Has Lawbreaking Become A Social Norm?

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
- Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

Most of us who are Baby Boomers or older grew up in a time when laws were to be obeyed. We knew what the laws were and it was our social (and family) responsibility to uphold them.

We didn't know much about those who freely and frequently broke laws because we didn't come in contact with them much. Recent studies in the US have shown that 90 percent of people today break laws frequently and without twinges of conscience. Most violations are minor, but they make laws in general seem like a social evil.

What changed? Why do we have so little respect for laws today compared to a couple of generations ago?

There are no simple answers to these questions, but I will try to simplify the complex answers and give you the opportunmity to think them through yourself.

Prior to the 1960s children were drilled formally and taught incidentally the range and scope of laws they were expected to obey, by parents, teachers and leaders of their respective church groups. In the interim, regular attendance at religious services dropped off dramatically, school curricula have been loaded to overflowing with "basic learning" information and skills and two parents working in most families have left little time for parental role modelling and direct teaching of the laws of their community and their nation.

As more children grew to be young adults who lacked knowledge about laws that affected them, more also became adults who were not clear about the moral obligations each person has to the social structure of their family and their community. In other words, they broke laws because they weren't certain the laws were all that important anyway or because they didn't know what the laws were.

Governments, reacting with shock to the increase in law breaking, passed more laws and bylaws. These became filled with details of specific examples of lawbreaking so that judges, magistrates and justices of the peace were left with fewer doubts as to what behaviours were illegal and what penalties should apply to each.

The plethora of laws to which each citizen must subscribe today is so complex that almost nobody knows what they all are. In their rush to create more laws and put more power into the hands of more police officers to catch more lawbreakers, the law makers neglected to provide clear and pervasive methods by which each child or adolescent would be able to learn the many laws he should abide by.

A teenager today may be able to do physics his parents don't understand, speak languages his parents have seldom heard and know a huge amount of information his parents were never exposed to, but he may not know the laws of his community and his country because most of them never made it onto the curriculum of his school.

Moreover, he may read the pages of any newspaper to find many examples of where people have broken laws. He will know many schoolmates and acquaintances in his community who break laws freely without being caught. Even television programs deal mostly with the most violent laws, seldom with those that affect most people on a daily basis.

A young person may even see a police officer speeding down a city street or highway on their way to a coffee break or to signout for their shift. He knows that the same police officer may catch and charge him the following day for speeding on the same street.

There are many laws that are never enforced by the police because they will not be supported in court or because the courts have many more important cases to attend to than minor cases that will "waste" precious time.

Like anything else in life, if we want people to obey laws, we need to teach those laws to children before they get old enough to find out that breaking them might just work. They need to be taught the gritty details about what is wrong, about the consequences that result when people break laws. They need to know the harm that lawbreaking does and that the harm is wrong.

Not teaching about drug laws because we fear that kids will find out about drugs and become addicts, for example, has no evidence to support it. Kids who know the truth about drugs before they are exposed to drugs on the street (often by the age of six years) tend to avoid the drugs.

By the same token, kids who know the details about sex and the responsibilities and consequences of pregnancies have a much lower incidence of teenage pregnancies and often do not have close relationships with members of the opposite sex until later than their more ignorant peers. Where do laws and sex come together? Ask a 16 year old father or mother who has life-altering responsibilities for a child they didn't want but will have to look after and be fully responsible for during the next 20+ years.

Making laws is one thing. Teaching them to everyone who must obey them is quite another.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the complexities of life clear and concise.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Nietzsche Said Groups Are Insane

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

Insanity in individuals doesn't seem so rare now when television programs showing videos of stupid stunts and events gone awry are common. But it's still not as common as insanity for groups of people.

How often have you wondered "What were they thinking?" when one of the governments to which you pay taxes passed a law that didn't make any sense, was unenforceable, would punish those it was trying to save more than those who were trying to hurt them, would cost fortunes to implement with little value foreseen for the money?

Or when corruption charges were laid against politicians who were, in effect, collaborating with criminals who would have destroyed the kind of lives the politicians were elected to defend and advance.

Or when a nation believes it can prevent war by starting one.

Or when a national leader creates fear within his own people by falsely accusing "others" of trying to make them afraid by threatening them. Hitler and the Nazis were an excellent example of that.

Or when a club, social group or service organization elects someone they know is the wrong person to lead the group, simply because no one else has volunteered to run for the office.

In the security business, be it national security, municipal security or security of digital records on computer, leaders sometimes hire criminals to advise them about how to guard against other criminals. As nutty as this seems, it works. Only a crook thinks like a crook. It also gives many criminals an opportunity to use the skills and knowledge they have learned to make life better for others, rather than worse. That's not crazy, but it seems that way to an unknowing layperson.

Groups of various kinds do apparently insane things and make crazy decisions not because they are all loonies, but because they think like individuals. Individuals seldom think in group terms.

Group decision making and action requires people who know not just the procedures for helping the group to survive and thrive, but the consequences of decisions that are to be considered.

Individual group members may be inclined to see only the consequences of how a group decision might affect them personally.

No doubt many stirling initiatives died in committee. But at least many totally foolish ones did as well. Committees have a way of sorting through the trash, even if they throw out some good stuff in the process.

Every group is conprised of individuals. Fortunately, some groups have individuals who think of the welfare and the future of the group while they are fulfilling their roles as group members.

The alternative for many groups is dictatorship. Benevolent dictatorship is the best possible form of government or of leadership. But benevolent dictators are rarer than sane governments. I would like to offer a good example of a benevolent dictator here, but most of the good ones went sour eventually--absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to see through the smog of reality.
Learn more at http://billallin.com