One of the aspects of life that has fascinated me most in the recent years, is how people deal with rules and laws. And how these rules and laws are embedded in us since childhood. In the next few posts I want to examine why some of us are able to get away with murder, while others do not. And I want to explore how effective they are at maintaining order and if there is a better way.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, our principles guide our rules and laws. But our principles are not universal. Our principles are shared to us by our parents. We tweak them where needed and pass them on to our kids. Our children do the same and the cycle continues. This is how things worked for hundreds of thousands of years, before the advent of writing.
Written rules and laws may appear to us as something that have always been there, since humanity began, but that is not true. They are a relatively new invention. All humans currently alive are descendants of homo-sapiens. Our ancestors are thought to have evolved in Africa some 300,000 years ago. Yet, the most recent evidence of anything being written by our ancestors is from a mere 5,000 years ago (3200 BC). That means that for close to 98% of the time we, humans were on earth, nothing was written down.
Prior to the written word, our ancestors would put their thoughts down as paintings and drawings in caves, the very caves they dwelled. The oldest of these painting we have found so far date to about 40,000 years ago.
Therefore, these so-called principles, rules and laws, were more ephemeral than permanent. Different groups of peoples, in different locations of the world, shared differing principles. They shared principles, rules and laws that made sense to their group.
As we evolved into larger communities, we had to find ways to make these laws more universal and permanent. We picked the best aspects of differing principles, argued over them and made them into rules and laws. In the beginning, we created ceremonies and rituals to share them and enforce them amongst people, and religions were born. Religions worked (and continue to work) pretty well, but as the world evolved, so did religions. So we needed to find ways to make these rules and laws even more universal and secular. We setup full systems around them. We setup courts to judge our actions against them and officers that enforce them. In general they work pretty well. They help us to maintain order.
So if these rules and laws work so well, how can people get away with murder? That is what I will examine in my next post. I want to understand how some people manipulate our urge for order so they can break it.
