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I Will Choose Free Will!
When I was in highschool, I absolutely hated the band Rush. Like, passionately hated. I just thought the whole thing was so ridiculous and over the top. But now I’m starting to get it. Because that’s the point. Their absurd musicianship and complex song structures aren’t (just) arrogant, they are supposed to invoke this super-human realm of existence. Maybe we could even call it Mythic or Real Time, if we wanted to be esoteric about it.
Over the the weekend, some friends and I were listening to the outstanding Rush album, Permanent Waves. It’s one of those albums you won’t really appreciate until you turn it up so loud that the critical part of your mind is completely drowned out. And if you have any intoxicants available to aid you in this process, I recommend you use them.
Anyway, the song that really broke through to me during this latest listening session was the second track, “Free Will“. In particular the section where they pull it all together lyrically:
You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choiceYou can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can kill
I will choose a path thats clear
I will choose free will
You’ll notice I’m not one to quote music lyrics willy-nilly on this blog, but this section really spoke to me. Mainly because, well, it’s about me. I am exactly this kind of person he’s addressing here. I have gone through my life in many ways simply not deciding, drifting, allowing the wind to take me where it will. I have chosen again and again to jump out of the game: dropping out of college, moving from place to place, quitting various jobs over the years - not committing myself to any one course of action for fear that I might limit myself from others.
But the thing I’ve always overlooked is that not playing the game is playing the game. Adopting the role of outsider and criticizing the game is still very much playing the game. As much, maybe moreso than anybody else caught in other roles.
The conspiratorial part of my mind believes that this simple truth is well known to Those Who Control the Game, and that they in fact encourage people like myself to not decide. That they encourage people like myself to “drop out of the game” in protest over the fucked up ways in which the game is played. And that this couldn’t serve their purposes any better - because we are the people who would be their fiercest competitors if we really knew what we were doing.
The evidence to support my paranoia comes mainly from my highschool days. After a certain point in highschool, literally all of my friends were what would be considered the “bad” kids: stoners, metal-heads, artists, skaters, musicians, dirtbags and creeps of all shapes and sizes. We sat on the “bad” side of the lunch room and played guitar and skipped class and bitched about things and laughed and had a good time. Okay, they mostly skipped class. I just figured out a way to bilk the system into giving me an absurd amount of free periods.
But anyway, while other people considered them bad kids, and while they were constantly getting into trouble, in my experience, these were the smartest and most sensitive and advanced kids in the whole school. The difference between them and everybody else was that they could see through the game. Maybe they couldn’t always articulate it, but they could see that grade-grubbing and mindless repitition of meaningless facts and adherence to rules just for the sake of it were symptoms of a system-wide illness. An illness which they innoculated themselves against with drugs and alcohol and music and each other.
Early on, they resigned from the system in protest - some not even quite sure what they were protesting. They chose not to decide, to simply drop out of the race. And these kids had a weird relationship with the school administration. Sometimes it seemed like a battle. Sometimes it seemed like the administration was trying to railroad them and ruin them. Sometimes it seemed like those guys running things actually gave a shit about these kids and were really trying to help.
But how could they help? How do you help somebody who has recognized that the system is insane and who themselves are becoming sane? The general modus operandi of the day was to try and rope them back into that insane system with rules and punitive measures. Which never worked. It just further alienated them, further reinforced the illness of the system in the minds and hearts of those who were trying to get healthy.
Maybe the administrators though weren’t simply trying to punish and restrict. Maybe they were trying to instill in them the lesson of this Rush song - that if they choose not to play the game, they are still just playing the game, but from a weakened position on the field - meanwhile setting themselves up for a lifetime of failure and a path laden with thorns and traps. But maybe some people simply need to go down that road and suffer those scars. I know I did - I know I do.
It’s interesting to look at the music and sub-cultures of the so-called “bad” kids like this, and see what it’s really about. While mainstream music is typically about nothing more than the vagaries of love and sex (reproduction, species survival), the music of the dirtbags is usually heavily laden with values. Punk is the obvious example here - heavily concerned with morals and the struggle between authenticity and hypocrisy. And metal, while some people see it as Satanic, is all about strength and making choices. In fact, Satanism - I might argue - is all about SINNING BOLDLY! You might be choosing wrongly, but the important thing is that you’re making a choice. You aren’t just fooling yourself about not choosing. You are intentionally transgressing, intentionally exercising your free will over yourself, over others and over the world itself.
And without necessarily delving into the realm of transgression and sinning on purpose, the Rush song, “Free Will” seems to be about the same thing. You choose to choose. You make some kind of stand, anything. You take a step forward. And then another. And another.
If you want to think about it mythologically, we could pull in the Judeo-Christian creation myths. God created us with Free Will. If He hadn’t, there would have been no way that we could have ever disobeyed him by eating of the fruit in the Garden of Eden. In fact, if you didn’t have Free Will, it would be semantically impossible to disobey in the first place. The thought would never even enter your mind. But for some reason, God gave us this gift. This gift that was so damned important to Him that we have, that He was willing to allow us to jeopardize our proximity to Him in Paradise. It’s the gift that any loving parent gives their child to enable them to grow: the ability to have their own flaws and imperfections - the ability to fail, and then to get up and keep going.
Imagine what would happen if all of us who sat on the sidelines in protest of the game suddenly went out on the field. Imagine if those of us who in our hearts know we should have been somebody, who should have been leaders - great men and women one and all - suddenly woke up and claimed what should have been ours. Those who have kept us on the sidelines - intentionally or not - would tremble in fear at the thundering of our hearts beating in unison across the world. The game would change over night. The meek would inherit the earth.
But if you choose not to do that, if you choose not to decide, not to exercise your free will, then you better make damned sure that you’re already living in Paradise. Because if you’re not, and you’re not making some stand, whatever it may be - even if it’s totally and utterly wrong - well then, you got kicked out of the Garden for nothing. Nice work and good luck getting back.
June 2nd, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Well, u really brought me back to high school for a few minutes here.
“You still have made a choice!!” - that Geddy Lee high vocal
That was some Canadian meat and potatoes of the intro to Rawk.
If you want a great current album to blast with intoxicants, I highly recommend the new Chili Peppers Stadium Arcadium, it’s 28 song double album but the musicianship and almost musical history lesson built into the album is amazing.
Sounds like a great classic rock album but just came out last month.
Peace out.
June 2nd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Further to my first response, which was a quick reaction to the Rush thing, I really like the post and have thought along similiar lines about myself and the friends I had / have. Although I “recovered” from my drop outedness in many ways, I didn’t completely, and I am happy that I didn’t. All my friends are still those guys and gals mentioned above, but who also managed to move on and grow into happy (more or less..) people with families and jobs, but also retained the love of music (and some of those substances…), can discuss things other than our golf scores and new cars, and still recognize the “grade grubbing” or whatever.
To your main point, yes it does seem that, if you are smart enough to figure out the game and lead, but not vapid or greedy enough to want to win it at all costs, then you are out of contention while recognizing what’s happening. Like a pro level athlete who develops a knee problem before ever going pro… he certainly can understand and talk the game with the best of them, but he can’t play. If we were to want to strategize and play the game at a pro level, we have to heal our knee injuries first. But - maybe in this case healing the injury means becoming a total dick that you wouldn’t want to do in the first place. So part of that plan would need to be the driving desire to change the game to something better, rather than win it.
June 2nd, 2006 at 3:52 pm
pro+bad knee=me……………..
rush was and is awesome. i saw them live in the seventies, along with queen, genesis, black sabbath, styx, and many more bands who were over the top…..that was the point. music on that level is pure theater. like beethoven. pow baby……not tap, tap, tap. 20,000 people in maple leaf gardens aren`t there to be subtle.
rush were big ayn rand fans too i believe.
June 2nd, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Aaaaaaawwwwwwww SALESMEN!
June 2nd, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Yes, Alistair, Neil Peart is a big Ayn Rand fan, and “Free Will” is Peart’s lyrical affirmation of that.
Isn’t Peart an English Lit professor or something like that?
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:12 pm
not sure……..he sure can play the drums though.
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:14 pm
oh yeah and the super-human realm of existance………isn`t that something to work toward?
June 3rd, 2006 at 6:26 am
A really interesting post there.
From my experience of school, the dropouts (on the whole) weren’t necessarily the people who understood the game, just the people who were apathetic, or lazy. A few years after dropping out most of them wished they had stayed as they ended up working in takeaways etc.
Sure, there were some who left because of feeling towards the system, but most just “fell” out because they couldn’t keep up. Often they were just wasters, the same people you would find vandalising shops in town on a Saturday night. It’s not good to be a grade grabber, for sure, but I think it’s probably worse to be a dropout who becomes a drug addict or something.
For me personally, I think you can know the game, and still hang around in it, but not really take part. There is this phrase I have heard from Christians: “In the world, but not of the world”, which I really like.
June 3rd, 2006 at 8:25 am
Edd, ya you have a good point, even after I posted I thought a bit more about, there are some of both aspects to all of the “groupings” u could do. Because the kids who were getting the grades and putting effort into it were definitely “getting the game”, regardless of how they felt about the game, because as individuals they were all different. But probably a good lot of them were tormented and turned off by the “bad”
group in discussssion, scuze the slurring I just slammed my morning scotch. Ahh. And so formed a negative attitude towards those who tended to get drunk (to excess), smoke, dope, etc, etc. Whereas those who did not want to direct their energies towards high school and the rest of the grade game, for unknown numbers of various reasons including laziness and apathy - me myself even ! was (and still am sometimes - shock!) lazy, but only when I am not interested in and focused on something of worthy pursuit. I think many are similiar in that respect. Anyway I am glad you had a good viewpoint on that.
June 3rd, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Yeah, I think thats absolutely the point - to strive towards that world.
Well I think you have to look at what each of these behaviors you’re describing means. Apathy and laziness are essentially a failure to connect to the motivations of the system. Vandalism is an outright violation of the rules and regulations of the system. I don’t believe that these things are all conscious attempts to not play the game in protest of it, but I do think that’s very much what they amount to.
Also, in my experience, if you want to talk about heavy drugs and alcohol use in highschool, the “bad kids” aren’t the ones with the biggest problems. It was the “normal” kids or the popular kids who would get really violent and screwed up, but because of their social standing, everyone sort of just allowed them to be that way…
June 3rd, 2006 at 4:07 pm
An article on Forbes about laziness
http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/20/lazin...rking-good_cz_mm_06work_0523lazy.html
June 3rd, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Leary’s advice of dropping out isn’t such a bad idea.
I don’t think people at any age should be like “well I am no longer all that young so I should simply accept the house, with kids, and the boring job” I think the teen-age psyche lives well on after one’s chronological time as a teenager and the teenage pysche has some important attributes like rebellion and sexual desire. Monster movies and punk rock are monuments to the teenage pysche. Though, it is important for the pysche not to turn into a murderous blob sucking things up for self-expansion
From the movie Fright Night
June 3rd, 2006 at 6:46 pm
I just don’t know anymore…
June 4th, 2006 at 5:20 am
Thanks, that is a good article.
I think what I am getting at is this: If you asked most (not all) of the people from my old school why they dropped out, their response would be “dont know”, “Sod off”, which may well represent a failure to connect with the system. But I don’t think these people are aware that this is what they are feeling.
An interesting subject…
July 22nd, 2006 at 4:53 pm
[…] The other question this leads me to, then, is apathy or lack of identification in politics and current events a good thing, a bad thing or not necessarily either? From the standpoint of social engineering and government control, I would imagine that it would be desirable to mold a group of people so that they consistently and predictably identify with particular groups and causes. If they as a group act together, it will be easier to make plans and manipulate them according to your own ends. Are people who are apathetic less easily manipulated though? The question seems like a hard one. On the one hand, the apathetic may not be drawn into emotionally manipulative games. But on the other, choosing not to play the game is still a method of playing the game, which in itself becomes predictable and can be used by those intelligent enough to mold the “unmoldable” or else just brush them aside. […]