Rules

Without a rule that cars keep to the right (or the left, in some countries), the roads would be chaos, impossible to travel and full of collisions. Many other complicated traffic situations need adjusting through a whole set of road traffic laws. Thanks to traffic law, everyone can share the roads efficiently.

The same goes for the sky. It looks empty and wide open, but it too has laws and routes. Aircraft must fly along assigned routes and cannot fly wherever they like. Thanks to law and rules, society is stable. People go about their work according to the law. Members of a community treat one another according to its rules.

Legal codes are drafted with great care, and of course they have flaws. Applying law to social life is how people live together in peace. If everyone obeys the law, life is easier for everyone, citizens and government alike. Communities, offices, monasteries and associations also have their own rules that keep them stable. If every member learns and follows them, everything goes smoothly.

But, and this "but" is such a pain, two simple things, knowing the rules and following the rules, are not simple at all.

No one knows all the laws of their own country. Not even lawyers, much less the many people who have never touched a law book in their lives. Lawyers have to pull out the documents and study all night when they take on a client.

As for internal rules, some are short and some long, and some people learn them and some do not. If the rules are too short and too plain, members will be lost in a difficult situation. If they are too long and too detailed, they are hard to learn. Knowing the rules is already very hard.

Following them is harder still.

People fall roughly into two kinds. One kind wants to follow rules and laws. The other likes to live outside the law.

Moral people lean toward following the law. Wicked people lean toward breaking it.

Following the law means giving up our own preferences, reducing our ego, to do what someone else wants (meaning the body that draws up the rules). We want to stay out late at a friend's house, but our parents' rule is to be home before eight in the evening. We want to climb the fence to visit a patient after the hospital has locked its gate, but the hospital's rule is that visiting ends when the gate closes. We want to cross the road anywhere, but the law says we may cross only at the marked lines. We want one thing, and the rule says another. If we are moral, we hold back what we want in order to follow the rule, which also helps society stay peaceful.

It takes morality, self-restraint and enough strength of character to give up a preference before we can follow rules. That is why not everyone in society is able to obey the law: holding back our own wishes is hard work. A person who can follow the laws and the rules is a very moral person.

But, yet another "but": the rules are not always right. Rules help keep society peaceful, but the rules are not peace itself. Cars do not drive onto the sidewalk, so that traffic stays free of accidents, but sometimes a car has to swerve onto the sidewalk to avoid an old person who suddenly falls into the road. That time, driving onto the sidewalk spares society an accident.

Liquids are not allowed on a plane, but if a patient does not carry the familiar traditional medicine (with no label) that supports the heart, they might die halfway through the flight.

A clerk sees some excited small children who forgot their birth certificates and look nothing like terrorists, so she lets them check in and catch their flight, since their parents are waiting at the airport.

A police officer is about to stop a motorbike carrying three people at speed, but sees the one in the middle with a deathly pale face, bundled up in a coat, eyes shut tight, and waves them through so they can reach the emergency room in time.

Following the rules is moral, but sometimes not following the rules while still achieving a good, peaceful and decent result shows higher wisdom and morality. Following rules too rigidly becomes the disease of stubbornness, and stubbornness is a kind of unwholesomeness.

Rules help keep society peaceful, but the rules are not peace itself.