Ever since the days of running around on the chipped wood of the playground everyone has followed rules. Makes sense after all rules are an essential part of society. Without them life would very likely be in more chaos than it already is Yet the question remains should we follow every rule given to us. The answer, despite what some people may say, is no. There are many secular small reasons a person could go into of why people shouldn’t follow every rule, but the main reason is rules can hurt people.
From rules allowing people to discriminate to others perpetuating a culture harmful to any percentage of the population, rules can be harmful Such as the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 banning marijuana for reasons other than it being a “gateway drug”, The real reason was due to the fact a high number of Mexicans and African Americans used it for both recreational and medicinal use. Some government officials wanted a way to ban these ethical groups in America, but they legally couldn’t ban them outright.
So, in search of a solution they banned this plant and later put it under the controlled substances act of the 70’s in order to also control the hippie movement in a way.
Obviously, these rules harmed groups of people back then but these rules still harm people in todays society. The people I’m talking about are those who medically need this drug for things such as seizures or to aid with the pain of cancer along with several other things.
While the rules recently may have changed around this plant there are still many issues facing people, such as my younger brother and cousin, who need this drug to increase their quality of life and maybe even make them healthier. Then there are societal rules that everyone follows to some degree. They can be incredibly harmful to many people. Such as be fearful of young black males they are gangbangers or robbers only out to hurt you. This view of young black men was brought on by years of the media and government portraying these people only at their worst causing many people to believe this stereotype.
This same stereotype which recently almost caused a young black boy his life. Ayoung African American teen accidently missed his bus, so he knocked on the door of a house nearby to ask for directions to his school. The woman answered her door and assumed without even listening to his words that he was there to harm her or steal her stuff, so she screams, and her husband runs down and starts shooting at this young teen. Then there are rules involving rape culture where we tell young girls and woman not to fight back and hide their bodies. Acting as if they follow these rules they will be safe but only making it where women are forced to follow rules oppressing them When we should be teaching young men that women are not objects and how wrong rape truly is, Besides the fact in some states rapist have parental rights over any children created in the act of raping another individualt.
This not only harms the victim further, but it allows rapist to force the Victim to drop charges if they keep the child in order for the rapist to sign away parental rights. Resulting in the rapist to go free and give them the chance to rape another unsuspecting soul, Now despite there being rules that shouldn’t be followed not all rules should be tossed to the wind. There are still plenty of rules that are helpful both amongst the government and in society, like how it is illegal to murder someone While this rule obviously isn’t always followed it results in having people who track down those who commit such crimes and bring them to justice Of course, there are also many more and many Limes the good rules outweigh the bad but there are still rules that shouldn’t be followed at least to some degree.
Rules as Essential Part of Society. (2022, Jul 09). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/rules-as-essential-part-of-society/