A reader provided the above comment as a simple solution to our societal malaise. What follows is my correction to his assertion, one so often mistakenly interpreted as the savior of society. More rules without the apriori establishment of a theory embedded in a system only yield more rebels without a cause:
You communicate precisely what goes wrong in our system-building-thinking and development processes. Rules are a consequence of a system with an embedded theory at its cause. The mere implementation of rules does not infer a system.
A system is created by a theory, which transforms input to produce the desired output. Without a theory, as the cause, the deployment of rules, as a consequence, leads to grave depravity of reason and, thus, the opposite of the desired outcome a system is expected to produce.
First, one must deploy a theory from a selection of input expected to produce the desired outcome and then embed the theory in a system by which “gameplay” is defined. Only after those steps can one define meaningful yet not stifling rules to guard the implementation of the objective of the system.
So, implementing rules before the system is defined is putting the cart before the horse.
