It's OK to Think

Todd Snider has a song called Keep of the Grass. The song is about a world full of rules. You can read all of the lyrics here.




We have a lot of rules in life. Anytime something goes wrong, it is almost a guarantee that a new rule or law will be made to correct what happened. Is our problem a lack of rules?

In New York City, they have rules on what can be used in food. Now granted some rules should probably be used,The Jungle showed us that. But New York's rules go further than just not allowing people to be ground up and sold as lard. Restaurants in the city cannot use trans fats. They are currently looking at reducing the amount of salt that can be in food. Now, yes these things may be unhealthy, but do we really require a rule to be healthy?

With all these rules, we are missing two very important ones. The first rule, law, or instruction should be "Think." It is very easy for people to get by without thinking. After all, when something goes wrong, we just make a new rule. There wouldn't be a need for a new rule every time if people think. The second rule should be "Do what needs to be done." This would require the person to do for themselves what needs to be done and to do for others what needs to be done. If one thinks and acts, the rules become unnecessary. With these extraneous rules, it removes and even impedes thinking as the person is not required and sometimes even punishes the person who thinks because they act outside of the rules. Things would still go wrong. This would be OK though, as long as the person thinks. As with any rules though, they must have some sort of enforcement. The enforcement would be simple, "A person will be responsible for what happens because of their actions."

It should be OK to think, however, it seems that we would rather just have rules and laws.