Rules

The ties that bind

“Man is born free but is everywhere in chains.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote these words at the beginning of The Social Contract. At the time of the writing, in the 1760s, some of the chains were physical. Political prisoners languished in the Bastille in Paris and comparable facilities elsewhere. Slave coffles marched unfortunate souls from their homes in Africa to the coast to be shipped in chains to markets in Europe, Asia and America.

But the chains that interested Rousseau more were the metaphorical chains of habit and custom that bound society together. In an idealized state of nature, each man was a law unto himself. But as soon as men began living in groups, rules emerged to govern their behavior. These rules determined who owned what, who mated with whom, who did which jobs, who deferred to whom, and so on. How the rules were established varied from society to society and over time within each society. Different rules were differently enforced. Rule breakers might be shunned or banished. They might be deprived of property or privileges. But the essence of the rules was to limit the ability and inclination of individuals to act as they chose. The rules were chains upon man's freedom.

In giving up freedom, humans gained security. This was the bargain at the heart of the social contract. The question in any society was the question in any bargain: Is the prize worth the price? Rousseau thought not. He looked around the France of the ancien regime and concluded that most men and women gave up far more in freedom than they got back in security. Indeed many were less secure—from their ostensible protectors in government even—than they would have been in a state of nature.

Rousseau understood he was speaking theoretically. There never was a state of nature in which individuals lived by themselves. Humans are a social species. Our society antedates our species, as the social nature of our anthropoid cousins reveals. Rousseau lived before Darwin and so wouldn't have thought in evolutionary terms. Yet everyone knew that humans cannot live outside society. An abandoned infant dies within a day or two. An adult cast into to the wilderness is lucky to last a month.

Moreover, the rules of our societies go far beyond relations between governors and governed. And they make us who we are as individuals as much as they define our places among other individuals.

Many of our rules emerged without conscious thought. Each human language consists of sounds every human could make but arranged and interpreted according to rules peculiar to each language group. Each language echoes the world in a unique way. The speakers of that language perceive and describe the world distinctively.

The rules that govern relations between the sexes might have emerged unconsciously. But over generations they have been shaped to serve deliberate purposes. Some cultures are patriarchal. Some are matriarchal. Some are monogamous, some polygamous. The differences reflect, among other things, relative numbers of men and women in a culture at any given time, and disparities of wealth between different groups within the culture.

Many rules are arbitrary and apparently trivial. But the appearance of triviality can be misleading. In Austin, where I live, swimmers and sunbathers at Barton Springs include bare-breasted women. A chain link fence separates the pool area from surrounding Zilker Park. The fence is transparent, so strollers in the park have no difficulty seeing the sun bathers. No one takes anything amiss—until a topless woman steps outside the fence into the park. Going topless in Austin is not illegal. It simply isn't done. No one would do anything to a woman who flouted the rule. But what is perfectly innocent, acceptable behavior inside the fence constitutes exhibitionism thirty feet away on the outside.

In Russia in the 17th century, Christians became deeply divided over whether the sign of the cross should be made with two fingers or three. Theology was involved, of course. But two-fingered crossers came to bad ends among the three-fingered, and vice versa. What seemed trivial to outsiders mattered a great deal to those on the inside. Rules are like that.

Young ladies in certain sectors of American society used to be sent to finishing schools, where they would learn which fork was to be used with which dinner course, and similar customs. A faux pas could reduce a girl's value in the marriage market and change her life.

Financial speculators during the Gilded Age did all they could to acquire information about the likely direction of share prices of particular companies. Such information could be leveraged into handsome profits on the stock market. But in the 20th century, the rules were changed to forbid insider trading. People now went to prison for doing what their grandfathers had done quite legally.

Bribery is illegal in most political systems. But what constitutes bribery varies widely. Campaign donations don't count in America. Other countries forbid campaign donations precisely because they suggest the kind of quid pro quo bribery consists of.

One's place in society often depends on one's willingness to play by the rules. To break the rules, even to point out the arbitrary nature of many rules, is to risk loss of status and perhaps freedom and safety. Know and observe the rules—stay inside the fence at Barton Springs—and you're okay, you're one of us. Ignore the rules, go outside the fence, and you're part of some other, potentially rival clan.

Rousseau fell into the trap he described. His writings got him in trouble with authorities who made the rules about what might be properly said and written. He moved around Europe one step ahead of the law. Finally in Paris he neglected an essential rule of the road in the French capital: Pedestrians must give way to carriages belonging to the rich and powerful. One such carriage careened down a narrow street with the owner’s Great Dane galloping alongside. Rousseau dodged the carriage but not the dog. His head hit the cobbles. The injury did lasting brain damage that contributed to his death two years later.