Ghost Rules

For most of us, we live according to set standards. No, these aren’t notions you need to look further into, as if to satisfy a sort pretentious, philosophical calling. These are just the simple rules of our world that guide the ebb and flow of our lives. You could call us conduits to the engine of creation, an engine we, us humans, ironically created ourselves. The desire to live in a system, a design of predictable and expected outcomes, or rather like a system, stems from an innate need for familiarity and security. In a particular state of mind, one where we are line with our cognitive yolk or our sentient and rational self, we exist in the mortal wake, contesting our individuality, our uniqueness with the idiosyncrasies that have become the unwritten commandments of social conduct. We act like “blank” and respond to “blank” with “blank” because of the walls of confinement that “keep us in check.”

How weird is that? There is nothing keeping me from screaming and parading in my bathing suit throughout town. Nothing physical, anyway. There no weighty, iron chains binding my hands and feet that are preventing me from doing so. Instead, I am barred on a psychological level. Evidently, I can’t just start screaming in class at the top of my lungs because it is a social no-no. I can’t just pretend to act like a tyrannosaurus in the streets. I can’t just ask people super personal questions without filtering through the bullshit of small talk. I can’t do this. I can’t do that. Blah, blah, blah!

These stupid rules will be our undoing. You see, when you govern people based on mandates that are uncertain, complex, and contingent, you get a mess of unorganized conduct. More so, you get people who become complacent and/or pissed off, much like myself. I’m not gonna go around and be a rebel because directionless fury accomplishes nothing productive. All I’m seeing is that sometimes we need to take a good, hard look at the lives we live and the standards that adorn those lives so elegantly. Does anyone ever stop think why we do things the way we do? Part of it, as I mentioned, is an innate process of familiarity and association of things that we see as “okay.” The other and far more volatile component is the interaction of humans whose views of what is okay vary because of the ghost rules of our respective societies. I guess we can’t say that ghosts aren’t real anymore.