The Right Rule

This post is about that eternal war that has been raged in the mind of every man and woman. Simply put, it's the war between the irrational and the rational, the mind versus the heart, the reasonable versus the unreasonable. A couple of thoughts flashed across my mind while I thought about this piece. I recalled Einstein who said, "Never let your mind interfere in the matters of your heart." Or that scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where the young Charlie tells a cynical boy, "Candies don't have to make sense. That's why they are candy." George Bernard Shaw who said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." A pretty close thought on the same line is from the movie 'The Departed' where Frank Costello tells his take on life, "I don't want to be a product of environment. I want my environment to be a product of me." Then there is that scene from the film 'The Dark Knight' where the Joker tells the half-faced Harvey lying in the hospital, "Do I really look like a man with a plan, Harvey? I don't have a plan. The mob has plans, the cops have plans. you know what I am, Harvey? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught one. I just DO things. I'm a wrench in the gears. I HATE plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's. Maroni has plans, Gordon has plans. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I am not a schemer. I show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. So when I say that what happened to you and your girlfriend wasn't personal, you know I'M telling the truth"*Gives Dent Gun*"It's a schemer who put you where you are. You were a schemer. You had plans. Look where it got you. I just did what I do best-I took your plan and turned it on itself. Look what I have done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple bullets. Nobody panics when the expected people got killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plans are horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will get blown up, nobody panics. But when I say one little old mayor will die, everyone loses their minds!! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I AM AN AGENT OF CHAOS. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey. It's fair." The Taoists believed that man is best when he allows his nature to govern his actions. Follow nature, they would say. Eat only when you feel hungry. Say what you think. Be authentic. If you feel angry, be angry. If you feel like smiling, smile. If you don't, don't. You don't have to be rational, only yourself. And this, they believed, was the ultimate secret to health and happiness. Following one's nature no matter where it led us. So, when I hear things like, "Follow your heart", "Follow your passion", "Do what feels good" etc, I feel the same Taoist thought ringing around. 

The Taoist philosophy was strongly contended in its time however by Confucius who believed that it's not nature that should govern us but rules. That some rules are needed to be followed in order to succeed. And like Chanakya in India, he described his rules and principles in a well documented way. The Dark Knight joker of course would say as he did in the film too, "The only sane way to live in this world is without rules." But I both agree and disagree. It is important, of course, to break rules, to follow your nature because that's the only way you say no to the conformity everyone else seems to be bound in. But we need rules. Some basic principles cannot and must not be forsaken. I love this quote about the importance of rules by Molly Ivins, “It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersection, no fish, and no ducks. OK?" Stephen Covey's book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People talks about how powerfully our life can change if we just apply a few rules that have stood the test of time and history.

It's all very good to talk about doing what feels right but I think that there is something called responsibility that comes before feelings. Being driven by emotion and not your beliefs doesn't sound right, does it? Emotion is transient. A belief is the product of a well thought-out system of thought that we have spent time on deliberately, not something that just happens impulsively. But then, impulsiveness has its benefits. You can't rationalize everything. Somethings just seem right and you do them. They defy definition by rules. They are simply done. Think Achilles and how he impulsively refuses to fight in the battle of Troy for his country Greece simply because of his differences with Agamemnon, the then king. And he returns to battle unexpectedly after his cousin is killed in the war. Think of just about any great achiever and you will find that they all had one thing in common. A paranoid dedication to their goals and a maniacal pursuit after the same that defies logic. But let's not forget that Achilles became such a giant because of the training and discipline he put himself into. He too followed the rules every great warrior had to follow.  The spartans had a saying that said, "The one who sweats more in training bleeds less in war." Clearly a rule worth sticking to. As a boy flying the kite said, "I wish the kite was not bound to this rope. That would make it fly higher." And someone replied, "The rope is what's making it fly." The rules are that rope. We can't get rid of them. Not really.