Thread: Rules?
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Old 08-15-2005, 08:05 AM   #28 (permalink)
Jinn
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Quote:
Here is another analogy in which I will draw more clear parallels. You are a parent with a son, who you instruct to never play ball in the front yard (under the reasoning that he could stray into the road and be smashed flat). One day the road is blocked off from both ends for sewer maintenance and the little boy, deciding that the rule makes no sense now, decides to go and play ball in the front yard.

The child is of course correct that the danger is removed and the rule pointless. However, it is not his place to simply disregard the rule without consulting with you the parent. The parallel here is that the parent is the government, and the child the citizen.

When you let a citizen decide which rules they are going to follow and which they will ignore, they in essence have no rules at all. If everyone reacted this way there would be no point of a government because everyone would be doing whatever they darn well pleased anyway. If you decided not to punish that child for breaking your rule he would most likely never change from the anarchist little snot that seems to be running rampant in the world today.

The point is that it is not your place to make up your own rules as you go along. Think for a moment about how your philosophy would utterly destroy society and civilization, and get back to me.
A much better analogy, and I even stopped reading to say .. "yea, that's true." However, I think there are a few flaws with this argument. Assuming that no one would obey laws and anarchy would evolve if people chose to break laws ignores the current status of the government. People ignore or break laws all the time, but anarchy has yet to insue.

Specifically, I found this idea quite interesting:
Quote:
However, it is not his place to simply disregard the rule without consulting with you the parent.
In a perfect world, I'd agree with you. The law-questioner should always talk with the law-creator, because they might agree with your dissonance -- they might even be pursuaded to remove the law or give you amnesty to it. However, in the enormous republic(an) State that we have now, communicating directly with the law-creator isn't as simple as the kid waiting for the parent to get home. It could take weeks or months to get a reply, and not necessarily a satisfactory one. If the parent refused to let the child play in the street even in the traffic-ending construction, and failed to provide a reason -- then I believe the child would have been correct to disobey it. A law is worthless without a justification. Attempting to enforce a law when it no longer applies is simply asking for rebellion.

Further into your metaphor, what if the parent made a rule to "not tell anyone about our 'special' time." This would be analogous to mistreatment by the government, covered up by laws. Would the child (citizen) still be risking anarchy and de-civilization by refusing to abide by the censorship laws? I, for one, would HOPE that the child would break the law and tell someone that he was being molested.
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