The Rule of Law
Do you know what I find fascinating? The rule of law. It seems to me that societies (groupings of people) all strive to some degree of stability through the rule of law.
The earliest societies had law codes of some sort. I don’t mean the “greats” such as the Hittite or the Hebraic, those are well developed. I’m referring to tribes of peoples even earlier, in Europe and North America. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Asia, South America, and Africa is lacking but I can’t help but assume that they functioned in the same manner.
The laws may have been primitive, often only concerning themselves with religious matters and dynastic succession yet they were in place. But why? It was as if people sought order and understood on a very basic level that order is better and more important than chaos, from that point onwards humankind just continued forth.
We continued with the development right up into the present day where law dictates almost everything, some would say to the detriment of the society in many ways.
I’m of the mind that law is a great thing. The codification of laws was one of the most important developments in human history. Law is like the secular religion. It provides answers to all of your secular problems, it tells people how to live and what is good and bad. Could things be done better?, probably and almost certainly. The possibility of better doesn’t demote the current system to bad though, just to worse. The eternal struggle for the ‘better’ is part of the fun of life.