We are sometimes victims of our habits, and those around us. Sometimes we reap rewards because of them.

Alone, we navigate these – sometimes as wayfarers, picking our way through them with goals, and sometimes we bumble through like the lost at sea, unaware, with serendipity perhaps pushing us in the right direction now and then. As communities and societies, it’s done much the same way – with the added reinforcement that the individual gets for being amenable to what society wants.

The rebel, the would-be revolutionary, is the one who breaks habits, perhaps wayfaring, perhaps through simple carelessness, perhaps through a self-imposed role of contrarian.

The rebel believes that they are alone, the revolutionary believes that they are not.

Regardless, society’s habits do not change unless those of the individuals at a certain tipping point change, those of the individual do not change unless the individual sees value in it, and what the individual sees value in can be fickle.

Pigs in mud are content, dogs with fleas can be having never been without them.