Rule-breakers and Box-holders.

“The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.”
- Susan Sontag

I was walking down Swanston st today, past the bums and beggars.

Some were eager to dance and make noise for a few coins, others content to sleep, swaddled in rags, a cardboard sign indicating their desire for your support. Still others harassed me as I went by, asking for some money for a meal, or, “to get home”, hurling abuse at my back as I kept walking, barely audibly asserting my (false) lack of change.

Now, these people are, quite obviously, outside of the system.

Some of them are people who played the game and lost. They may have been riding high on a pile of money, a Monopoly millionaire, and then some sudden change of circumstance has left them without the faculties to survive, and they find themselves down again, lower than before, asking for change from those they once played.
It may not have been that clear cut, just a slow slide into the gutter from the sidewalk.

Some, though, are people who never learnt, or maybe never understood, the rules. It’s not like they were intelligent enough to realise that there are rules and ways to circumvent or bend them, or that they chose to not be a part of the system, they simply never grasped the concept of the game. They’re box-holders to the game of life, holding the still wrapped package, reading the blurb, wondering what it would be like to play.

If they could even grasp the basic rules, they may be in a better position. As it is, they’re at the mercy of those who are rolling the dice, making their moves around them. Maybe someone slips them a donation from the kitty, maybe they don’t - it’s not really up to them. They only have the opportunity to make the choice for themselves once they begin to play by the rules.
The intellectually disabled and stunted are also at the mercy of the charity of game players and by necessity family and friends will often protect these people from the ravages of a game they don’t (and may never) understand.

I’d like to clarify that I don’t think it’s enough for us to simply step outside of the game and refuse to follow the rules.

Of what value is that?

You’d simply become another box-holder.

If I suddenly stop going to work, start voicing the intimate thoughts in my head to people on the train, stand on tables in the middle of cafes - simply because I can do all of these things - I don’t make any impact on the game. The game continues without me, and each of you that reads this will roll the dice and pass me by, collecting from the community chest and laughing as you pass “Go”.

The point is considered, decisive moves that deconstruct the very idea of the game.

Hitting someone in the street and stealing there wallet - that breaks a rule, but serves no great purpose.

But breaking into someone’s house in the middle of the night, subtly moving all their furniture, possibly taking photos of yourself going through their fridge, underwear drawers etc and placing it in the family photo album. That’s going to make them think.

That might make the homeowner consider exactly how safe they are. It might make them wonder exactly how the game protects them from this occurrence, and exactly what purpose following the rules serves.

By turn, it might reinforce the rules for them - it might make them doubly aware of the need for safety and propriety. If so, good. The point of this experiment is to undo the rules and, if necessary, rebuild them. Rules should not be arbitrary, they should be honed, tested, pushed, melted and destroyed, then rebuilt.

Fantomas, the great anti-hero/villain of french pulp-literature, once hid razor blades in soap that was delivered to orphanages. Let’s be clear - this is not path I wish to explore, the unnecessary mutilation of the unfortunate, for my own sake, but the act itself is a stroke of genius. To what end does the great villain commit this act, for what result?

Simply to strike fear into the hearts of the populace. Simply to let them know that their safety is tenuous at best and to assume otherwise is mass suicide.

The other lurks in the dark and it has your name. The rules are but constructions that imprison and blinker us all to the reality of the situation.