Last year, when I was in Florence, I saw the work of Clet Abraham. He is an artist who alters European traffic signs. He sites various reasons for doing this, many of which are aesthetic in nature, but he also claims these signs speak down to us. The two altered no entry signs shown here seem to point out a refusal to take these signs seriously and to express a feeling of being unwillingly forced into encountering them.

People give us signs of what they want us to do all the time. This often happens in an individual to individual manner. But sometimes, individuals give us signs of what they want us to do because they fear we won’t do what’s expected. More importantly, they seem to believe that if we go too far beyond what they and the group they belong to deem to be acceptable, that somehow, our authenticity becomes a rebellion and a revolt against this accepted way, which they of course wholeheartedly see as the right and only way.

These same people praise innovation but only when what is innovated can become a part of their paradigm. They see individualism not merely as the breath-in-breath-out practice of living authentically but rather as a call to arms to stamp out a wayward, confused member of the human race. Not to get all Ayn Rand on you but how smart can you truly be if you fear difference? How inclusive are you if your acceptance of diversity has a limited list?