@Charli_Mills Weekly Flash Fiction Prompt: Rebellion

In response to Carrot Ranch’s weekly Flash Fiction Prompt: Rebellion.

Ignorance

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

He said it so casually, for such an inconsequential thing. David stared at his brother.

“What?” Scott grunted, barely looking up from his laptop (too busy spamming job applications).

“You don’t even know where that phrase comes from.” Not a question.

Scott grimaced. “But you’re about to tell me…”

“Guy Fawkes said that.”

“The firework?”

David gave up with a melodramatic gesture towards his brother. It was Scott’s ignorance that caused him to get sacked from his last job, inadvertently offending his boss’s family. He had to learn some social awareness sometime… surely?

*

A tenuous link to the prompt, I know, but ‘rebellion’ caused me to think of Guy Fawkes, which in turn made me think of the phrase ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’. While I was told by a teacher in high school that Guy Fawkes said this, the phrase is actually much older and is thought to originate from Hippocrates’ Aphorisms (an ancient Greek book) : Extreme diseases require extreme cures.

This also got me thinking about how we use everything in the world while (largely) being ignorant of their origins. Another example I can think of is the Nobel Peace Prize, which was started by Alfred Nobel so he could be remembered for something better than becoming ‘rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before’ – he invented dynamite.

In turn, isn’t rebellion often brought on by ignorance? The ignorance of the plight of an oppressed people, until the oppressed rise up to face their oppressors? Or in the case of propaganda, being used to spread half-truths to people who don’t know any better, to stir them up into rebellion?

Food for thought.