Living the Outlaw Life
The Importance of Escape

by Claire Wolfe

"As I understand it, laws, commands, rules, and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway."

~ Anne Hutchinson, 1591–1643

Running away from your problems might just be the best thing you could ever do.

No, I'm not talking about skipping out on your child-support payments, your court hearing, or your carping spouse – though come to think, of it, maybe I am.

I'm talking about moving on when the society around you becomes too unjust, chaotic, or hidebound. I'm talking about heading for open spaces and starting over again in brand new territory.

BHM readers know instinctively the importance of moving on, as they leave behind traffic and noise, rabbit-warren neighborhoods, drug dealers, and busybodies to build a more serene life in the backwoods. But the picture is bigger than that. There must always – always – be places where discontented people can run for refuge and new beginnings. Otherwise, society ends up being a pressure cooker with a broken relief valve. And someday – blooey!

In an ideal world, moving on would be easy. The exit door to new territory should be wide open – even if it sometimes means law-breakers and moral scofflaws are allowed to "get away with it" by changing their identities, lying about their pasts, and making a run for some new frontier. We call such people criminals. And today we often suspect them of being terrorists. But in truth, they have historically and collectively been saviors of humanity.

The open door to escape doesn't just benefit individuals, outlaw or otherwise. It's right up there with breathing and eating when it comes to what keeps the species alive and thriving.

Outlaws on the move

This thought first began to sink in with me several years ago as I read a book about the Alamo and learned that the three most noted figures on the "Texas and freedom" side had all physically walked out on their earlier lives, and not necessarily in the most genteel manner. Col. Travis, the commanding officer, had abandoned his child and pregnant wife in South Carolina. He was busily making sexual conquests as a "single" Texan when command of the Alamo fell into his lap. Davy Crockett left his beloved Tennessee after a bitter political defeat. Though he was already a legend in his own state and had been a U.S. congressman, he said "You can go to hell – I'm going to Texas." Jim Bowie was simply a con artist – the very kind of person the government says it wants to protect us from with its cradle-to-grave surveillance and control. Before arriving in San Antonio from New Orleans, he had sold land to which he had no title and had helped his friend, the pirate Jean Lafitte, pull off a vile scam involving the illegal importation and sale of slaves.

These men became heroes. Yet at least two of them would never have even been allowed into a modern-day equivalent of the Alamo with today's background checks, immigration forms, passports, and ID scans in effect. (Remember Texas wasn't part of the U.S. By today's standards, these three were illegal immigrants.) Yet their stories are typical.

It's not news that U.S. history has been made by malcontents, dissenters, the unwanted, the desperate, the impatient, and a goodly share of out-and-out rogues.

But just as crucially, our history has been made by people who've migrated into new territory without being forced to carry with them a lot of old legal, social, and psychological baggage. And it's happened again and again, to our benefit.

Dissenters, rogues, and castaways settle new lands, seeking fortunes or freedom, better hunting, or just plain breathing room. Their descendants become the next "establishment." And soon unhappy individuals and groups must flee them.

It was so when religious dissidents Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams fled the Puritan theocracy. It was so when nineteenth-century visionaries moved to the frontiers to found hoped-for utopias. Each new utopia was built further west as "civilization" became too omnipresent for such innovation to thrive in its midst.

And it would be so now – if there were new territories left to move into.

Not only American history, but vast portions of human history have been the history of moving into new territories, driven by need or desire. The climate changes and you follow the herds. The Pharaoh enslaves you and your tribe seeks a new land. Cast out for questioning the authority of a powerful shaman, you and your companions seek whatever might be over the next hill. And you don't have to ask the shaman's permission. In fact, he might be chasing you out of the village on a fast pony.

Moving on doesn't always benefit the individuals who do it, and it sure doesn't benefit the people already on the "new" land. Half the pilgrims died in the first year in the New World. Travis, Bowie, and Crockett paid bitterly, if heroically, for their escapes by dying at the Alamo. Few European immigrants to North America found the promised land, though their children may have. American Indian tribes and cultures were nearly destroyed as descendants of Europeans overran their "empty" lands. And how many ne'er-do-wells have fled the old, only to find themselves recreating their own problems in their new home, even under a new identity?

But individuals do benefit from the very freedom to make the move. And in the long run, the human race benefits beyond measure.

Troublemakers, geography and destiny

The people who run for new territory are often a pain in the backside to society. They may be perceived as a threat to the established order. They're the non-conformists, the people who challenge every received opinion, the people who don't follow the rules or don't want to. (Anne Hutchinson expressed their spirit in the quote that opens this article.) They're the agitators and the chronic rebels, the losers, the petty crooks, the cranks, political outsiders, the unquenchably risk-taking adventurers. Troublemakers all.

In the short term, tidy, orderly societies should be glad to see the backs of such people as they head on down the trail.

But arguably, the restless souls are also the most important people in the world. They are the ones who keep cultures, including the overall human culture, from turning into one big, stagnant bureaucracy. And they can do that best when allowed to move on, not when they're held in place to struggle against the antipathy or inertia of any "establishment."

When they move on, people bring along the best of the old and create the rest to their liking, or to meet the dictates of the new land. They bust the old paradigms and show that different ways of life and thought are possible. Later, the people in the old places adapt and grow in turn by taking the best from what the pioneers have made possible. Or they stagnate and suffer for it.

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October 29, 2009

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