Musings On The Function Of Rules

Lately I have been musing over a question which perhaps you can help me on; should we always blindly stick to the rules?

As some of you may know, I like to run the odd competition now and again. At the moment I have two running; The Great Steem Giveaway and Cryptogee Photomash Emoji Challenge.

Earlier on I was looking through the entries to the Emoji Challenge, and I saw that even though when I launched the comp, I repeated over and over, and over again to follow all the rules to the competition, only 3 out of the 13 entries have bothered to do so.

That's less than 25%, so instead of doing another reminder post, I thought instead I would have a muse about the nature of rules, why we follow them, and if they are a good, bad, or neutral.

The Rule Of Sapiens

Human beings are a primate belonging to the genus Homo Sapiens, and as such are the only mammal to cooperate in such large numbers. For indeed a troupe of monkeys, or pride of lions may hunt together, but they won't leave a kill behind for others of their species that they haven't met.

This is why ants don't build roads. . .

Rule Breaker vs Rule Maker

Certain people in life have a rebellious streak, maybe at heart I am one of those people. I enjoy doing the opposite of what a sign says, and I tend to cross the road when there is no traffic coming, not when the lights tell me to go.

So in that respect, I can somewhat relate to people who enjoy breaking petty rules, however I am a little less patient with those who don't realise when to break the rule, and when to simply follow it.

For instance I won't walk on the right, in front of a 'keep left' sign, if there are hundreds of others obeying the rule. That's the difference between being rebellious, and being a dick.

The Evolution Of Rule

In our early neolithic communities, we had to quickly establish a set of ground rules which would help society as a whole.

In fact, this is probably pretty near the time, that the term society was created, if not yet intellectualised. Ultimately we can view society as the strangers we haven't, and will probably never meet.

So as we grew from settlements to villages; as a hunter you learned not to kill the guy from the next village for his resources, but rather to pool your resources and become an even stronger force together.

Of course when we get a deviation, or disagreement over rules things can break down into conflict, or even all out war. For the most part though, we managed to agree and societies grew and grew.

The Fallacy Of My Way Or The High Way

Rules are made to be broken.

It is very easy to misinterpret that oft used parable; because of course it is talking about the rule makers, rather than the rule followers.

As far as people who are supposed to follow the rules, the rules have definitely not been made to be broken. Rather the statement is talking about the fact that society may make one rule one day, and the shifting sands of opinion mean that they have to change the rule tomorrow.

Take for instance the rather bizarre rule espoused by child psychologists in the late 1920s, that children should quite literally never be hugged, and hardly spoken to. It was felt that a firm handshake in the evening, or when your child excelled, was more than enough for your progeny.

It was thought that good parenting was about providing the material needs for your child, and any kind of emotional contact would damage the poor little mites.

This was considered standard wisdom in the United States for around 25-30 years. Until the rather fascinating (and extremely cruel) experiments, whereby infant monkeys were ripped away from their mothers at birth.

Later on, the monkeys were given a choice between a cold hard metal dummy that produced milk. Or one that was soft and cuddly, but gave no sustenance whatsoever, the experimenters expected what they already knew to be confirmed.

However, the monkeys preferred to cling to the cuddly thing that made them feel warm and safe, to the point whereby they would rather starve.

This empirical evidence proved to us that if so-called lower lifeforms, needed love and affection, then it just figured that so would human children; the rules were changed, and so began modern child psychology.

The Rule Of The Religious

The problems with religious rule, is that once religion strays away from the more obvious, long-established, pretty much unchanging rules; it can potentially become extremely dangerous.

Take Thou shalt not kill, as I mentioned earlier, long before a religious person wrote those words down, we had figured out that indiscriminate killing was not to the advantage of the greater good. So a religion repeating that fact, is fairly harmless.

However religious rules by their very nature are ambiguous. This is because they were all written (with the exception of Scientology), hundreds and sometimes thousands of years ago. Therefore the rules were specific to the people of the time.

This is why most people don't know, or don't bother to recite the Ten Commandments, because a fair few of them mean nothing to a person living in the 21st century.

Take for instance, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

Who among the worlds billion plus Christians, is that particular rule relevant to? I'm imagining this is the easiest commandment for a 21st century New Yorker to adhere to. Perhaps not so much for a denizen of the 1st century, in downtown Damascus .

With religion there is no committee, no group of scientists or think tank to analyse whether a rule everybody lives by is relevant any more.

I believe it was St. Paul, or was it Saul? Who said, spare the rod and spoil the child. However years of research in the area of child psychology, has shown that refraining from beating your child isn't spoiling them. It is in fact nurturing them, and helping them to turn into rounded adults.

Of course their apparent unchangeable nature, doesn't stop people trying to modify them, for instance using the words:

It's a metaphor,

is a great way to attempt to change a religious rule.

Your problems start when someone else says;

no it's not.

Hmm, fancy an ism anyone?

Competition Rules

So right back to the inspiration for this muse; competition rules of course do not affect society in any big or meaningful way, they don't even really affect all the people who enter, merely the winners.

However they do lay down guidelines for entrance, so if a competition tells you to wear a red hat, and you wear a blue hat, as far as the organisers are concerned, you haven't entered.

So, if I tell you to put a screenshot of a layer file, or retweet and/or vote for a particular article, and you don't, whilst I might vote for your general efforts, you haven't entered the competition.

So should we always blindly stick to the rules?

When it comes to competition;

OF COURSE WE SHOULD!!!

LET ME KNOW BELOW YOUR THOUGHTS ON SOCIETAL RULES, HOW THEY EFFECT YOU, AND YOUR PERCEPTION OF RULES IN OTHER COUNTRIES AND RELIGIONS.

Cryptogee