Exponential growth of the number of laws since 2500 years

Hello every one !

A few days ago I wrote my feelings on the Wall several times (one time each 5 minutes for 7 or 8 times may be, kind of spamming ), as the placeholder="Say what is on your mind..." suggested it to me . (I didn't understood the non-Facebook like function of this box :dry: . May be it could be changed to placeholder="Say what is on your mind to the Jedi Community on the common Wall...", which could be more clear for the newbies like me...)

My thinking was about the laws, and the useless of their exponential growth from the beginning of writing !

An archetypal beginning of the written laws in Occident is the famous "10 laws of Moses" :



Nowadays, the shelving of one of the numerous specialized libraries full of modern jurisprudence looks like this :



From 10 to tons ! :S
A kind of exponential growth...



For what ? Today, is there more (in the register of quantity ) or better justice than before ?

I was thinking it's just the opposit !

More laws = less thinking, less responsibility, less liberty, less empowerment of the people, and may be less justice... Brief, less Humanity !

Droïds need functionnal laws. But we are not machines, even if sometimes we can act and think in the way of it. I thaught the better for Humanity could be : "No law at all", as exp(0)=0 !!! :woohoo:

What about you ?

Bearded Hawk

Anarchy VS Bureaucracy.... always an interesting exploration. The debate often circles around individual liberty versus the needs of the many.

It all comes down to TRUST. Let's use gun control as an example. Do you trust me with a gun? Do I trust you? If we do, we should write it down so that it is understood that we can both have guns because we trust each other to be safe and responsible. We'll call it the 2nd Amendment. It's a pretty straight forward law and we all agree on it. Besides, we're on the same team, right? Screw the British! Until someone isn't on the same team... then we write down that everyone can have guns except the people who shouldn't because they can't be trusted. But who decides who those people are? The group of "good guys" who make a set of laws! Yay for democracy! Now we need someone to make those decisions about who is "bad" and be sure those people don't get guns, so we create law enforcement. They are trusted with the power to label "bad guys" and they are given guns so they can keep the bad guys from getting guns because we trust them. Until THEY abuse that trust... Now we have to write down what the law enforcement is allowed to do with their guns and what they aren't. More laws! And on and on and on ad nauseam. Until finally we decide to get rid of ALL the guns and everyone is equal. A new law. NO GUNS! Except for the one guy in charge who still has the biggest gun... and now none of us feel safe. So we overthrow the whole thing and start over. Do you trust me to start over with you? Do I trust you?

The dance between Anarchy and Bureaucracy seems to be cyclical. There is a reason that no great civilization lasts longer than a thousand years or so. It is because we collapse under our own bureaucracy and back into anarchy until we restore a sense of safety and order with new bureaucracy.

Hello !

I found interesting your opinion about the cycling row of anarchy & bureaucracy and the place of TRUST as axis of the movement of this row.

The representation of the row of fortune in Tarot is a good image of the non-sense of arguing about cycle changing things, as hasardous in short effects (everything could happen), and predictible in long term : nothing is permanent, the bad will be good, and the good will be bad, eventually, after changing again.



But, (sorry for the "but" ) there is an other representation/interpretation of the raw : the Karma row



I think it's practically the same raw. But the purpose of the representation of karma, more than the links between past and present (which could be very unpleasant ), is to show the present, and to make understand the future not as "existing thing"(as anarchists, english punks say "No future !" :woohoo: ), but as a potential of the only true thing (I think there is no other thing in our World) : "the very now", which is "Now", or whatever word you want to put on "reality".

And it's matter ! Because the purpose of the buddhist way is not to follow the raw, ever and ever, life after life (buddhists believe in reincarnation), but to "go outside of it", to stop the cycle of the reincarnation, which could mean to dead and not to reincarnate... (may be like Obi-wan Kenobi killed by Vador ? :evil: :ohmy: :pinch: )

The solution for realising this "flying or fleeing Karma :dry: " is the well known meditation, tantra, yoga & others... And to make it "Now".

This solution has no link with TRUST, which is actually connected to FEAR, in the same kind of raw as before : first you TRUST, after a time, may be you trust less and you have FEAR... May be a day, FEAR to TRUST ?

Hmmm...

In fact the growth of laws is not a theological or theoretical point of view.
It's real, "Now", a mass of a lot of tons of paper which could be measured with a very uge scale !
And from the beginning of bureaucracy in Babylone since now, there was a growth which can't be represented by any "cycle", because this growth looks like a mathematical function which is probably the exponential one :



So the problem of arms and TRUST (and FEAR) is not linked with the growth of laws (which began centuries ago, when there was no guns at all ).

And I think also there is actually no kinship between anarchy (a "state") & bureaucracy (a "way" or "method"), I think they are two completely different kind of things :

- bureaucracy is a way for organising a large group of people with a lot of paper... (not only for toilets and for embelishing walls :laugh: )
- anarchy is a state (a State ? :woohoo: ) of a large group of people living without an established and efficient hierarchy... (not necessarily a synonym for "civil war" : there is "Mad Max"... and there is "Avatar", it's an other planet, but the movie has been made by Humans, so I hope it could be possible to live in peace without a State... :blink: )

In fact, laws are often seen like a "guaranty", a kind of "assurance" in which you can TRUST because you are frigthened of what could happen...

The problem is : when it happens, laws never protect you in anyway, people can protect you, but laws can't... (the problem with guns, as "objects" like lightsabers or sextoys :blush: :kiss: :woohoo: , is entirely different, and could be discussed elsewhere...)

In my opinion, laws can't really protect you because laws are not "real" things, like people are (it looks like an evidence).

You can "refer" to laws, you can "apply" laws, you can "write" laws, etc.
In fact, I think laws are "programming language" for Humans : "refering"="calling a function" ; "apply"="do" (an old and "bad" way to code...), "writing laws"="writing code", etc.

And the discussion, for me, is about the useless & usefullness of laws for Humans... Comparing with Droïds !!
And in particular about the number of laws it's better to have for Humans, from 0 to "a lot of tons" !

So, more clearly, what are you thinking about the quantity of laws we need as Humans :

a) no law at all, which means "0" and may be... Anarchy and so on !
b) around 10
c) less than 100
d) less than 1000
e) there is no limit to the number of laws we need, because the world is changing, and there will have ever end ever modifications to do for making the system functionning better...

May be we could make some statistics and a Doodle ? :woohoo: :evil:

You are quite a character Hawk, lol. I enjoy reading your posts.

Being a part of society means that you inherently agree to abide by the laws and rules that have been set down to keep said society functioning the way that it does. Sure, you can disagree and use the available legislature to attempt to get the laws changed to the way you think they should be; or run for a political office to change things more rapidly than as a regular citizen, typically the amount of paperwork is too daunting a task for the working person to want to dedicate that much time to so they accept the chip on their shoulder about the laws and rules they disagree with and go on about their lives.

Now, because of the way that (at least in America) we like to live; we tend to just shut our mouths and do what we're told. We have become so afraid of not only our Police, but our Government as a whole.
***warning I may be about to ruffle feathers*** (I apologize in advance, this is only an opinion not meant to be taken in offense)
When Barack Obama was elected President suddenly, I think, we were scared to contradict anything that his administration wanted to put into action because we didn't want the race card to get pulled. Now, with the upcoming election; there are all kinds of anxieties rising because we said yes to so many programs (Obamacare, for example) that now a large portion of the population has become dependent on them. What is going to happen when Obama is no longer President and someone decides to shut down Obamacare, suddenly there are going to be 15 Million (obamacarefacts.org) people in the country who no longer have medical coverage...again. Yes, it may have added a ludicrous amount to our ever growing "National Debt" but there are many people who have a better quality of life because they don't have to worry about "what's going to happen if I get sick; or my child gets sick?" Some laws are put into effect to help out the people in the society they live in. Then there comes the part when toes start getting stepped on. The Confederate Flag business, for example.
When a 20-year old decided on his own free will, that he was going to go into a private Bible Study being held at a church and conscientiously end the lives of 9 people, of course he should be punished but what do those actions have to do with the Confederate flag? This is what I mean about the "race card" getting pulled and it upsets me. I have been born and raised in Central Illinois all my life. I'm a Yankee, but I have mad respect for the fact that there were people who had a life in this country and were willing to fight under a different flag for that life. For what they felt they wanted out of their country. That is what America is all about. There is nothing Racist about the Confederate flag and it makes me sick to see that it's going to be painted over on the roof of the General Lee...I digress...
Yes, Laws are created based on fears and trusts....if everyone in our country walked the Jedi path; or if our country was functioning in a way like a Shaolin Temple, or a convent, the yes, we could probably function under a nominal amount of laws, but because there are so many different people with different views, in different locations and there are people who like to break laws down and find loophole to get them out of trouble, laws have to be constantly amended and reworded. That accounts for, likely, a large percentage of the books on the law shelves...are mostly amendments to previously existing laws...
As long as there are laws, there will be people who want to try and push the limits of those laws and question everything about them. If Anarchy was put into effect, there would be a mass "Purge" type scenario; and then groups of like minded people would form together to keep themselves safe and they would in turn make their own laws and rules and it would all start over again. I totally agree that Anarchy and Bureaucracy will undoubtedly cycle throughout time. The main concern is finding a society that you can live in and still abide by the laws; or have the guts to go forth and change them yourself.

Athena_Undomiel wrote: I have mad respect for the fact that there were people who had a life in this country and were willing to fight under a different flag for that life. For what they felt they wanted out of their country. That is what America is all about. There is nothing Racist about the Confederate flag and it makes me sick to see that it's going to be painted over on the roof of the General Lee...I digress...

I have difficulty respecting a people who were willing to kill other human beings to protect their privilege to own other humans as one would own cattle. Don't kid yourself, I grew up in the South and still live here, and THAT is what these people were doing. Shooting at Union forces and killing them for what they felt they wanted out of their country, the ability to treat other human beings as sub-human property. That is what the confederate flag is about.

EDIT: The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States

There were lots of laws before the 10 Commandments.

For me its a bit like the downside of a system/society becoming transparent (accountable), everything all of a sudden looks worse.... but in reality it was just as bad before its just no-one knew about it because it was not transparent, and transparency is required before real progress can be made in improving how things work.

And for the outsider looking in, we need to meter our subjective reaction to the apparent to the relative truth of its broader context, IMO.

With law's I think it shows that people are willing to keep looking for advantage in beating the idealism towards a free and moral society. Ethics sort of (to me at least) is the grey area between legal and illegal, and it seems that so long as people want to get ahead of the other bloke, they will push the boundary layer between ethics and illegality - which means laws need to become more detailed and therefore more numerous. That is a good thing IMO, but the bigger a body of instruments is, the more they can be abused themselves!!!! The judiciary probably needs constant and close scrutiny to ensure the legal system remains functional towards the needs of society as determined by that society.

Kamizu wrote: There were lots of laws before the 10 Commandments.

I was thinking the same. Hammurabi, ur-nammu and urukagina must not be pleased.

I hear they laid down the law in Mesopotamia... :silly:

Hello and thank you for your many replies !

If I well understood and well resumed there is for the moment only 2/5 replies to my MCQ :dry: :

- Athena : c) choice (it looks like a pessimistic & "by default" choice ) : "if everyone in our country walked the Jedi path; or if our country was functioning in a way like a Shaolin Temple, or a convent, the yes, we could probably function under a nominal amount of laws, but because there are so many different people with different views, in different locations and there are people who like to break laws down and find loophole to get them out of trouble, laws have to be constantly amended and reworded. That accounts for, likely, a large percentage of the books on the law shelves...are mostly amendments to previously existing laws..."

- Adder : c) choice (if I well understood, it looks also like a "by default" choice which points an intrinsic default of the "many laws" system ) : "(It) means laws need to become more detailed and therefore more numerous. That is a good thing IMO, but the bigger a body of instruments is, the more they can be abused themselves!!!! The judiciary probably needs constant and close scrutiny to ensure the legal system remains functional towards the needs of society as determined by that society."

Kamizu, ren and CryogenX what about you, would you reply more clearly please ? :huh:

You just replied about the Sumerian or Mesopotamian people and the existence of laws before the 10 commandments :blink: . But there is no link at all with my purpose which is to have a discussion about the growth of the written laws and to talk about the "written laws justice system", not about the anteriority of written laws to Moses... (on this matter, you can notice there isn't a lot of relics of the laws before Moses, and the fact the few Sumerian or Mesopotamian relics which remain have not the same impact nowadays compared to the 10 commandments, which have a lot of importance in the mind of many people around Earth).

I would like to add to the discussion a link about the Maori justice system (thank you Reacher for this !! ) : http://camelliawaldorf.org/kim-john-payne-describes-social-inclusion-at-cws-community-circle-meeting/

For me, it's a very interesting and further more, a very important account of the possibility of a "justice system" functionning without "written laws" (and so on...) Especially, because it seems that (for the Maori people only ? ) "no law" is not equal to "civil war" (sorry Athena, but I still think that "anarchy" is not a state synonym of the "civil war" or "barbarity" states... )

Would you please reply also about what you are thinking about the "Maori justice system", please ?