Huainanzi - Entry 65

Trey Smith

Law does not come down from the heavens, nor does it spring up from the earth.
~ a passage from The Book of Leadership and Strategy by Thomas Cleary ~

By and large, modern sociologists would embrace this statement. So too would three philosophers -- Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- whose conception of the social contract serves as the foundation of much of what western democracies are built upon.

Of course, the sentiment butts heads with the fundamentalist Christian formulation that laws are transmitted to people from God.

In many ways, this serves as one of the stark political dividing lines in America today. A portion of the citizenry wants to craft laws that reflect contemporary societal mores, while another segment believes that the laws devised several millennia ago -- in what is now called the Middle East -- should be adhered to at all costs.

In all honesty, it is hard for me to imagine a compromise between these two world views. They are so far apart that each side would need to walk ten thousand miles to find the middle ground.

To read the introduction to this ongoing series, go here.