It took a law 2...

A month or two ago, I wrote about a Norwegian law requiring large corporations (200 employees +) to have a 50/50 gender divide on executive boards. I applauded the move discussing the belief that it takes a law to cause change, that it is in our interests and for our benefits that we create and attempt to follow laws. Further, that laws are one of our greatest tools for social change.

Today I popped into BBC hoping to find the Asian markets had picked up overnight, and instead I see several different stories making my earlier, very simplistic view explanation of the role of law in a society seems like nonsense. The first article is about a youtube I happened to have been sent, made by Saudi women protesting laws against women drivers in their country! This is brilliant, I think, and highlights what laws are, why we have them and how they work. Laws are temporary explanations about how we agree to behave. I.e. all laws must at all times be subject to change. As a woman of western/catholic socialization I cannot really understand how barring women from driving is for their benefit, to protect them and their families or any of that. But I can imagine in a volatile country it is possible that limiting the movement of people is of benefit to the society. But now as Saudi Arabia is far more stable, it is time to let go of that and allow for a new social order.

The next article was about the reaffirmation of mortal sin by the Vatican. A move that has been made perhaps as an attempt to demonstrate to people how to interpret words like avarice or sloth. As I read, I worried about the loftiness of these new interpretations though. There are surely no more than a million billionaires, and not more than a hundred million millionaires, but that leave 5.9-6.1 billion people on the planet who need moral guidance. Which is the problem for us when we create laws. They are often almost always to narrow in their scope, leaving more people without guidance than need it.

Then there was an article about 24 hour drinking in the UK. This seems to me to highlight the UKs endemic dependence on law to order their society. Guidelines are necessary, they help us understand and interpret ways to communicate with those around us. Particularly as we have less and less of a close common history with our neighbours as we move from country to country, it is important that we have ways to open communication, to network and build community.

Which brings me to the last article, which I haven't read and don't want to read, but which is titled "STDs rife among US teenage girls." I'm assuming there are going to be some horrible statistics about the big 4 (HPV, herpes, Chlamydia, tric) and talk about vaccinating them all against cervicle cancer. No talk about guidance, about a growing desire to talk about and think about giving our kids less information and more guidence in how to behave.

So we do like laws. They do help us figure out ways to behave, but we should also keep in mind Sir Thomas More's idea: In his Utopia there were no laws, and each time it seemed an injustice had occured, it was weighed and discussed. The society debated and thought about it, and even when they came to a decision, it was only about that one case. Laws must be flexible enough to act as real and useful tools in the greater functioning of society.