We all have the potential to change the status que in fundamental ways. But for that change to reap favorable results awareness is needed. Without it, you will be unconsciously reacting to your society’s hundreds of years of conditioning. You will become revolutionary in the process. While awareness directs you to create something new to achieve your vision. As such, you become a proactive rebel. Your obsession is not fighting the status quo but rather creating the new. At one extreme, you have the lifeless status quo; at the other, you have the revolutionary. Both are destructive. In the middle you have the balanced, compassionate rebel who drives humanity forward.
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Revolutions had led humanity to nowhere. All revolutions have failed miserably. Their chief aim is to fight the status Que. For revolutionaries, status que is the enemy. The set of rules that govern their society stands in their way. Hence, society is their enemy. So their actions are decided by society. They are simply reacting. And the mere fight creates resistance. Society fights them back. For the revolutionary, it seems he wins battles against the collective individuals, but he finally loses the war. Consider the last 300 years and you will find that The French Revolution, Russian Revolution and even the recent biggest Revolution in the Middle East, the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, had all failed miserably.
Rebellion is propelled by conscious individuals. Rebels never take anything for granted; even their society’s conventions and deep-rooted procedures. They question everything in order to come up with the new, the relevant, and the better. Their actions are consciously directed not against the old but for the new. Their actions are springing out of their dreams of helping others and making their life even better. Unlike the revolutionaries, they are not enemy-driven but rather humanity-led. Just imagine how the compassionate rebels like Thomas Edison , Bill Gates, and Albert Einstein have led humanity to new frontiers of progress and scientific discoveries.
Rebels come in many shapes and sizes. They are like beauty, hard to define but you know it when you see it. Our rebel today takes a whole new shape. He’s been brought up in a traditional Italian culture. In such a culture, conventional food recipes were sacred; there is no way to mess with them. Food recipes were passed from generation to generation with a revered sense of love and discipline. Young Massimo Bottura was back then a food lover. But out of his passionate love for good food come his ingenuity and also his early failures.
Being a rule breaker is not an easy endeavor. Chef Bottura started studying thoroughly the traditional Italian recipes. Out of his intense studies, he managed to transform these dishes into innovative dishes. He didn’t break the rule simply for the sake of it but for making cooking time a joyful experience. For him, food has become a means to demonstrate his love for his Italian community and the world at large. He used to say, “ As chefs, we create food, like how an architect designs buildings and an engineer creates fast cars. Our food is a representation of our thoughts and ideas, but we are artisans, not artists.”
Creating a lasting change won’t be possible without awareness. Without it, change agents, the revolutionaries, will push humanity to destructive consequences. With the help of awareness, the rebels will lead humanity towards a better future.
