Drawing Lines: Borders

[Vance]

I have developed this little pet idea of mine and just got it walking, applying it to everyday life and it works well... It's the idea that you can't draw lines anywhere other than borders. Let me explain: You are the head of a band of pillagers. Suppose (for whatever reason) you had rules for looting and pillaging. So, there is Plundering Raping Burning Killing -Soldiers -Civilians Say that you wanted to let people plunder, but not too much. Eventually you would have people making small exceptions, going over the weight a bit because one item is oversized: Pretty soon this leads to people plundering way over the limit. Say that you allowed as much plunder as anyone wanted, but there was NO burning. This is naturally easy to enforce, because only one instance of burning is enough to warrant punishment. Even if you said not to go over the limit on plunder, and any milligram that was past the limit would be discarded, the pillagers would still see the rules as flexible, or more aptly; arguable. When you state that there will be absolutely no burning, the position is much harder to topple, being that there is an unknown amount of justification behind the argument, that we'll call "weight." So, you see that the leader allows 100 pounds of plunder for every village. Well, surely he can't have a reason for not allowing 101 pounds other than his own pride. And you see that the leader allows no burning. You can't see why, but you can't measure his adamancy either. But the moment he lets one building be burned, it shows that there was no consequences to burning one building. So this rules out the world exploding from one burning building (they are not very bright raiders) well, now two buildings would be an odd number for the potential exploding of Earth happening, so the situation escalates, putting more ground behind them with each building burned, ground that can never be pushed back. So you have to draw lines on a specific action, not in the actual action itself. This has numerous paralells in politics, humanitarian crises and drug abuse, etc.

[ray]

This is so true,i have noticed this in politics especially. Just wondering, what is your IQ? You seem to think.

[Vance]

This is so true,i have noticed this in politics especially. Just wondering, what is your IQ? You seem to think. I have no idea. I saw the number, but I had to use a chart to count to it, then I forgot. (what a chart is) I don't know. I always questioned the legitimacy of those tests in the first place, and never really bothered to take one. Thank you for noting that I think! It really spurs me on