Rules of Engagement
What is R.O.E. and how does it pertain to the situation at hand? To me, Rules of engagement are conditions that trigger rules I will adhere to as a general rule of thumb kind of thing. What does that mean exactly? Well, there are agreed upon reactions to certain situations. For instance, one cannot simply attack someone because they disagree. The urge is ever present in humans some times to do just that. What keeps us from doing that is an agreed upon reaction chain. If someone uses words, you are to respond with words. If they attack you physically, you respond physically. These are rules that in times of stress are easily followed.
What are my rules and what makes my statements and body of work different than what other people say and do generally speaking? This is a question that comes up a lot. People take the simple statement and they just want to hold that and run with it all the way to the end of the race. Fortunately, it doesn't work that way. When I make bold statements I do it on my own turf. I do not take out a publication's momentum and use it for my own personal gain. I will not inject my thoughts into people's conversations unwanted and I do not take out advertisements to force my opinion down people's throats. In fact, odds are that you coming across something I say randomly, is very slim. I am not putting my opinions "out there". I have them, I form them and I express my opinions and beliefs on my own personal site, my own personal Facebook page, or my own personal blog post. I do not force people to all of the sudden become assaulted by my beliefs. Doing so, they open themselves up to retaliation conditions.
What violates ROE? I believe that when you are listening to music, online, watching a movie, whatever the case may be, that's your personal time. There is no need to inject ephemeral opinions that need to be prefaced in order to be related. At that point, it becomes something entirely different all together. It ceases to be a work of art and becomes a soapbox. Synergy is fine, but the general intent is there sometimes and that's something that can be so polarizing especially when it lands just the right way. Intentionally misleading someone in order to gain their attention, using tricks to shift one's perception, and generally doing things that when done one can immediately tell the moral implications are not going to be good, these are all things that violate the rules and open people up to retaliation. We have a mission to convey our opinion, it's when we try to overstep and add stuff on top that outweighs our objective, that's when we start to violate that line.
I don't go out there and troll people with my statements. Innocent bystanders to me are just that, I don't see them as someone to yell at. I'm more of the mindset that no news is good news. As long as there is peace who gives a damn about the other stuff, life is too short to worry about standards that are beyond a mortal's control. That's something the future men are more aptly able to deal with.