Rules are rules.
Follow the rules.
Majority rules.
Rules of engagement.
We have all heard these phrases at one point or another in our lives — likely from some authority figure in an attempt to convince us that rules are rules for a reason.
Rules form the basis of societies. In a society, rules have all kinds of names: mores, regulations, laws, norms, conventions, standards, principles — but any way you slice ‘em, they’re rules.
They are created by ruling parties for all kinds of reasons — or at least, rules that make sense are based on reasonable grounds.
For example, speed limits are rules that are based on the principle that going too fast in a vehicle for a particular stretch of road can jeopardize a person’s control of said vehicle. Throw in a busy highway, and all of a sudden speeding jeopardizes far more than simply control.
Yet people break rules all the time. Sometimes, when they break rules that don’t seem to make a lot of sense, that can affect real change.
Without Rosa Parks challenging the rule that only white people could sit at the front of the bus in Alabama, who knows how much longer it would’ve taken to change that stupid rule.
Change was the hope of campers who set up tents in Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park in July. The urban tent city was a protest over that city’s lack of affordable housing.
It just came down a few weeks ago after the city enforced a judge’s ruling that the tent city was interfering with people’s enjoyment of the public park, and the campers were evicted.
Whether tangible change — namely, more and cleaner social housing — comes as a result of the protest remains to be seen.
Without some rules, it’d be chaos out there. And I’m not just talking major rules like laws, but even simple social constructions that help keep the peace and order during our day-to-day lives.
For example, imagine waiting in line at the grocery store only to be cut repeatedly.
Or trying to have a conversation with someone only to be interrupted again and again. Pandemonium!
OK, maybe that wouldn’t set the stage for total anarchy, but it would get trying pretty quickly.
In Kamloops, a Grade 3 student is keeping up a fight to wear head scarves despite her school’s staunch rule that disallows head scarves as they go against the dress code.
Her head scarves were simply to keep her hair out of her eyes, an inconvenience anyone with long enough hair can probably relate to. “Rules are rules” is generally not a great justification for following or enforcing particular rules.
That’s kind of like shrugging your shoulders, raising your palms up and saying, “Just doing what I’m told.”
Sure, we all have rules to follow, but for the most part, rules exist simply to get us to behave well within the confines clearly set out by those rules. While some rules serve us — think waiting patiently in line at the store — other rules seem almost self-serving.
Which came first, the rule or the justification for it?
While some rules seem made for a reason, others seem made to be broken.
And without the occasional challenge, rules might never change
