Recently blessed with moderately long commutes to work each day has left me with plenty of time to ponder. As if I needed more time to think, but at least this is as close to “quiet time” as I get—no cell phone, no email or web connection, nothing but the rising sun—and it helps.

This morning, as I performed my daily routine of shaking fists and talking to other drivers in not-so-hushed tones, I began thinking about driving…and then on to people’s styles of driving…which lead to categorization of driving styles and attempting to find patterns based on states of license, gender and car model. Needless to say, all that was really accomplished was that I got through another 40 minute commute without committing mass vehicular destruction.

But as I exited the parking garage en route to my office, I started thinking about the concept of rebellion. Written across so many faces every morning, emblazoned on bumper stickers, I see a distinct air of defiant resistance. But to what? Life? What could you possibly be so pissed about? The more I thought about modern rebellion, the more my stomach sank at the thought of where our modern civilization seems to stand today.

First of all, what was rebellion? Rebels used to be those that questioned strict authority (the establishment that seemed to blindly dictate). They were willing to lose something…be that their pride, self esteem or even personal safety. Rebels in the truest sense defined other boundaries, carving out alternate routes. They consciously ignored stereotypes, laws and power structures. And what usually came of rebellious types was rather polarizing: a society filled partially with criminals and troublemakers, and a society simultaneously enriched by, well, out-of-the-box thinking. From free-thinking professors to inventors to artists. Challenging authority is synonymous with the roots of our culture.

Somewhere along the way, though, the Media came along. I hate to mindlessly assign blame, especially to faceless groups, but I can think of no other popular catalyst that could render this effect in such a short amount of time. I would wager to guess (in my limited knowledge of pop culture) that around the times of Elvis and James Dean, the rebel image caught the intruiged glances of the moneymakers. These people were hip to the fact that there was money to be made (and hearts to be swooned) on this image. If they could package up an “attitude” and sell it commercially, it would be liquid gold! Now look at where we are today.

What was once dangerous and a serious choice is now cheap and childish. Smoking, drinking, cursing, breaking laws…now flipped around to be a “if you’re not doing this you’re a loser” situation. Revolution and resistance (politically) are armchair-style and watered down as far as possibly can be, with a vast majority of those “politically active” simply showing their spirit by snarky message on their car’s rear end. T-shirts bought at Hot Topic proclaim statements of feigned autonomy and power (“What are you looking at?” or perhaps “Party girl”). Ideas once gleaned from a scowl or (God forbid) actual actions are now innocently (and triumphantly!) printed on glittery fashion accessories. “Ground-breaking” publications that once threw the literary finger at established circles of criticism are read by soccer moms, mainly because they are chock-full of ads for things. Musicians are pimped for sales, and learned long ago to rollover and simply take cash rewards instead of fighting for creative and artistic satisfaction, producing truly new material that would help define another generation.

I could ramble on forever citing examples of how it pains me to think that rebellion might not even be possible in today’s world. A kid who misbehaves (he would say he’s ‘fighting the system’) would likely just be dubbed “moody,” anesthetized with pharmaceuticals, and allowed to sulk in his room listening to Distrubed’s new CD on the computer Mom and Dad bought him. — Arg, sorry. There I go again.

So is it even viable to be a true rebel in today’s society? We’ve seen it all…the Unibomber hermits and the shock-rocking Satanists…is there anything left that the “normal people” would consider rebellious?

Maybe the art critic (who’s name I can’t remember)—who said that modern resistance is so weak that if it were to happen at all, it would have to occur only in the abstract—got it right. Perhaps any real rebellion at this point would have to be so far extracted from everyday life, away from the billboards and commercials, away from anything we associate with culture or stereotypical rebellion, in order to be effective and pure.

Oh hell. Here I am at the office again. Time for some coffee. Now if only I could be free of this automoton’s rat race, no longer a prisoner in this mokey suit, filing like drones…