change your reality

Life has no brakes

“Moral education” sounds like something contemporary teenagers would skip to go skateboarding. Why? Don’t they care about what is good for them? Of course they do. That is why they skipped class to go skateboarding! Contemporary teenagers are not corrupt! Corruption takes time - only old people are corrupted.

The teenager who is rebellious and does something different from what he is told is actually exercising his own judgment instead of obeying ours. That his judgment may be mistaken is the minor evil that should be allowed to avoid a bigger one: his enslavement to judgments other than his own.[1]

How can you encourage teenagers to trust their own judgment when we prescribe where and when it shall be used? How can teenagers trust something that they seldom use? How could they ever get better at it if they don’t use it? Would you drive a vehicle you don’t really know how to drive, especially if it has no brakes? Life has no brakes. When we allow people to drive on the highway of life, we are surprised by the number of crashes and casualties. Not to mention the insufferable traffic.

Then we think that the solution is to add rules and regulations. We think this way at least well avoid the casualties. But the crashes happened not because of the lack of rules but because people were never given the chance to exercise their judgment, thus improving it. Adding rules makes people worse. Road signs rob us of our judgment*. They are the sign that people are too stupid to trust. It is the same with laws. We do not trust each other. But the solution is not obedience to the law.

Laws were made for specific people, under specific circumstances. They become obsolete if the people and the circumstances change. I am at a crossroad around 4 a.m. Most people are asleep in their homes, their cars in their garages. I am not drunk or too tired. I am a competent driver. There is ample visibility towards all directions. It is a quiet night. I do not see or hear a car for miles. Yet the light is red. According to the traffic light, I shouldn’t drive forward. But the light does not know it is 4 a.m.; it does not know that most drivers are sleeping, their cars in their garages; it does not know I am not drunk or too tired. It cannot see or hear there isn’t a damn car coming for miles; it doesn’t know all these things. For if it did, it would have been green. And because it doesn’t know these things and I do, I drive on as if it was green.

Policemen or judges who charge you for crossing a red light under such circumstances have dehumanized themselves into ignorant traffic lights. They make those who embody the spirit of the law into criminals, while sometimes giving the green light to the bodies of criminals who only obey its letter.

Notes:

[1] Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims.

* For those of you who are pedantic, I obviously don’t mean all signs, rules and regulations rob us of our judgment, nor I am implying that all of them are useless.