This is a question that has plagued me for a long time. Why do we care about what other people in our country do that doesn’t effect us in any way? Why do we feel we have to pass laws based on our personal, religious, spiritual, or other beliefs that will effect millions of people we’ve never met? While I’m talking about law being passed regarding abortion, gay marriage, and other “hot button” topics, I’m also talking about how, in some states, you can’t get a beer on Sunday. How, when some people, are offended by art or smoking or whatever it is that day, people want to make a new law.
I know people have very strong opinions on many issues, as do I. But, most of these issues do not effect me in any way.
Why do we care what other people do?
NOTE: Please do not respond with why abortion is wrong.... I just want to keep it to the reasoning behind the issues:)
I am sorry, but I just can’t hold my tongue on important matters. I am offended when I see “effect” being frivolously used where “affect” should rightly be the only choice; as God and Webster intended!
This is a question that has plagued me for a long time. Why do we care about what other people in our country do that doesn’t effect us in any way? Why do we feel we have to pass laws based on our personal, religious, spiritual, or other beliefs that will effect millions of people we’ve never met? While I’m talking about law being passed regarding abortion, gay marriage, and other “hot button” topics, I’m also talking about how, in some states, you can’t get a beer on Sunday. How, when some people, are offended by art or smoking or whatever it is that day, people want to make a new law.
The majority of the issues that you mention i agree is legal meddling - but we also have to have a sense of what is fair to the least of us. Someone murders a homeless man in Arizona or abuses one of their own children or a company makes a dangerous product that i personally don’t purchase and none of these affect me in that sense. I still think it’s a matter of degrees. We as a society have to agree what is right and wrong and unfortunately personal rights get trampled on in the process. I know of no other way than to allow laws that sometimes trample rights - it becomes our job to put the people in office who will create meaningful laws and repeal personal-rights laws.
There does seem to be an over-abundance of laws that are life-choice rather than creating a danger to society at large. Legislating morality is a constant balancing act.
My apologies. Hey, should we make a law against improper grammar? :)
No, we shouldn’t have laws against bad grammar, but we should have penalties though, spanking for women and flogging for men.
Now all seriousness aside.
Stop being holy, forget being prudent,
it’ll be a hundred times better for everyone.
Stop being altruistic, forget being righteous,
people will remember what family feeling is.
Stop planning. forget making profit,
there won’t be any thieves and robbers.
But even these three rules
needn’t be followed: what works reliably
is to know the raw silk,
hold the uncut wood.
Need little,
want less.
Forget the rules.
Be untroubled.
The Tao Te Ching #19
Many other verses of the Tao touch on the subject of what people should know and how they should know it. We cause ourselves a lot of problems by meddle with things, fussing with things. The Tao teaches us that that is no way to act. Doing by not doing, wu wei, is the best way. This may sound a little odd but there is a strange beauty to it.
Lao Tzu goes on to say in Chapter 65,
....People get hard to manage
when they know to much....
Know to much what, I ask?
In these days so many people think they have all the answers. We have been raised to feel empowered by our knowledge with very little, if any, true wisdom behind it to guide that knowledge.
Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it is the sickening grammar that they use. --Mark Twain
Zen: Good points. I, of course, am not advocating letting people do whatever they want, ie murder, molestation etc. These laws protect society and individuals. There is definitely, as you put it, an over abundance of laws that have taken away choice. Asheville, for example, has decided to keep the ban smoking in restaurants law out and leave it up to the owner. I applaud this. Not really because of smoking, but because people should have a choice and if you don’t want to be around smoke there are many other choices. People seem to think they have a right to dictate what people do on private property.
Ralph: It’s not like I used the word “irregardless"… please forgive me:)
Carrie, that was just a general observation. ;-) As an author, publisher, and editor of many years experience, I note grammar and spelling closer than most folks.
The editor side of me tends closely follow the Holy Writ in THE CHICAGO BOOK OF STYLE but the creative author side drifts more to what President Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson famously said:
“It is a damn poor mind indeed which can’t think of at least two ways to spell any word.”
My apologies. Hey, should we make a law against improper grammar? :)
No, we shouldn’t have laws against bad grammar, but we should have penalties though, spanking for women and flogging for men.
Now all seriousness aside.
Stop being holy, forget being prudent,
it’ll be a hundred times better for everyone.
Stop being altruistic, forget being righteous,
people will remember what family feeling is.
Stop planning. forget making profit,
there won’t be any thieves and robbers.
But even these three rules
needn’t be followed: what works reliably
is to know the raw silk,
hold the uncut wood.
Need little,
want less.
Forget the rules.
Be untroubled.
The Tao Te Ching #19
Many other verses of the Tao touch on the subject of what people should know and how they should know it. We cause ourselves a lot of problems by meddle with things, fussing with things. The Tao teaches us that that is no way to act. Doing by not doing, wu wei, is the best way. This may sound a little odd but there is a strange beauty to it.
Lao Tzu goes on to say in Chapter 65,
....People get hard to manage
when they know to much....
Know to much what, I ask?
In these days so many people think they have all the answers. We have been raised to feel empowered by our knowledge with very little, if any, true wisdom behind it to guide that knowledge.
It doesn’t sound all that odd, Seeker. I’ve never heard someone say, “Tao says we should ban (insert thing)”
People seem to want to meddle with the lives of many, many people they’ve never met. It’s confusing to me.
This is a question that has plagued me for a long time. Why do we care about what other people in our country do that doesn’t effect us in any way? Why do we feel we have to pass laws based on our personal, religious, spiritual, or other beliefs that will effect millions of people we’ve never met? While I’m talking about law being passed regarding abortion, gay marriage, and other “hot button” topics, I’m also talking about how, in some states, you can’t get a beer on Sunday. How, when some people, are offended by art or smoking or whatever it is that day, people want to make a new law.
Why do we care what other people do?
NOTE: Please do not respond with why abortion is wrong.... I just want to keep it to the reasoning behind the issues:)
I think it is a uniquely American thing to want to dictate how others can behave. I am generally amazed when I visit other countries like India, Canada, or even Mexico, at how out of other people’s business the locals are in these places. Canada especially. There seems to be more of a focus on the spirit of the law, and not the letter.
I suspect we have been programed to keep an eye on each other Foucoult ("Foo-Co") wrote about it a few decades back. He called it the “Panopticon”, based on some circular French Prison where pretty much every prisoner could see what every other prisoner was doing, with a gaurd tower in the middle with a guard only periodically appearing to keep the prisoners guessing. Our current culture is quite similar, especially with security cameras everywhere. We get used to being watched, and therefore become the watchers, ourselves.
