The Corean Chronicles
Dividing Lines... and Judgment
What's the difference between obtaining timely information, products and services and an obsession with instant gratification? Or between being able to obtain a hot meal quickly and suffering fast-food frenzy? Or being able to get in touch with family or job quickly and having an unseen cellphone umbilical cord that's really a communications chain that leaves you at the mercy of everyone else?
For that matter, what's the difference between a "reasonable" editorial and an editorial rant? Or a good book and a great one?
For a traffic cop, is it reasonable to ticket a driver going three miles an hour over the speed limit... or is the dividing line five or seven... or where the possible violation takes place? How many school assessment tests for pupils are too many? Or too few? Is it reasonable to apply the same standards for achievement to immigrant children as to upper middle class students?
For a publisher, how many copies of a first novel must be sold in order to consider buying an author's second book? If the book is right on the edge of profitability, what tips the decision one way or the other?
All these questions aren't meant to be examples of the unsolvable, but examples of the daily judgments people in all areas of life must make, one way or another... and what I've written touches the barest minimum of the complexity of human society and life. I'm doing this because, again, I tend to get tired of the proliferation of rules and laws that try to answer every single injustice or odd situation.
In the United States, in particular, we seem to have this idea that when there's a wrong, another rule is just the thing to right it. Except... it doesn't seem to work that way. The USA probably has more rules dealing with regulation of the financial sector than any nation on the face of the earth... and we've just created the biggest misuse of funds in human history by most likely the most corrupt [I didn't say illegal, just corrupt, although some did break various laws] group of executives ever, at least in dollar terms, all of them trying to find "legal" ways to accomplish the unethical, and from what I can tell, not a single one ever asked whether what they were doing was "right."
We have among the strictest laws against bribery of public officials, and yet during the past session, Congress enacted the greatest number of payoffs ever in U.S. history with public funds -- through the entirely legal process of "earmarking" -- often in response to perfectly legal, if significant, campaign contributions.
Recently, in a number of locations across the industrialized world, various cities have taken the step of removing speed limits, traffic lights, stop signs, and in some cases even sidewalks from streets. At first thought, this seems like a recipe for disaster... except average automobile speeds have dropped, as have fatalities and accidents. Apparently, when people have to use their judgment, rather than rely on rules blindly, they behave better.Part of that also might be that the "rebels" have nothing against which to rebel.
I bring this up because it's an illustration, at least to me, of how the proliferation of laws and rules causes people to focus on legality rather than upon ethicality, and what can happen when people have to rely on their individual judgment. What if the law just declared that misrepresentation of facts to obtain funds constituted fraud, and the greater the misrepresentation and the greater the funds obtained, and the harm created, the greater the crime... and left the sentencing in cases where guilt was proven to the judge and jury?
Ah... but that wouldn't work. We really can't trust human judgment, and we need all those hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations and laws... don't we?
For that matter, what's the difference between a "reasonable" editorial and an editorial rant? Or a good book and a great one?
For a traffic cop, is it reasonable to ticket a driver going three miles an hour over the speed limit... or is the dividing line five or seven... or where the possible violation takes place? How many school assessment tests for pupils are too many? Or too few? Is it reasonable to apply the same standards for achievement to immigrant children as to upper middle class students?
For a publisher, how many copies of a first novel must be sold in order to consider buying an author's second book? If the book is right on the edge of profitability, what tips the decision one way or the other?
All these questions aren't meant to be examples of the unsolvable, but examples of the daily judgments people in all areas of life must make, one way or another... and what I've written touches the barest minimum of the complexity of human society and life. I'm doing this because, again, I tend to get tired of the proliferation of rules and laws that try to answer every single injustice or odd situation.
In the United States, in particular, we seem to have this idea that when there's a wrong, another rule is just the thing to right it. Except... it doesn't seem to work that way. The USA probably has more rules dealing with regulation of the financial sector than any nation on the face of the earth... and we've just created the biggest misuse of funds in human history by most likely the most corrupt [I didn't say illegal, just corrupt, although some did break various laws] group of executives ever, at least in dollar terms, all of them trying to find "legal" ways to accomplish the unethical, and from what I can tell, not a single one ever asked whether what they were doing was "right."
We have among the strictest laws against bribery of public officials, and yet during the past session, Congress enacted the greatest number of payoffs ever in U.S. history with public funds -- through the entirely legal process of "earmarking" -- often in response to perfectly legal, if significant, campaign contributions.
Recently, in a number of locations across the industrialized world, various cities have taken the step of removing speed limits, traffic lights, stop signs, and in some cases even sidewalks from streets. At first thought, this seems like a recipe for disaster... except average automobile speeds have dropped, as have fatalities and accidents. Apparently, when people have to use their judgment, rather than rely on rules blindly, they behave better.Part of that also might be that the "rebels" have nothing against which to rebel.
I bring this up because it's an illustration, at least to me, of how the proliferation of laws and rules causes people to focus on legality rather than upon ethicality, and what can happen when people have to rely on their individual judgment. What if the law just declared that misrepresentation of facts to obtain funds constituted fraud, and the greater the misrepresentation and the greater the funds obtained, and the harm created, the greater the crime... and left the sentencing in cases where guilt was proven to the judge and jury?
Ah... but that wouldn't work. We really can't trust human judgment, and we need all those hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations and laws... don't we?
—L.E. Modesitt,
Jr.: 1/23/2009 10:51:00 AM
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If we have no laws by which to judge ourselves, what would we do? This is a scary thought for some. I also read that laws and rules are enacted so that those in power have something to hold over us so they can stay in power. Like the IRS. No matter how good you are at math, they can always find some law to hold over your head. Been there, done that. Now I just try to do the best I can, every day.
We convince people of the need for fixed, uniform rules by starting their indoctrination at age five. Almost all schools use a rule and punishment system known as "zero tolerance." That's why an eight-year-old girl was expelled from school for having a knife: her mother had put a plastic knife in her lunchbox so she could cut her apple. The school had a zero tolerance policy for weapons, and the plastic knife was, by the rules, a weapon.
When my daughters first brought home a "zero tolerance" school rule book, I immediately relabeled it "zero judgment." This is what they're teaching children: rigid rules are best, do not make judgments, do not consider the circumstances, do not mitigate, exceptions cannot be tolerated. I was reminded of Kafka's The Trial. We have achieved the same mindless bureaucratic conformity to rules that existed in Russia in the 1920s. Hurrah for us!
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When my daughters first brought home a "zero tolerance" school rule book, I immediately relabeled it "zero judgment." This is what they're teaching children: rigid rules are best, do not make judgments, do not consider the circumstances, do not mitigate, exceptions cannot be tolerated. I was reminded of Kafka's The Trial. We have achieved the same mindless bureaucratic conformity to rules that existed in Russia in the 1920s. Hurrah for us!
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