Protesting Creatively

Truth is closely associated with creativity, individuality and freedom. Falsehoods, on the other hand, are associated with conformity, loyalty, dogma, and endless repetition. This is why we need to be creative when protesting in support of truth. We must avoid repetition and strive to come up with something new. When done correctly, this can be both fun and interesting. All sorts of ideas come to mind once we let our creativity loose, some of which may be benefitting in more ways than one. Protesting banks by closing bank accounts and buying gold instead is but one way that creative protesting has benefited me personally. However, at the moment, my focus is mainly on mask-wearing rules. I find this particular insanity fascinating. I love going out in the streets to observe and note how people comply and how they don't, and I greatly enjoy the challenge of coming up with new and novel ways to protest.

Walking the streets of Porto this morning, I noticed that true compliance has fallen somewhat since the new, stricter rules came into effect. Half of all the people I came across seemed defiant in some way.

While compliance is always expressed in one way, and one way only. Defiance is expressed in several different ways.

1. There are the strictly non-compliant who don't wear a mask at all.
2. There are the reluctant compliant who wear their masks incorrectly.
3. There are the defiant compliant who follow the rules theatrically.

All together, these protesters make up about half the population, and they have an advantage on the compliant in that they support each other. The strictly non-compliant are supported by the reluctant and defiant, making it easier for them to stay strong. The reluctant demonstrate to the compliant that a better life, with fresh air for our lungs, is only a matter of lowering the mask below our nose, or all the way down to our chin. The defiant compliant show everyone how ridiculous everything is, making the compliant feel bad in some way, and therefore more likely to become reluctant compliant.

The least stressful of these protests is the reluctant defiance, and the most stressful is the strictly non-compliant, followed by the defiant compliant. However, there are ways to mix reluctant compliance with theatrical compliance in a non-stressful manner. Going out this morning, I wore my "mask of the beast" under my chin. Only when I felt pressured to put my mask on properly, did I do so, which made me go directly from reluctant compliant to defiant compliant, something that made me feel quite happy, because the social pressure of the moment didn't force me into strict compliance. At no point was I fully compliant. The protest mutated spontaneously from reluctant to defiant, without passing through strict compliance.

Mask of the beast

Wearing the mask of the beast reluctantly puts the ones insisting on compliance into a difficult position. They cannot very well fault us for wearing the mask that they have pressured us to put on correctly. They must therefore applaud the mask, even if it clearly states that it is a creation of the beast, which in turn makes them complicit in our protest.