Don't Tread On Me

By Brian Knapp


I collect souvenirs. No, I don’t hop from location to location, sacking each gift shop in each respective airport. Instead, I mimic.

Observation is probably the one skill that I would say I perform better than 99% of the population. I would rather sit back and drink in information in attempt to decipher the world rather than to actually live in it.

In this case, I speak not only of the natural world, but of the social one. Human behavior is a powerful and interesting subject and understanding it is invaluable.

Along the way, there are times in which mimicry of action is necessary in the learning of it. A thing is multidimensional. In order to grok in full, one must know it multi-dimensionally. Lucky for humans, we have several sensory inputs. Coupled with the probability machine of our minds, these inputs add dimension to a thing. The way a thing looks tells one only how a certain spectrum of light is affected by it. How a thing sounds adds another dimension.

To truly Know a thing is to understand it from every possible dimension. This, of course, might be impossible. Yet adding many dimensions will at least allow us to know a thing most probably.

In adding dimension to people around me, I mimic their behaviors. When I learn a behavior thoroughly enough I begin to perform it on a regular basis.

When I was young, my aunt “popped” her back and knuckles often as a chiropractor would. I knew this behavior well, I thought, and pop my back to this day. Later in life, I had a friend who performed similar actions to most other joints and yet another who did so for other joints. I know this behavior well enough to perform it for about any joint I choose. To this day, I cannot perform any like action without thinking of these people. These are souvenirs I picked up from them.

I have another good friend who has carried chewing gum with him since the day we met (and presumably before then). For hours every day, I chew gum. I can’t escape it. There are many other behaviors that I perform and all but for a few essential ones, I attribute to a person that I “visited”.

One souvenir which is most interesting is a tattoo. Yes, a tattoo. Those who know me might be surprised. But then, it is another dimension that they were not aware of before. So, now they have a more probabilistic view of me and hence “know” me better.

When I was a teenager, I was quite interested in politics. I read political philosophy and applied it to current events in attempt to understand our system better. I quickly went from right conservative to conservative libertarian. Then, I moved into anarcho-capitalism, and finally settled right in the center, embracing civil and property libertarianism, or what I like to call, pure libertarianism.

Because of my contempt for anything compulsory, like high school, my rather self-reliant upbringing, my pubescent need for independence, and my aforementioned political ideology, I was rather intense. Thick surges of testosterone and a limited worldview emboldened my ideology.

About a year later, I had entered what many refer to as “the real world”. I forwent college in order to finance my girlfriend’s (now wife’s) education. I worked ridiculous hours and had little time to pursue the life I thought I would lead.

But I didn’t want to forget about what I thought was liberty; the right of a person to own himself and the product of his labor and his natural right to defend both to the death against any action in violation of this law (whether intentional or not).

So, I got a reminder, a tattoo: “Don’t Tread on Me”. The line in the sand that is the Gadsden flag was painted right on my arm where I could never forget it. And I never have.

But time can wear down anything without breaking a sweat. And although the ink remains, the foundation, the faith, that it symbolized is gone. It is now a relic, a souvenir, of who I used to be.

I call it faith, because believing in the sanctum of “Don’t Tread on Me” doesn’t work. This is an observable fact. I contend that it is impossible to move through life without both being tread upon and treading upon others. Yes, even in America.

“Don’t Tread on Me” went from a strong assertion, to a reactionary bark, to a reasonable exasperation, to a desperate plea. And now, it sits on the shelf, collecting dust. Lately, I seem to express the phrase “Tread on Me Lightly Please” instead of its distant cousin. It takes itself, like me, a little less seriously and it has a more authentic, if tragically amusing, sentiment.

The interesting bit in observing the memories of my past self is to understand how differently I see the world now compared with before. Once, I believed, wrongly, that I could carve out a place for myself, free of infringement, and live there in peace. Now I understand that I am too interconnected, too dependent, on even those I do not know, that I couldn’t isolate myself if I wanted to. I need to be tied in.

“Don’t Tread on Me,” taken to its logical conclusion fails. Famously, Ben Franklin exclaimed that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. This may very well be true. Death is the inevitable tread of natural law. Entropy and chaos will break down especially the most complex systems such as the body. And Taxes are the inevitable tread of the social rule insomuchas we are responsible for each other.

Taxes are instituted by the government, sure. But the goods and services that we rely on must be obtained through others, whether in form of government or other social entity such as a corporation. Money exchange however undesirable and even unwillful to a certain extent must occur. When faced with the prospect of freezing in the winter or paying the utility, there effectively isn’t a choice.

To go to an even further extreme, to refuse to participate in certain events socially can be equally devastating, depending upon the standards of the community. Yes, that means to not own and operate a cell phone in the U.S. can be devastating. The expectation of doing so is so great that one’s viability is not insignificantly impacted. Will someone DIE if they don’t have a cell phone? Clearly, no. However that particular and peculiar facet of humanness that requires social interaction for survival (yes, mere survival), can be stressed to the point of failure.

The point is, that place that I wished to carve out for myself, unbothered and governed only by the inviolate letter of liberty does not exist here.

I don’t begrudge “Don’t Tread on Me”. It’s a souvenir I picked up at a place I visited once. I hold it dear to me like the other souvenirs I’ve received from others. Like my dad’s mannerisms. But it certainly is not what I thought it would be and it doesn’t do what it promised it would.

 
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