August 10, 2006
You Shouldn’t vs. You Can’t
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
-Henry David Thoreau
Now, I know a revelation like this might shock some of my readers, but one of my biggest pet peeves is being told what I can’t do. If our federal government ever passes a Constitutional amendment declaring flag-burning to be a crime, that’s about the time I might consider burning a flag— something I would NEVER do otherwise. Perhaps I’m just stuck in an 8-year-olds mentality, but once you tell me something is forbidden, I want to do it. I think I’m just the type of person who decides things for myself, and when someone tries to artificially limit my options, I get angry.
It’s not that I want to do bad things. In fact, I do my best to ensure that I don’t do bad things. But I’m quite quick to do illegal things if I can. My wife is the social director of our neighborhood association, so we regularly have to pass out flyers. The easiest way to do this is to put those flyers directly into a mailbox, but this is a violation of federal law. I violate that with a grin on my face. Really, if you get a chance to blatantly violate a stupid federal law, why pass that up? I still don’t understand the reasoning that I have to purchase and maintain my mailbox, but it’s the US Postal Service’s property.
It’s not even that all governmental laws are bad. For example, the fact that government tells you to wear a helmet on a motorcycle is damned good advice. If they issued a resolution that said that you SHOULD wear a helmet, I see no problem with that. Or when the USDA tells you what they believe to be the consensus opinion on proper dietary habits, that’s not so bad. But when government tells you that you MUST wear a helmet, you get people like me who have a temptation to defy you simply to assert our independence. I’m personally not one to act stupidly and not wear a helmet just as a matter of asserting independence, but quite a few do. What do we do when they institute a “fast food tax”. Is it that far behind, with America’s obesity “epidemic”?
It’s not just government. I’m one of those folks who has a problem knowing where my proper consumption limit is when I’m drinking with friends. It’s a bad personality issue, to be sure, and something I try hard to control. But the other night, I was far from over the line when my wife told me “that’s your last one”. Immediately in my brain I said “the hell it is!” and started getting angry. Had my wife said something like “Brad, you’re getting a little bit too drunk, you might want to watch it”, it would have made me much more likely to accept her opinion and really slow down. (FYI, in all honesty, there was no point where I truly got beyond my limit that night). I respond much better to suggestion than coercion.
It’s not that I dislike authority. It’s not even that I always know what’s best for myself. It’s just that I absolutely detest outsourcing the decisions of my life to someone else. If you have an opinion, by all means, tell me about it. I’m not going to guarantee that I’ll take your advice, but I’ll listen. But if you’re planning on telling me what I can and cannot do, your efforts will be for naught. The fastest way to make me stop listening, or to make me do the opposite to defy you, is to try to make my decisions for me.
Below The Beltway linked with To Hell With Authority
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[...] Brad Warbiany doesn’t much like people telling him what to do, and I can’t say I disagree at all: It’s not that I dislike authority. It’s not even that I always know what’s best for myself. It’s just that I absolutely detest outsourcing the decisions of my life to someone else. If you have an opinion, by all means, tell me about it. I’m not going to guarantee that I’ll take your advice, but I’ll listen. But if you’re planning on telling me what I can and cannot do, your efforts will be for naught. The fastest way to make me stop listening, or to make me do the opposite to defy you, is to try to make my decisions for me. [...]
I suppose you would be just like Adam and be kicked out of the Garden of Eden for disobeying the Father. “I give you this entire Garden to eat from, but do not touch this tree for it is forbidden”. Now is Brad going to eat from that tree just because he was told not to?
Lucy,
When something is advertised to me as the “Tree of Knowledge“, it’s probably going to take quite a bit to keep me away from it…
Yes, you have a point Brad.