Quiche Du Jour: Rule Breakers

A great artist told me once, "You gotta learn the rules so you know how to break 'em." Although the self-portrait above does not convey much in the way of outrageous impudence to us today, it very much did back then, and Albrecht Duerer was such a successful rule-breaker he has been called by many the first "Modern Man." Artistically, he was an innovator, and socially and religiously he was a revolutionary.

I remember the first time seeing an image of one of his paintings, a rabbit, in a well-worn high school social studies book. Though utterly realistic and a wholly unsentimental likeness of a rabbit, it still managed to be a masterpiece. Later, Duerer was largely responsible for securing the city of Nuremburg's support of Martin Luther, when most of Bavaria did not.

To break a system, you get inside one you want to change, and then you start breaking its rules to make good things happen. If you keep making the good things happen, people will try to find your "corruption handle" to get you under control. They'll start to panic if they can't find it, but you'd better not have an obvious handle if you want to follow through on your revolutions, no matter how tiny they may be.