What is a “cardinal rule”? A “cardinal rule” is defined as a fundamental rule, upon which other matters – social, cultural, issues pertaining to law and ethics – generally hinge. While “cardinal rules” are recognized among “civilized society” as common sense, and our entire lives go into abiding by these “cardinal rules”. These “rules” are established/manufactured by people who lived generations before our even being born and since all human beings live in communities segregated on the basis of territory, law, religion, and other belief systems we are supposed to follow these “cardinal rules”. These “cardinal rules” define what is good and what is bad for us, in other words the way we should live our lives. Without questioning the authority or the basic or elementary credibility of these “cardinal rules”, we follow them nonetheless. But is it natural for a human being to take things as they come? Isn't it imperative for every one of us to ratify, classify, reject or accept these “rules”?
Almost all of us accept culture, religion, law and social norms as they come. But, principally, no principle that is advocated or thrust upon us when we are young (or old) is infallible and each one of the so called “cardinal rules”, emerging out of religious, social and cultural ideologies is challenge-able and thus our un-wayward acceptance of the imposed rules and regulations without challenging them confirms the idea that it is an “unnatural process”. We human beings have the dignity and “common-sense” to scrutinize each of these rules, every law, every religious belief that we quite subconsciously accept as the “guidebook” to living our lives. It is natural that we oppose everything that is statutorily accepted by all of us on a “matter of fact” basis. But we do not do that (at least most of us don’t) and that constitutes enough reason to analyse the whole phenomenon of our “matter-of-factly” attitude of acceptance of the “cardinal rules” and the personal and inter-personal conflicts that may possibly eventuate thereof.
The very moment a child, once he or she, reigns in some of the senses, adequately masters’ language and starts to express, inquisitiveness is extremely characteristic of his or her persona. The child questions everything and does not settle for ambiguous answers. Children demand the facts straight. One needs to exercise extreme caution when replying to the queries of a child (questions about God, the universe, life, death etc.), to which we most often do not have palpable answers since we never reconsidered these questions ever since we grew up to the designs of the societies we live in. This inquisitiveness, formidably constitutes what we refer to the “state of childishness” and by the time the child becomes what we call “socially responsible” or “aware” the inquisitiveness is gone. The ever questioning mind of the child grows up to accept and acknowledge everything that is set as a rule or a limit, the very notions of good and bad as forthrightly implying since any deviations from the espoused character as per the “cardinal rules” are termed as anti-social, blasphemous and indicators of a sickened mentality. If the subject in question deviates from the principles, the “cardinal rules” he she is “delicately” categorized as mentally sick or anti-social and thereof delimited from exercising social interactions by being confined to prisons or asylums. This precautionary social subjugation is deemed mandatory for those who choose to deny fitting in the ironical social strait-jacket. Thus, it may be implied that socially all of those who question authority – the proclaiming “body” of “cardinal rules” – are essentially categorized as outlaws, mentally sick, perverts and anti-social which alternately means that natural human behaviour is pertinently overruled.
No two human beings are alike (I am meaning to imply likeness in terms of the whole plethora of subjective phenomenon that deliver the persona of a human being, i.e., emotional, psychological, physiological, chemical, biological and all), which means that every individual has a different set of needs and demands. By imposing and superimposing the social obstructive, society ensures compliance which is very basic to its very sustenance. The social obstructive in other words “common sense” is our very own thesis of behaviour and applies to all kinds of beliefs that we as human beings are commanded to espouse in order to stay within the circle of the social pertinent-ness. In the process the natural leanings of human beings on an individual basis are always grinded down to the point of annihilation. Thus we, all of us, are living surrogate lives potentially far away from our natural self.
“Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant. This ideology is compounded from different sources: items that have survived from religion, items of empirical knowledge, items of protective scepticism, items culled for comfort from the superficial learning that is supplied. But the point is that common-sense can never teach itself, can never advance beyond its own limits, for as soon as the lack of fundamental learning has been made good, all items become questionable and the whole function of common-sense is destroyed. Common-sense can only exist as a category insofar as it can be distinguished from the spirit of enquiry, from philosophy.” - John Berger: A Fortunate Man.
As Berger implies common sense, our social obstructive, is meant to keep us ignorant and while evolution attaches the character of learning by contact to all human beings, by stopping the learning process we turn into mere vestiges of the society that “grooms” us.
By not engaging in the very human process of learning by contact we are rendered into mere “tin soldiers” of a set of oppressive regimes, for instance culture, religion, law, language and general behaviour. Raking up one of the issues as for instance that of religion I would surmise that all of us are born atheists since we are not born with the concept of god inside our heads. We are bred, groomed and turned into religious bigots by way of treatment and not the natural circumstance even though proponents of religion make us believe that we were born into a particular religion. In the same manner the state makes us believe that we owe inherent allegiance to the state even though we are born into a space that is not demarcated. We are stressed into dressing in a particular way even though we are born naked. Historians make us believe in a cacophony of “events” that may possibly, for instance, construe as being “untrue” if we were to analyse them on practical first hand basis. We are made to adopt defined mannerisms in matters that concern ethics, moral conduct, ethnicity, human rights and choices in general. Thus rival systems of belief are created by the social obstruct and these are primarily the roots of strife. Conflict, as such, is a characteristic appendage of the social obstruct, common sense, general belief.
Conclusively, society, which seeks to intrinsically balance itself on the foundation of commemorating civilization as the base construct of human existence in its own existence propounds inter-alia arguments that have “historically” set civilizations on fire. The “cardinal rule” lays the foundation for eternal conflict.