by Ed Dickerson
Apparently crafting sensible laws is harder than it looks. From the time when ideas literally had to be chiselled into stone to be preserved until the present day, philosophers, artists, politicians, monarchs, and sages have all tried their hand at this task. Nowadays, computers and laser printers make recording and publishing these crucial ‘words to live by’ easier. Maybe too easy. For example, the Constitution for the European Union runs to 265 pages and more than 60,000 words in the English version. Maybe I have too much empathy for the ancient Egyptian scribe who would have spent his life chiselling those ideographs into sandstone, but for me, that’s about 263 pages too long. Who can remember 265 pages of anything? You can’t live by 265 pages of rules, of ‘whereas’ and ‘by authority of.’ Besides, the greater the number of laws, the greater likelihood that they will contradict one another, and the greater possibility that this interlocking web of legislation will snare an innocent person out of simple ignorance. Nazi Germany multiplied laws and regulations to the point that the average citizen had no way of knowing if he’d broken the
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law. But that’s to the advantage of a totalitarian state, because it can throw troublemakers in jail whenever their activities become inconvenient to the powers that be – with so many laws, it’s only a matter of discovering which particular law they’ve broken. So, unless it’s actually the purpose of government to blackmail its citizens – as totalitarian states like to do – ‘words to live by’ need to be few enough that the conscientious citizen has at least a fighting chance of remembering them. Sixty thousand words are too many – way too many! In the 1960s, some proposed that we could live by four words: Do the loving thing. It sounded good at the time. But of course, ‘the loving thing’ to do might be different to different people, and to the same people at different times. ‘Do the loving thing’ lacked content, and ended up meaning ‘Do what you feel like doing.’ Instead of promoting peace, joy, and harmony, ‘doing the loving thing’ produced a lot of conflict, anger, and discord as some abandoned mates and children in order to ‘do the loving thing’ with another partner. Sixty thousand words may be too many, four words proved to be too few.
© iStockphoto/Sharon Dominick
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© iStockphoto/Matej Michelizza
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Some laws you may not know about:1 In the UK: 4 All English males over the age of 14 are to carry out 2 or so hours of longbow practice a week supervised by the local clergy. 4 Since 1313, MPs are not allowed to don armour in Parliament. In Italy: 4 A man may be arrested for wearing a skirt. In Switzerland: 4 It is illegal to flush the toilet after 10pm. In France: 4 No pig may be addressed as Napoleon by its owner. In Singapore: 4 Bungee jumping is illegal.