Why do we have so many rules in society?

You can't only pin it on V_I generation for being pathetic. I come across pretty pathetic wusses that are our age too.


Visceral...

The problem now a days is that parents buy their kids all the newest gadgets on the market if the kid deserves it or not. They go to the store with these brats and buy them expensive clothes while the kids mouth off while they are buying them for them. I have seen this many times and think to myself how STUPID the parents are to put up with such an attitude and open up their wallets and spend their hard earned money on these SPOILED BRATS!

My 13 yr old does chores like cutting the grass, miscellaneous things to help out when needed for an afternoon and I give him money. He puts away his laundry and has to keep his room relatively clean. I buy my kids things but not everything they desire. Some things I tell them to save up the extra money I give them and they can buy it themselves.

This way they realize it takes time to get together $100.00 and a bit of work behind it.

My son tells me that none of his friends have to do chores and their parents just buy them whatever. I said Great, I don't really care. This is how it works in this house. He doesn't hate me for it either, and frankly I think he is a better kid because he is learning some responsibility.

Parent's need to put down rules and they should make their kids have some responsibilities in the household. It is a family after all, why the hell should the parent's have to do everything. My son's are healthy, strong kids so why shouldn't they be out shoveling snow. Up at the cottage he chops wood and helps builds docks and everything.

Parent's are raising wusses these days, it's not all the kids fault.

 

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I agree, I dread to think who I would have grown up to be if I'd been raised by some of today's parents. I had a boyfriend 2 years ago who only ever had to do chores as a dire punishment, and even then he would usually moan that it was too hard and go and lie around.

I thought 'What the fuck? You are a 6ft 2in male and you can't cut wood? I do that all the time and I'm half your size...'

 

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Exactly what I mean.........

Because he probably wasn't expected to do anything growing up. Then parents send these kids off and they are lost. They don't know how to cook, turn on a washing machine and are afraid to get their hands dirty. That is not how I was raised. I had to do chores and I was cooking up dinner at 13 because my mom had to head out to work at 3pm and sometimes didn't have time.

I moved out when I was 17 and I wasn't lost at all. I could do everything for myself and I have never been a wuss or afraid of hard work. If I didn't know how to do something, I figured it out with persistence.

I want my boys to leave home and be self sufficient and not wusses when it comes to doing work. Considering the road they are on now, I have no worries that they will be fine.

 

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what does size have to do with cutting wood? Its a learned skill and some people just don't know how. :shrug:

 

Wouldn't it help if you have some weight to put behind it ?

 

Not really. You just yank back and forth with a saw. If I can do it a large and powerfully built male can...

 

We are sending signals when we wear or do not wear anything on our bodies. Anything we do, anywhere we stand, anywhere we live, whatever we do or don't do; other people receive signals and they try to locate themselves and other people around them. The "meanings" of these signals differ, yet some of the signal gives universal meaning: If you are are in a uniform and carrying a gun, you are probably someone who can kill for authority. Everything in human universe work with symbols; not with chemistry or physics.

When we "generally aggree" that certain "unnecessary divisions and alienation with rules" are too obvious, then they will become history. We will change our perception, but it might take some time.

DNA already recognised that the visual impression of a creature has a grave importance in natural system. If we, humans are thinking that we are able to produce something bit more original than the jungle rules, so we need an alternative system of signalling and recognizing each other. In theory, if I could read your whole brain, I would have a decent idea about your intentions towards me or against other aspects of existence. I would ignore what you wear or what you say.

I say brain simulations in virtual software environment would solve this puzzle.

 

Society is oppressive to create solidarity and conformity which it believes will lead to a more successful society.

It's a load of crap, really.

 

In response to OP:
Lets look at the story so far.. for 200,000 years, since humans have been around, they've lived in small societies or tribes. Here, there were of course rules and norms, but not in a single one was there an actual legal code, for which there were definitive punishments or penalties. The rules were built into the way of life; they were as intuitive as any other part of life.

Enter totalitarian agriculture... around 10,000 years ago, in the fertile crescent, humans decide to take up totalitarian agriculture. From there, it spreads like plague, and within millennia, almost the whole planet believes that growing food on a surplus scale, and keeping it under lock and key are the only way to live. However, this system also brought about a lot of other things. It brought money, a cradle-to-the-grave economy, hierarchical societies in which a small few at the top of the rung who held the key to the food supply, then army and conquest, then political states, then law.. wait. Law was borne out of our civilization; it was necessary, as this way of living was inherently one that was unpleasant for most who took part in it (as we can see all too well even today), and cannot (I won't go into the reasons for this) be made pleasant for all. So, in order to keep the masses under control, strict legal systems, with penalties and prisons and fines and sentences and all were made. Law as we know it is actually a very recent installment to our civilization; it's only been around for about 5000 years, when the life we'd chosen for ourselves had already begun its inevitable nosedive to destruction. Massive social unrest, which was literally unheard of in precivilizational societies was extant, and so the powerholders, wanting to remain powerholders, took to such measures.

Think about it. Even today, if you analyze it, all law does boil down to control. Control over the residue of a flawed system, the 'asocial' outcasts of our society, the inevitable spawn of a kamikaze civilization.


Now, from prior experiences here, I'm sure that I'm going to receive some fairly impassioned response to this. I'm not trying to run from it or prevent it; I will put in my best efforts to respond back to the replies this may yield. Yet, if anyone is concerned or.. intrigued enough by all this twaddle of mine, they'd do well to read Daniel Quinn's books, esp. Ishmael.

 

@Nyr: how does that explain why we need useless rules?

There are good reasons for certain rules. 'Don't rape people' is obviously a sound one, as is 'Don't take what isn't yours.'

But 'don't wear dark clothing' or 'don't wear a certain object in your hair'? How do those promote social harmony or prevent harm to anyone?

 

Fraggle Rocker pretty much answered this. Anyway, your question itself answers itself.. why would anyone need useless rules? That's my whole point. They aren't needed to the people in general; they're needed to the continued establishment of things as they are.

which would be loads better for the Earth in any case. Still, I don't believe in completely going back to paleolithic or mesolithic lifestyles. Humans are by nature technological species. There will be technological advances, allowing larger populations, and rendering your worries about music generation hopefully needless. The only bug in the whole system, IMO, is totalitarian agriculture, and the accompanying meme that states that it is the only way to live. Which it actually isn't. I won't expand on this, but this is what all green anarchist, anarcho-primitivist and social ecology ideologies propose. An accurate statement would be it is the only way the majority of the human race currently lives.

It is true that without agriculture humans couldn't ever have built permanent settlements, but as I repeat, I'm against totalitarian agriculture - the method of agriculture involving full-time domestication of crops and livestock. However, even before this was adopted, part-time agriculture was practiced, and humans hence did live in permanent settlements.

Some links you might want to check out:
http://www.wowessays.com/dbase/af4/seg61.shtml
http://www.davidsheen.com/b/b2.htm
http://www.awok.org/great-forgetting/

 

Ah, but I'm not talking about a time-scale as short as that.

Before the agricultural revolution, people did (and today's few remaining hunter-gatherers still do) have much much more leisure time than anyone, whether they be living 500 years ago or today, in our civilization of totalitarian agriculture. Any anthropologist would agree.

Moreover, by full-time, rather than the hours occupied per day, I also meant the allocation of energy and degree of importance going into one activity. By saying that today's agriculture is full-time totalitarian agriculture, I mean that people depend solely on mass-produced food, or even if not mass-produced, under-lock-and-key food supplies, which take a hell lot time, effort and resources to maintain.

In Daniel Quinn's words,

Its full-time because there seems to be in the minds of people no alternative to it, its all there is.

If I'm not clear enough, those links I'd posted might prove to be more cogent. They're quite enlightening anyway.

 

Well ,Rules in society should thoguht of as different from rules of a science or skilled trade as rules of a science are designed for saftey and direction.

Rules of society are made because human society has controll freaks, people that only feel better or good about themselves when they make other people submissive to their preception of life. Few leaders can controll their own lives day to day but are obsessed with controlling other people. I think its root is bordom and ignorance, where in they lack the ablity to make a real life such as on a farm because they where never taught how to really gain a living, so their oreintation is on creating a problem so that they can get help with the others and by manipulation recieve more help than the others. Some just taught that maniuplation is the means to gain a profit.

Rules of society are made by goverment, and when their are to many it is because the goverment doe not know what it is actually doing. its called a headless goverment.

DwayneD.L.Rabon

 

^I agree.

People should spend less time spitting vitriol about other people's aesthetic style and more time actually doing something worthwhile. If they're that angry, let them use it to make a difference in the world, instead of having a tantrum because that goth girl over there has dark serrated lines beneath her eyes instead of "normal" makeup or that dude looks a little androgynous.

 

Does anyone else think we should do away with the concept of "normal", or redefine it?

If I had to define "normal", I would go for:

- reasonably happy with life and able to deal with everyday problems

- treats others well

- is productive in society, or if a child/teen, shows potential and willingness to become so.

I would *not* base it on whether someone wore blue cotton or dark leather, or whether their favourite activity was meeting up at a mall or sitting in a dark room writing morbid poetry.

 

Oh by the way Nietzsche...you might like to go around my friends who happen to be emos, and tell them they are pathetic little shits who badly need a beating.

One is a very decent and hardworking 18 year old male, one is a happy outgoing girl, one is a quieter but sociable and creative girl, one is very happy and hyper and effusive...I can think of several more but I won't use unnecessary blocks of text describing them.

None of them are whiners who act as if entitled to a sheltered life and no effort.