of intellectual decline. With the body aging and losing its energy and motivation, so the mind soon follows. It’s a mental decline to match the physical and is often so subtle that the shift can occur with little notice. People that we may have once admired for their rationale and intellectual acumen suddenly don’t fit those assumptions any longer. Instead of using their minds to work their way through a complex social issue with logic and reason, suddenly we find them settling for easy answers, the low hanging fruit that takes little effort to pick, bumper sticker intelligence, in other words, and with it, stereotypes, biases, and prejudices are often served up as thoughtful opinions.

It is no accident that when we’re young our minds are firing with curiosity, imagination, and tolerance. Then with age a general malaise tends to settle in and the mind gradually finds itself unwilling to confront outdated assumptions, nor push on for new horizons. The fire of youthful optimism fades as the soothing comfort of nostalgia begins to coalesce into a romanticized past. The young are fearless and idealistic, while the old often retreat into easily digestible conservatism.

The fight begins here!

Because I give my intuition free reign, I will occasionally find myself taking a few unexpected detours along the road, ideas that may have once felt abhorrent can at times weasel their way into my heart. I simply love the sensation of having my mind stretched and challenged by new ideas, and to feel the fascination of learning something that rings so true that it pushes me to reconsider my positions and to renegotiate outdated opinions.

Toward that end, I need to talk about “Rage Against the Machine.”

To begin with, I need to admit that I have never cared for the hybrid of Rock-n-Roll and Rap. The entire genre was something that I loathed, and Rage certainly occupied a large chunk of that terrain. At a base level, Rap is anti-melody, and since music, as I grew to understand it, doesn’t make sense without it, I never gave it any of my attention. Even when Rage was still an active band and a very relevant presence in the music scene, I simply didn’t care. My musical taste just didn’t go there. I hated rap music of any kind, and that was that.

Yet there I was sitting in my kitchen listening to a Rage song called “Guerilla Radio” and feeling something stirring inside. I didn’t quite understand why at first, but since I value my intuitions, I opened myself up to it, and with that tentative endorsement, Rage soon became an indispensable band for me. Once I let that door crack open just a bit, something in their music burst through and spoke to me with the same passion and clarity of purpose that Lennon ignited thirty plus years ago. And like other times in my life, it was that deep place inside that knew it was a path I needed to explore, and because I accepted the challenge, a healthy sense of defiance suddenly woke up inside. The passionate individualist of my twenties suddenly stood tall again.

I believe most people generally equate social defiance as something bordering on anarchy, feeling that it’s the obstinate refusal to follow the prescribed rules of society, and with that simplistic association, defiance is often viewed as a danger and threat. But I will have to respectfully disagree. Sure, it’s an easy deduction when seen pouring from the mouth of belligerence, making juvenile demands, but placed in the inspired hands of an intelligent artist, for example, defiance can be, and often has been, the ignition point to seismic changes in our culture. The call for social justice by Dylan and Lennon alone during the mid-60’s helped bend the attitudes of a generation eager to escape the puritan ideals of Eisenhower’s America.

Years ago, I read an article with Bono in Rolling Stone magazine, and below is a quote from that interview that I believe is quite relevant here.

“…..a nervous breakdown is the reasonable response of a sane man to an insane situation. I think rock and roll has to be the sound of that nervous breakdown. “

Rage Against the Machine, when heard within that context, can easily be seen as the sound of that breakdown because unlike most all other bands, they never sang about the frivolous topics that dominate popular music. The music they made was serious and although often politically extreme at times, their concerns were always centered on the indignities experienced by those living in the margins of society or aimed perhaps at the puppeteers manipulating the strings of policy to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

One particular song that has struck a nerve recently is “Bullet in the Head”; meant metaphorically of course. The song addresses the subtle manipulations that we can all fall prey to in this era of mass communication, as we’re inundated with media content from every direction and persuasion, whether it’s a product to be consumed, or an opinion to be assimilated. And in the fog of distraction, many fail to recognize, to stay with the metaphor, the snipers of propaganda and commerce hiding out of view trying to put us in their sights. In fact, it feels as if there are forces at work crafting, packaging, and spoon-feeding content to us solely for the purpose of corralling us into manageable attitudes that can then be manipulated, in mass, for purposes that are not our own.

In the case of ‘Rage’, the common thread that runs through their music is to encourage us to see what is going on for what it really is, and to be clear eyed and diligent in order to immunize ourselves against the flying bullets of manipulation. Of course, that message can easily be seen as just another opinion to be assimilated like all the rest, but I would emphatically disagree. Consider the revolutionary thoughts of Thomas Pain’s ‘The Rights of Man’, or the plea for racial justice found in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, or the defiant methodology presented in Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”, each exemplified the power of well thought out and executed expressions of defiance. And regardless of whether you agree with the band’s political positions or not, it must be acknowledged that they stand right alongside these examples with regard to their passion for social justice. If for no other reason, ‘Rage’ has become an indispensable voice in my life, for they keep me alert and on the lookout for the snipers of propaganda aiming their bullets at me.

I feel absolutely reborn. I feel the same urge for individualism, the same passion for growth and personal clarity that I had in my twenties, and it feels incredible. I’m about to turn fifty and I have rediscovered that sharp edge in my mind that is demanding the absolute best out of me, and Rage Against the Machine, at this surprising point in my life, is helping me get there.