Every time I encounter someone rebelling I wonder if they might be in the less than one percent fraction or the dime a dozen fraction. You can’t always be confident in advance.

Though I’m also the sort that wants to protect traditions from utilitarians for their own sake. Sometimes it’s your reason — which was Chesterton’s. He wrote something along the lines of even if you find an isolated wall with no obvious purpose, you leave it alone until you can explain why it was built in the first place.

That’s a pretty extreme example. Many would say that if one can ascertain no current utility, it should not be necessary to determine its original utility and prove that it no longer exists. I sympathize and would probably say that’s how things should normally work, but we have lived through an age in which too many things have demonstrated Chesterton’s wisdom, and too many others have made what, for me, is the wider error of prioritizing utility at all over other factors. I’d probably say an ancient wall in the middle of a field should stay for its own sake, unless you actually have a genuine, overriding modern utility to serve by knocking it down.

SO with the path example, I’d probably walk the worn path and take a curious look at the straight route a few times. The loss of time and effort is too trivial to automatically cut a new path. But I’d keep the option open for consideration.

In practice, of course, we’ve all worn paths on literal grass countless times, so there’s room for rebellion at last.

Having the independence of mind to make your own paths is an advantage, provided you go about it prudently. Rebels are a dime a dozen, but a smart rebel is another thing. Smart rebels make breakthroughs. Smart rebels advance human civilization.

What always amuses me is that about two-thirds the way along this well-worn path, there is an unnecessary kink in the line of the path. For no obvious reason (no tree or water hole or rock) it bends a little to one side and after a few yards resumes the ‘natural’ path of the shortest route between the two points.

But clearly every single person who followed the path over the years has never stepped off the worn way: every user has followed the path (unnecessary kink and all) without question. Maybe tradition dictates you follow what was laid down, or maybe no one finds the extra steps required any sort of issue.

It would take a rebel to make a newer, straighter path.