Rules Are Rules
[03/23/2011] [Delphos]Rules are rules. Boy, if I could count the number of times throughout history where someone has defended their own actions or inactions by quoting those word. . . well, the number would be astronomical! Too bad so few people learn from the mistakes made in the past and are doomed to repeat them. In my opinion, people who use this argument for anything are beings who are unable to think for themselves, think out of the box, make decisions on their own or simply carry on a deep philosophical discussion. They can only recite from a written script and, if any question goes beyond their little card, they seem to just sputter the same phrase over and over again. Oh, wouldn't it be so nice to just blindly follow rules? To not have to answer for your own stupidity because you were simply following the rules set in place when you arrived on the scene? But life is fluid, and we have brains. And, as a species, we evolve and change. We challenge the norm and we change our own environment. We question our surroundings and we test our boundaries. And most of all, we fight against captivity. We fight against control. We fight against those who would control us, even on the most basic levels. Were we not the "misbehaved children" that we are, we would all still be slaves. We would be subjects with no rights and no opinions of our own. We might not even exist. If we, as a Nation, would have followed the rules of England, then there would be no United States of America. If all the Africans who were captured and brought over the sea as slaves would have followed the rules, they'd still be slaves! If the Free Hills of the SCA would have followed the rules, there would be no Amtgard Kingdom of the Emerald Hills. If the folks in El Paso who played this game before it had a name would have followed the rules, there would be no Amtgard at all. Though the Founding Fathers of the United States are no longer alive to tell us all what they were thinking and feeling when they broke away from the British, you folks in the Emerald Hills have some of the Founders right here, alive and well, yet you seldom listen when those Founders speak, and follow their rules even less often. Rules exist the serve the people. People are not supposed to be slaves to the rules. In my humble opinion, and I'm a Founder (like it matters), you people have lost your way. You're lost in your rules. You're lost in your own self-importance. You've lost the reason. You've lost the spirit. If you loose the rest, you'll have lost everything... and your rules will be all you have left. This kingdom was founded in the middle of the Dallas/Fort Worth SCA territory from an outlaw shire caught between two powerful baronies. Both barons tried to cram their rules down the throats of the Free Hills. And the Free Hills rebelled. That rebel spirit created the Emerald Hills. You can re-write history, you can re-write corpora or the rules of play. You can even change the very core of the game-play. But you can never kill that spirit. And when you've pushed way too many rules down the throats of those who still have that rebel spirit, they will rebel. It's as simple as that.
[ discuss on forums ] | 
