Is it illegal to break the law? The foundation of rules

It seems that threads on my blog are of two types at the moment... those to do with the nature of illusion like the previous post and those to do with the Ouroboros like this.

If one breaks a law then what of it? In reality you can't break a law because laws describe reality. When a law is broken the law is patched up to reflect the break - that is science.

In the realm of authority laws must be enforced. This means that other laws must exist to guide the behaviour of the enforcers. And, what if they break the law? Then other laws must exist... and we have an ouroboros. The law cannot justify itself. So where does the authority of the law come from?

A lot of my thinking seems to be picking up from where I was 10 years ago. Maybe the spell "my muse" cast on me has broken and I am returning. Even the job I had was got to get money incase I decided to get married. I'm free ... maybe the spell really is finally broken.

10 years ago while watching the F1 grand prix the house opposite was burgled. The first anyone noticed was the police turning up. They asked us if we had seen anything and we hadn't. Despite it being a small street with houses packed on both sides, everything on view to everyone, no-one anywhere saw anything. It was then I realised that law and order has nothing to do with the police. They are simply a token force. There is simply not the manpower to watch every single person all day and night - and if there was who is watching them? And if they don't need watching then why do we need watching? The police rely upon a simple fact that most people are good. There was a sudden increase in police presence around where I live a few years ago. I asked them why. Apparently a known thief had been released from gaol and immediately the reports of thefts had increased. They were just waiting to catch him again. This seems to be the way, that a small minority live in a dishonest way and the majority are good.

Sadly however the whole of society is organised according to this small minority. Indeed the small dishonest minority are what justify the existence of the small ruling minority. It is intolerable really that we live in a world where every door has a lock (even in my lifetime in the UK it wasn't like this). If we leave something unlocked and it is stolen people have normalised this state of affairs to such an extent that they argue it is our fault that it was stolen! And if people find something unlocked it is ok to take it! Are we accepting theft as a normal part of the world these days? So if I don't arm myself and someone attacks me that is my fault? Maybe I should take preemptive action, be responsible, and kill everyone in the world to make sure that they can't do wrong to me! American logic is not so far away from this hyperbolic absurdity.

But, it is a mistake to blame a "rotten" part of the world for the evils we all endure. Certainly the temptations of greed, anger and ego exist within us all; it is only that some people are weaker in the defence of themselves from these temptations. And, certainly once weakness has been shown it is even doubly hard to recover ones original strength. A bitter irony that the people who need the strength and the support are least likely to get it. The winners get more accolade and strength, and the losers have more taken from them.

So what we have played out on the "official" stage today is a play where a small and clearly identified righteous group (the good guys) take on an equally small but dishonest group (the bad guys). The rest of us are the "innocent" audience of this show, at best giving evidence to the police, or being caught up in a shoot out. If anyone ever wondered why the good guys always win its actually because of simple logic. The problem with bad guys is that their badness is shown to everyone including each other - so you can always rely upon the bad guys imploding due to their own greed, anger or selfishness. Indeed the good guys don't need to do anything - the bad guys will always implode by themselves! No actual need for crime fighters - the bad guys always lose anyway (that is what is wrong with badness - its the Law see below).

Returning to the start before putting all this together: so where does the authority of law come from? Well this is what has been established in the recent bundle of posts - it can't be established! it just "is". It is a normative assumption we must make - after all if rules didn't exist then how can I be using these words correctly/incorrectly butterflies. Instantly we know the last word in that sentence doesn't belong there... how? It is because of rules we learned "as" we learned to read - so no point in writing them down! No-one enforces these rules, indeed what language would the rules of English be written in! And what language would those rules be written in ... ouroboros again. This is the hemaneutic circle argument - that we enter into the game by learning how to play it, not once we have learned how to play it. Once again there is this fundamental irony, something Wittgenstein spent his later life examining, that the human condition is not one of approaching things face on, but rather looking backwards over territory we have already covered (I believe but haven't read it that Heideggard amongst other may make similar points). When we enter into language classes we do it with a full working knowledge of a language already. Our teacher can talk to us in one language and explain a second language. But the real progress is made in "practice" of that language "submerged" in the language culture. This is backwards, because as a child our primary language is learned through the submerging and practice first and then only much later the instruction from a teacher - I knew english long before I was taught it! Wittgenstein would argue that this process of practice and submergence is analogous to playing games and we learn the use of words just as we learn the use of objects like balls in various games. Likewise we don't get taught culture it occurs to us through submergence and practice - we just go along with it. It is a process with things one after another, not equivalences running side by side (like this word = that word). So humans are well accustomed to laws and rules - these indeed are the foundations of the human world of myths that I have been highlighting of late. It is a normative part of the human mind to embrace law, custom and rule. This is why we enjoy football, or even stories and films, where actors are put through the hurdles of a make believe world of rules.

Now just quickly that raises the point of dualism. In games and in stories the fundamental rule seems to be of sides. We instantly look for the side of the narrative voice and the other side (which causes what I've called in the blog the tyranny of the narrative where you are excluded from any rights if the narrative does not favour you - which seems to be the nature of Yahweh in the Old Testament stories). We instantly look for the good guys, and the bad guys; the winners and the losers. Then you have the film noirs and the anti-heros where the narrative is reversed: the Bogart's who while the "other" guy and who lose are followed by the narrative and so oddly "win". And obviously in sport which is between winners and losers. So the foundations of human meaning: unwritten rules seem to entail dualism and setting of one thing against another. So it follows that we eat with a knife held in our right hand and with the handle concealed in the back of the gripped palm, and those who do not obey this unwritten rule are excluded.

Yet we also know that human meaning and so dualisms are a myth. There must be a deeper reality beyond this. This deeper reality is what enables us to adopt the rules of football when that game begins and the game of rugby when that game begins. That deeper reality enables us to speak English when that game begins and Chinese when that game begins (assuming we are bi-lingual). That deeper reality enables us to play a character in a play, and then become ourselves afterwards, or watch a film and turn back to our "reality" afterwards. In this deeper reality it is no longer a myth that we are watching a film, or speaking English. That is Reality. In this Reality we do not simply obey the rules of business if it entails our actions becoming "wrong". It is from this Reality that we can say that the rules and mores of the various games are myths, suitable at a time, for a time, and only where they do not contradict the higher Reality. This higher reality like the passage of the planets is not breakable: you do wrong, you will suffer: because there is only "Good". This is what the religions speak of.

Now the problem for me it seems is that a contradiction has occurred in my rules. Like HAL in Kubriks 2001 I'll go mad unless this is resolved. Put alternatively the games I have learned to play tell me different things, and these often contradict what seems to be the Higher Law. My culture tells me to use a knife and fork, but actually I can see no advantage except when eating steak (which I don't because killing obviously breaks the higher Law). Practical Reality has taken presidence in my mind. This is the contradiction between my deeply tradiational upper class mother, and my laisez-faire rationalist father - which turned into irrationalist authoratarian in later life. Who do you listen to mum or dad?

This is what must be resolved before I inevitably mad. But the bits and pieces are all expressed in this post.