Hit Piece #3Rebel Without a Context

Cherished Beliefs

[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]A[/su_dropcap]llow me to introduce myself. I am an iconoclast.

A what? Don’t worry if you don’t know what it means. I had to look it up myself. I was looking for a way to describe myself in one word, the way people do when they introduce themselves as doctors, or as lawyers, or engineers.

When I’m on the fly, I usually go with, “I’m a writer and a musician.” But this could mean a lot of things. How many different kinds of writers and musicians are there?

LEONARD BERNSTEIN, by Jack Mitchell, 1977

When I was a kid, I wanted to be Leonard Bernstein. But how do you describe Leonard Bernstein in one word? You can’t. He was, at the very least, a conductor, a composer, and a teacher. The most succinct way of describing Leonard Bernstein is to say that he was . . . Leonard Bernstein.

But . . . iconoclast. According to Google Search (which pulls from the Oxford American College Dictionary), it refers to “a person who attacks cherished beliefs or institutions.” Synonyms include: skeptic; heretic; infidel; renegade; and mutineer.

Family Business

I started SRP in 2011 to challenge “popular notions of propriety, in thoughtful and amusing ways.” Why? Because . . . well, because . . . I’m a progressive; and yet I value tradition.

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Don’t pull words out of context and say that Greg Silva (or Freud) advocates patricide and incest.

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I honor my father and my mother. But that’s not enough for me. I must raise children of my own. I must claim my own territory, and build my own home on it. My ego demands it. And as Freud pointed out, in order for a man to make a lasting positive contribution to the world, he must murder his father and marry his mother.

By the way, that was a METAPHOR, for those of you who are prone to literalism. So, please don’t misquote me on that. Don’t pull words out of context and say that Greg Silva (or Freud) advocates patricide and incest.

Freud used the Oedipus story as a symbol for . . . and I’m gonna be insanely simplistic here . . . how and why children ultimately replace their parents. And not only their parents, but also their bosses, their ministers, and their political leaders. People have to die, and aging structures (including traditions) have to be torn down and ground into foundations for the new and improved.

For the iconoclast, this means NOT following in the family business; or the family religion; or other family values. It means living as a black sheep, and doing so with neither pride nor resentment. It means slaying dragons and returning with treasures that your family never knew existed.

ST. GEORGE SLAYING THE DRAGON, by Jost Haller, 15th century