Topic: Why do people believe so firmly in 'the law' (Read 2354 times)

Well, what would you do when confronted with the policeman? Let's say you tried to make all the excuses you could think of and there is no way out except the slim chance of run for it (gambling that you are better at running than them) or take the punishment, which would be less severe than if you ran for it.

It's caused by overactive Si, which is worsened by Te; see here and here for the most obvious examples.  These are your rule-followers; bible-thumpers and government lapdogs, and their main job, when it comes to social concerns, is to ensure everybody else is following the rules as well.  Nothing you'll ever say will convince them to believe otherwise; they believe what they believe and you should, too.

In comparison, Ni-Fe users are rule-makers; see here and here.  These are, in recent times, very frequently the libertarians and anarchists, who are against the status-quo since it gets in the way of their own rules.  These two groups clash with each other because the former wants the latter to follow the accepted rules, and the latter wants the former to accept the new rules.  Not to mention, they make sense within their groups, but not at all between.

I've never understood this either. Same goes with the bible.

it's kind of like how crazy right wing nutjobs like to quote the constitution as if it wasn't flawed.

What gives a person the right to deny people from living on that land? Contributing to society != making money in the current Corporatocracy . A person would more than likely not camp on the lawn of a middle class person, but rather on empty large plots of land. The only reason the owner of the land can take the right to use it from other people is because they are recognized by the government to be the "owner" of the land. They acquired the land not through use of it, but with paper (fiat).

At what point does a representative become more ruler than representative?  The way that some members of congress as well as the House have succeeded in manipulating the redistricting of many congressional voting districts means that future elections are hedged in their favor.  This is in addition to the large salaries commanded by a mandate to complete real work at a rate inversely proportional to the amount of the salary earned. Special interests are the only groups represented here.  When can this system change?

Great.  We are in agreement then.

Provided what you rely on is based on a separation of powers, that is fine.  But if you have some idea about 1 person with a gun making his own rules, deciding that someone else has broken his rules and killing that person, then you are just another advocate of tyranny.

By the same token, without law, what's to keep me from aggressively protecting my property to the point of causing mortal injury to the would-be camper?  If there wasn't any law concerning this scenario, how many faced with this situation would even bother with issuing a warning if they happened to be keeping a farm full of hogs that could deal with any "evidence".

I think one of the most basic functions of law (something that is abused sometimes in current day China and is holding them back) is to protect people's property.  Maybe this seems cynical but without law, someone could just come live on your front lawn if they wanted.  If that was allowed, why would you want to even bother working to try to contribute to society and make money, if it was worthless and you couldn't buy property without someone taking it?

I do see your point.  However, the riots on 8/6/11 were not caused by police stating that property crime would not be punished.  The precursor to those riots occurred after an unarmed man was shot and killed by London police.  After that, there was a fabricated story about police restraining a teenage girl in connection with protests regarding the shooting that ultimately incited the riots and the property crimes which your picture documented.

Furthermore, only strategic, controlled, and acute displays of violence and aggression are rewarded consistently in our society, imo.  Uncontrolled and unprovoked instances of violence and aggression attract only condemnation and unwanted attention to the party committing the acts.   This is a way to ensure a coalition is formed against you, concerned only with finding the most effective means of stopping you or containing you.  This is far from a reward.  In fact, it will only serve to divert one's attention and resources into dealing with a new threat.  No matter how powerful, a war on two or more fronts cannot be waged successfully by a party utilizing only brute-force without a guiding, strategic component.  As Denzel would say, "This shit is chess, it ain't checkers!"

I think it is the fear and respect that come with witnessing successful, well-developed, strategic "shock-and-awe" displays of power that generate a reward.  the obvious 2001 Afghanistan example being excepted, I'm talking about a display more along the lines of the dropping of the first fission bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 and to a lesser extent, Nagasaki.  Hiroshima was such an unfathomable display of power that, initially, the Japanese thought it must've been some sort of natural disaster.  This reaction took place depsite an overt warning from the U.S. that a device with unrivaled power would be used unless there was unconditional surrender.  However, if this stimulus is overused, the novelty is lost and will simply be recorded, not rewarded.  If Japan had been bombed 10 more times after offering unconditional surrender after bomb 2,  how might our allies have responded to us and what effects would it have now?  The use of 2 bombs has generated more than enough modern-day criticism, if not enough to negatively affect our image as a benevolent, executively-misguided superpower.

This is London on 6th August 2011 a few hours after the police let it be known that they would not be punishing property crime.  People being attacked in their homes and jumping from burning buildings for their lives.

Stop being naive about our shared humanity.  Evolution rewards violent aggressive species and since humans are the top predator species on the planet, violence and aggression are bred into us.  Our laws are a way to manage this violence and aggression.  

Maybe, people cite the law in order to feel a sense of justification when giving their ensuing condemning opinion on the situation being presented.  This way, they believe they are expressing their individual opinion on an issue, comfortable in their perceived solace that any damage caused by a contradicting follow-up response is hedged by a belief that their opinion is one supported by current legislation and is thus, "correct".  The person with the legally supported view ends up looking like a cheerleader for the government to most observers. Therefore, any point made by the cheerleader should be seen as lacking originality at best and flaming at worst in any forum.  

In this forum, however, there seems to be an abundance of government cheerleaders who relish the opportunity to drown out the sound of any dissenting view being expressed.  In addition to this unsettling occurrence, you have those people who are directly affiliated with the government observing, if not participating, in this pattern of continual denial and condemnation of viewpoints that may be against the law. I believe the latter party tends to observe rather than participate in most discussions. It seems to me that there are plenty of private citizens who are vocal in their absolute confidence in our legislative system.  These people express nearly identical opinions almost automatically, unaware that it is their fear of change that feeds these beliefs.

How so many of them end up in a forum that almost exclusively focuses on Bitcoin is beyond me.  IMO, they should display their cowardice elsewhere.

That's why we need law enforcement.


So do you support robbing some one and stealing his belongings? If you don't, then what should be done to someone who exhibits that sort of behavior.

Social conditioning in linear, hierarchical thinking drives this kind of mindless "law abiding" behaviour

This is true. How many people steal things from hotels or their workplace etc. I also always find the concept of looting interesting. I think otherwise law-abiding citizens can get caught up in the chaos/excitement and heat of the moment and steal something during riots or civil unrest etc .

Not true. 

http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/daniel.nettle/ernestjonesnettlebateson.pdf

Perfectly normal people steal if they think they can get away with it.  Its why looting and kidnapping flourishes when the system of law breaks down due to natural disaster or war.

It speaks the world to me that you equate "normal" with "fear".

If I am the victim of a crime, then I don't need the law to take care of the accused. But in case of crimes against vulnerable people such as orphans and widows, we need the law to punish the perpetrators.

At least the normal people will refrain from doing that, for the fear of law. And if someone breaks the law, in most cases the perpetrator will be punished.

But if there is no law, who will punish the criminals?

May be. But still it is far better than having someone breaking in to your home at will and butchering the residents.

It's just stratifications of slavery Hawker, there is literally nowhere on the planet where you are free to live a subsistence lifestyle. Eventually, someone with a weapon and a funny little hat that color matches his outfit turns up, and tells you to pay for some imagined obligation. No money? Only living by taking what you put back to your locale? Welcome to the world of mindless graft.

The real world is the exact opposite of your theory.  When we look at our societies, the rich free societies have laws by the ton.  

It truly bothers me how many people believe a lawless society is even possible, let alone bad; a lawless society means everyone is actually in agreement.  You create rules only when someone will break them; if people actually got along, they would have no need for them.  This is impossible.

To judge how well any given society is doing, all you need to do is see how many laws they have; the more, the worse off they are.

People forget about the difference between making rules to enforce morality, and making rules to discourage (subjectively) nuisance behaviour. Sometimes nuisances are even cast as immoral (drug use being the all time classic).

Truthfully, enforcing morality isn't necessary in a predominantly well informed and emotionally well adjusted society. History has many an example of this. But misbalances toward more short termist or psychopathic behaviour completely poison the balance of such societies, either from the inside out (depraved culture beds in over the long term) or from the outside in (war and/or genocide).

That is an excellent explanation. Normal people like me don't want to live in lawless societies. As far as I am concerned, I'll break the law only when it is absolutely necessary.

my two cents:

1: people have been "told it all their life". i'm going to use the word indoctrinated in this somewhere, so it might as well be here.
aside from pure indoctrination, there's the simple lack of a second opinion: people don't know that it's possible to NOT follow the law. i barely even see police officers, and i've been exposed to things like anarchism, so the law is a more abstract concept to me, but there are some people who think it's just how the world works: "you do thing A, police show up and take you to court B and jail cell C" and they're thinking "yep, always been that way, always will be that way". they make it an inherent quality of the world and proceed to
2: people have nothing else to cling to. if someone doesn't feel there's any rhyme or reason to the world, they can cop out and say "the government will tell me how to act! then everything will have meaning again!"

3: fear of the most terrifying bugaboo of the day: the dreaded [communist | anarchist | socialist | nazi | terrorist | criminal | insane person | anyone who is waving a gun in my general direction but doesn't have a little flag stitched to their military garb, because that makes it alright to have a gun to point at me]
the problem i have with these people is that if everyone is so terrifying, especially if people are "naturally [greedy | violent | ignorant | made it their life goal to kill me, specifically]", how could you possibly trust a person you haven't met from across a 3,000-4,000 Km country? having common heritage obviously doesn't work forever, since we're all the same species, so what could it be? is it that we all watch the same TV, because if so why aren't we moving TVs out ASAP? is it that the [desert | tundra | ] makes them naturally hate you, in which case why don't we just nuke them and get it over with? the only thing that isn't a quick answer like that is that everyone in the military is afraid of everyone else in the military, in which case they should just talk it out and create a dictatorship or something, or a mercenary who joined up with the largest and best paying group!
the most baffling thing is that apparently the army makes you swear an oath to the constitution, so either everyone in the military are blatantly lying about loyalty, or people can actually believe in ideologies, and if people can have opinions, the only enemy is irrationality because everyone else can either be proven wrong or shown that we don't know how do decide.

And what does violence settle exactly?

Saying you believe something is entirely different from it being true.  We know for a fact that all human societies are violent.  Even the most peaceful orders of nuns have procedures for dealing with violence. 

If your case, you've posted that you are happy to allow female genital mutilation as long as its not done to members of your family.  I assume you have the same views on things like animal cruelty.  You may believe that left to themselves people won't cut off a girl's clitoris or won't torture their dogs.  But its a matter of fact that people do these things.

Why do people believe so firmly in God or angels? Some people just go to bits without something guiding them. With law it's just a common set of rules for society to function. Obviously some laws are stupid and shouldn’t be in place, but all we can do as a people is protest and try to change them for the common good so justice can prevail.

Have such individuals ever sought out the real truth and not what gets spoon-fed to them on TV? Sheep, that is what they are. They do what they're told because they don't know otherwise. Weak.

Laws are coded into our DNA because we are social creatures, the same way whales are social creatures, the same way wolves are social creatures.

Even if we would be 1000% anarchists, we would still need to live next to each other one day. We first would call those codes "rules", but then eventually those rules would be codified into laws.

The only way for you to live with others without any laws is if, maybe, all of the others are perfect clones of yourself. But then, after a while I would guess something similar to a very bad case of cabin fever will take over you and all the other clones.

It's because they have no principles; when they cannot govern themselves, the only thing left to latch onto, to give them any semblance of a civil society, are the principles other men have cast upon them.  My theory is, when a person is provided with these things, they have a tendency to not develop their own principles, just as a person who is given everything he needs in life has such trouble taking care of himself when his providers leave him.  It's these same people who believe anarchy is chaos--because nobody is providing their principles for them, they immediately acknowledge, though they may not understand, that there would be no order; they acknowledge there's no order within themselves, the very people who would kill at the drop of a dime if their principle-providers asked them to.  The law, then, becomes an irreplaceable gem; without it, how could society survive?  As a convenient example:

No principles here.

I believe most people aren't like this; I believe the principles are there, and they're very basic; anyone with a reasonable amount of empathy can guess what they are, even if they don't fully realize them, and I do believe they make up the vast majority of people.  So where do these principles go?  My guess: when you violate these principles at a very early age, i.e. circumcision, spanking, abandonment (daycares, babysitters, et al), they tend to drop out of a person.  This person then grows older, goes from "troubled child" to "troubled teen" and then gets unleashed onto society after 14 years of being kept in a box.  The only thing the person has to go from at that point is this: follow the law out of fear (since they have no principles to fall back onto), or overcome this fear and become a law-breaker.  The ones who follow the law out of fear continue to operate without principle however, and support such exploits as taxation, war, and the use of systematic violence against peaceful people.  For this reason, the law appears as a real life force, just as a ghost would, or perhaps God.

As a species we are prone to disputes that can only be settled with violence.

Laws are a codification of violent enforcement.  The alternative is spontaneous violence.  Since most people know that is a bad thing, there is a strong preference for obeying laws.

I've been on the forum for some time, and it never ceases to amaze me how many people quote the law as if it were physics.
'You cannot do this' as if it were an impossibility, rather than a vague piece of legislation that has never been tested legally ,or no precedent set.

It seems half the people on here think of law as a wall made of molten rock that you can never break through, and it would be better to keep your distance for fear of being burnt.
The other half see the law as a vague line in the sand that you cross and then keep going until a friendly policeman asks you how much you've been drinking, at which point you just pay the fine.