Rebel scum

This week in the Blaugust 2023 blogging festival, the broad theme is "Introduce yourself." Yesterday I alluded to my bardolatry and its place in the cornerstone of Quintessence of Dust, but that's not really an introduction. So here is a bit more about me: I love the Star Wars universe and I'm into evolution, and both of those things are deeply connected to my main tendency—I'm a rebel.

That might sound romantic and all, but I'm actually being somewhat precise and referring to some useful counsel I got in the past few years as I considered Gretchen Rubin's Four Tendencies. The Rebel tendency describes me all too well. I hate being told what to do. I hate being controlled. I hate even suspecting that I'm being controlled. Here's how Rubin captures much of my life: "Telling a Rebel what to do makes them less likely to do it, even if it’s something they want to do."

There are advantages to being a Rebel but big weaknesses as well. Another tagline of the Rebel tendency is this LOLsob-inducing truism: "You can’t make me, and neither can I." So, the perhaps obvious disadvantage is that it can be extra difficult to get tasks done whenever there is a sense that someone or something is ordering it to be done. I'm not lazy; in fact, I work too much. But whenever I sense that someone is telling me what to do, I have to work around my natural instinct to resist their brazen attempt to control me. (Heh.) Otherwise, I'll find ways to not do the task (or meet the obligation, or whatever).

What are the advantages of that tendency? Are there any?

There are two that I see. First, I might be hard to shepherd but that also means I'm hard to manipulate. It's not cynicism so much, it's just my natural aversion to being controlled or feeling like someone else is pulling the strings. Second, I am inherently focused on mission. This is the only way to manage the Rebel tendency: you don't control the Rebel, you unleash her or him in pursuit of a mission. This is how I work and how I lead. I really can't do it any other way.

I think this probably explains in part why I'm a lifelong lover of Star Wars. My two favorite films in the collection are The Empire Strikes Back and Rogue One, both of which are intensely focused on outright rebellion. One of my favorite lines in the whole library belongs to Finn, who answers the taunt "You've always been scum" with an epic callback: "Rebel scum." To me, the heart of the whole Star Wars universe is rebellion and resistance, with a mission. "Rebellions are built on hope."

What does this have to do with evolution? Well, evolution breaks the rules. It obliterates crusty old boundaries (between species and every other biological level of separation). It laughs in the face of the Intelligent Designer. It eschews the simple rules and "laws" that so many people believe are the basis of science and the universe. Evolution is rebellion, against the rules, against the status quo, against the past.