A Quick Note on Deviance

The Ramones are quite possibly the greatest punk band to ever assail the eardrums of the New York Punk Scene of the ’70s. The Ramones, know three chords. The Ramones are dirty, smelly rock junkies who live in vans and drink copious amounts of alcohol while corrupting the impressionable youth.

Perhaps all three of these things are true. Perhaps not. One thing is for certain though, these guys were passionate about what it is they were doing. Their passion was the fuel that sustained them through the good the bad and the ugly.

Did that passion align with the status quo? Certainly not. The Ramones were deviants in every sense of the word. They were social outcasts. They didn’t cooperate with the desires of the mainstream music industry. They did what they wanted to do and they were rewarded handsomely for it.

What was the reward? I don’t really know if they ever made much money, but they did shape the world at large in a completely irreversible way.

My call to action today is for us to become deviants. I don’t mean that we should don our leather jackets, yell into microphones and flick off the establishment… or, on second thought… maybe I do. No, I mean that as those who will make the next major shift in global humanity, we need to shed the roles we’ve been assigned and deviate from the norms.

The rewards may be few – people may shun us, we may make little money, we may questions ourselves daily, but we must proceed. We must deviate in order to secure the future we want to see. Our vision will guide us, our passion will sustain us.

Normal is so 2010. Fuck the norms – and long live the Ramones!