I apologize in advance, it is late, I am tiered, but I wanted to write this down.
I wrote October'09 about how society without social rules falls apart, that post focused on showing examples and reasoning around it to make the point that it leads people to doubt themselves and everything around them, and don't even know if they are being treated badly, or if they do realize it don't know if speaking up is the right thing to do or just to be silent and eventually communication and understanding breaks down, since there is no protocol (rules) left to enforce this communication.
Reason I came back to this was that I just observed another example, one person just giving orders to his friend "go make tea, chop chop", and it was not like he wanted a conflict or was an ass, he just wanted tea and thought it would be funny to "ask" in this way like giving orders to a slave, which already shows that there is a big problem in the understanding of how to treat your friends.
And I just saw how his friends face changed this disgust of being treated like that, he hesitated, and thought what to do, but he was lost with no clue of what to do, so after few seconds hesitation he went up and made tea where the appropriate reaction wold of course have been "who the f*** do you think you are to talk like that, lift your fat ass and do it yourself".
Why? To help him, what are friends for if not helping. Yes you might say, but you might tell him in a normal way and not as above, you could try, but if you would have seen his friends face that is what would have come out.
Well enough with examples, there are more details in last post about that, the problem is identified and the consequences are grim, but how did it come to that? I see several possible reasons:
First one is the most obvious, there existed bad social rules, for example how women were treated in the society, minorities, e.t.c. those bad rules had to go, but one threw out baby with the water so to speak, by fighting for women's rights which is good, you now have a high probability to have a fight on your hands even if you do such harmless things as opening the door or taking/giving the coat not even talking about paying for her at the date. Hence some rules disappeared this way.
Second is the religion, a society with hight percentage of believers does follow certain rules from their religion, hence religious rules/laws becomes social rules and since everyone believes they follow those rules and even those that don't believe do the same because everyone else does. And as long as enough people believe those rules will be followed, but as long as enough people looses the faith the ones that still do believe will start being ridiculed for their believe and strange rules they follow, speeding up the process, until there are so few believers left that their rules do no impact on society. "I God does not exist, everything is permitted" becomes true, not because non-believers don't know what is wrong and what is right but there is no authority to enforce it, and the problem becomes not that people do evil things, but that people don't do good things. And only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Third is obvious, if not enough parents teach their children about what is wrong and what is right the few that do will get overwhelmed by the majority that does whatever they want that they will not be brave enough to act the right way against the popular way.
I live in such a country, where everything above is true, there are no males and females but something in between with different reproductive organs, we are among least believing countries in the world and I haven't seen anyone that teaches their children things like give seat to elders on the buss, don't yell or talk loudly in public, don't walk between two people, don't stand in the way and talk, treat others like you want to be treated, don't promise what you can't keep, e.t.c. basic rules.
It sounds like you should expect total chaos, ruleless society, everything is permitted, and basically it is you can act however you want and the risk of someone actually telling you that you are doing something wrong is basically nonexistent, but there is no chaos, quite the opposite.
I explain, I have lived in a society with very strong social rules, those social rules determined what was the right way and the wrong way to act towards each other, law on the other hand was government telling you within which space you are allowed to be free, that is there could be situations where the right thing to do by social rules was not always legal. This of course has consequences when people make up their own rules, and it becomes difficult to uphold the law.
But here on the other hand where there are no social rules the only limitation to what you could do is the law and the upholder of the law is the police. There is a clear authority and it must be obeyed, why? Because otherwise anything is permitted. The law became new God. As opposed the the example above where people think "well law is all good and such, but I know what is right thing to do".
It sounds good doesn't it law abiding society, why should we have social rules at all then? But the law does not say stand and let the elders sit on the full buss, law does not say a lot of things, and it should't hence everything what is not law will degrade to "what is easier/profitable for me" and I hope that with previous examples I have shown that this is the case here.
But:
Rules are not written in stone, (some have tried) but it fails, rule is a rule as long as it is considered to be right by the majority.
Law on the other hand is a set of instructions written by few for some reason or another, and even if majority disagrees with those there are still a group of armed people with power to make sure you follow it, the authority. Or remove you if you don't(imprison you) so that no one else gets the same idea.
And the scary thing is with ruleless, law worshipping society is that people as I wrote so many times before don't know what is right and what is wrong, they don't even want to know or why they should, there is a law to follow, that's it. For example there is an extreme example I have seen, standing at a traffic light, there are no cars as far as the eye can see, but it is red for pedestrians, normal person will think, "what am I waiting for?" look to both sides, no cars, and walk, but this person stood there until it turned green and then walked over.
He did it because (he thought) law said don't walk on red, so he did't even though common sense said to walk because there are no cars on the road.
Hence people are acting like robots following the law and where the law does not apply, they are lost not knowing how to act and often acting wrongly because they lack the knowledge of what is right thing to do and often doing wrong thing motivated by "it is easier" or "better for me".
What is the other extreme? A society where it is impossible to uphold the law.
Two opposite world views, which one is better? The answer probably going to depend on where you live and what you prefer, personal freedom and search for truth, or law, order and prosperity.
But whit kind of law will people write that do not apply the common sense in everyday situations in order to do the right thing?
And does it matter how many laws are written if everyone only use common sense?
PS
I have used the term don't know what is right several times, and I want to explain what I mean by a quick example.
A friend borrowed "money" (gold) from me in a game. He said he will buy X, pay me back within one week then when he has enough, buy Y.
I had X but I did't have Y either, so I thought poor him, surely I'll do it for him.
What he did was, bought X, collected enough gold to pay me back, instead borrowed more from another friend, bought Y and fed me lies for several days that he has't collected enough to pay me back yet.
Well obviously everyone still (hopefully) knows that it is wrong to lie like that to a friend.
But what is not so obvious is the fact that he consciously decided not to keep his word and pay back at promised deadline, that is very common here, why did't he do it?
Because he did't think keeping his word is necessary, he figured no harm will come from this, I will patiently wait for him to pay back and he will eventually hence he did nothing wrong.
When I told my other friend that I caught him with the hand in the jar his reaction was also basically, well few days sooner few day later, he is going to pay back eventually, but agreed that he should't have lied to cover it up.
Hence lying is still considered wrong.
While not keeping your word is not considered wrong.
But the difference between those two is very small and yet there is nothing wrong with not doing what you promised, and I tried to explain that it is wrong to promise things and not follow them through, and they did't understand why when I told them that it is simply wrong, a friend said, you could have borrowed from me to buy Y until he paid back, I have enough, but that is beside the point.
If something wrong turns out ok in the end, it doesn't make it right. And if you keep doing wrong things like that and everyone around will keep ignoring it it will become normal, because it's easy.
And this incident opened my eyes to see that people don't try to do the right thing, they don't even want to know what the right thing is, when they are faced with a problem they don't think what is the right thing to do because there is no moral authority left in society to fall back on, but only the law left, and if it is legal then the next question what will I benefit/suffer.
If you have read this far I take my hat of for you, because I am very tiered and I realize that this text is very poorly structured and much longer then necessary.
Do the right thing, but authority of the right thing to do and obey the law.
