Rule Theory

I'm a big Aldous Huxley fan. This started about the time I read Brave New World (Junior Year of high school) and has continued onward from then. This is primarily because one of the central philosophical principles of my later life occurred to me while reading BNW.

This principle is as follows: It is through the rules a person adheres to that that person makes progress in life.

It might seem strange to you for someone who's a self-described anarchist to espouse the primacy of "rules." I'd point out that this springs from a misunderstanding of "Anarchism," but I'll play along, and explain that the problem might lie in your understanding of rules.

Rules are not simply boundaries and limitations; they are guides for systems to form. This is the principle of Emergence. Look at Chess--it is only through the presence of the dozen or so rules that govern the game that the millions of different arrangements for the pieces are possible.

The rules you choose to live by are what enable you to accomplish anything. If you accept traffic laws, probability dictates that you are much more likely to be able to make it from point A to point B. If you don't accept them, then chances are your movement will be impeded, either by solid objects in your path or the enforcers of those same laws.

By the same token, however, a rule has no existence if it is not accepted by anyone. This is related to an idea originating from Walter J. Ong, the most intellectually famous graduate of my college--words have no existence outside of the minds of people, the markings on the screen before you are not words, but the seeds of words that only blossom into existence when you take the time to read them.

The same goes for rules; if a rule is not enforced by one person upon another (even if the enforcer and the enforcee are the same person) then it has no existence--it is not ontologically valid. Only scientific laws can have any validity outside of their meaning for human beings, and that presupposes that they're right.

So, if we accept that rules are only meaningful insofar as they're enforced, what does that mean?

I'm not entirely certain, personally. I'm beginning to suspect that it means that ethical choices might also be aesthetic choices. But this leads me to ground that someone I respect has already covered, so I will let his words speak instead:

The nameless of which we are all part does dream form and the highest attribute
any form may possess is beauty, the nameless then is an artist. Therefore, the problem is not one of good or evil, but one of aesthetics. You may ask then “How am I to know that which is beautiful and that which is ugly, and be moved to act thereby?”

--Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

Of course, I don't mean "aesthetics" or "beauty" in a shallow sense--I am, first and foremost, insterested in the aesthetics of a good story. The rules you choose to live by are what defines who you are--it needn't be a conscious choice, but the things you will do and the things you will not do are (equally) your own, personal rules. They are the boundaries of the story you wish to tell and be the central character of.

Beyond that, it means that all "Laws" are subjective. They're rules we all agreed on, and continue to agree upon. If a law were to suddenly not be enforced, then it would cease to be meaningful--it is only through the consent of the governed and the governing that they exist. But because we enforce these rules on ourselves by choosing not to do certain things, that makes "the governed" the more important of the two parties involved in the process.

This is the root of my anarchism--people will break laws they do not agree with, and they will live by rules that are not enforced by an outside force. Therefore, theoretically speaking, laws are less important than the rules that people accept without coercion. If we could teach people to internalize the rules necessary for society to emerge from a mass of people, why have laws?

Of course, I admit that this is theory, and as unlikely as a mole of one element spontaneously turning into a mole of another. But the possibility is there.