The restriction is easy to see. The protection it offers is harder to appreciate. We focus on what we might gain by making an exception, without considering what we might lose.
When we think about the reason for having rules to guide our behavior, we typically think about harm to others. Rules, in this sense, are meant broadly. They encompass actual laws, but also systems of moral values and ethics, social expectations, and beliefs about what makes a good life. They include rules against driving drunk, stealing, or cheating on a partner, as well as the expectation that we prioritize people over money or keep our promises even when breaking them would be easier. Drunk driving can hurt or kill other people on the road. Cheating on a spouse causes pain and ruptures a relationship. Valuing money too highly can lead us to take advantage of people. Broadly speaking, we tend to think of rules as constraints on individual behavior, intended to prevent harm to others.
But there is another reason to think about rules that has less to do with protecting other people and more to do with protecting ourselves. When we break a rule, we can inflict harm on ourselves as well. On the surface, this may seem absurd. Driving drunk injures the person waiting for the light to turn green, not the intoxicated driver. Cheating betrays the trust of the person who has remained faithful. Stealing leaves the thief richer and the person robbed poorer. But consider what the next day might feel like. But consider what the next day might feel like. Imagine waking up knowing that you killed someone by driving drunk, or facing the person you promised to love after betraying them. We may lose our marriages, disrupt our families, and damage relationships with people whose respect matters to us. More than that, we have to live with the knowledge that we caused this suffering through our own actions, perhaps knowing that the damage can never be repaired.
Prohibitions against drunk driving and infidelity are generally understood as protections for other people—and they are. But they also protect us from having to carry the burden of having caused that kind of harm. Even when we take responsibility and make amends, we may have to live with what we have done for the rest of our lives.
Many rules can be broken without anyone knowing about it. We know when we have done something wrong, but the external consequences can be low if we are not discovered. But repeatedly breaking rules creates a problem: we must find ways to reconcile our behavior with our perception of ourselves as good or worthy people. We minimize the harm, shift the blame, find reasons that the person we hurt deserved it, or avoid thinking about what happened altogether. These new patterns of thinking can change how we see the people involved, and how we distinguish right from wrong.
At first, we may simply make an exception for ourselves, but over time we begin to defend that exception, adopt the reasoning behind it, and apply it elsewhere. In trying to justify our behavior, we construct a series of beliefs that take us further and further from what we originally understood to be right. We can become so invested in defending our actions that we allow it to determine our future values. Our whole worldview shifts. This is another way that rules protect us: they help prevent us from entering a cycle in which the effort to justify one action leads us further from the person we want to be.
Consider the pursuit of money. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting financial security or accumulating wealth. But there are good reasons not to prioritize financial gain above all else, or to view its pursuit as the highest good. At first, breaking this rule may seem to pay off: bigger paychecks, greater financial success, and the plaudits that come with it. But as we evaluate more of life in terms of financial gain, our whole perspective shifts. We evaluate people in terms of their net worth rather than their creativity, contribution, love, or other qualities. We view leisure time through the lens of what it costs or how an activity signals our success. We see our relationships through the lens of money and what financial benefit someone can offer. As human relationships are reduced to financial transactions, it becomes easy to become suspicious and paranoid. We can end up wealthy but disconnected from the people around us. It can become difficult to understand why anyone would be kind to us without expecting something in return.
This doesn't happen because someone is inherently a bad person. It happens because, as we organize more of our lives around financial gain, we begin to see the world through that lens. We become more suspicious of other people's motives, more transactional in our relationships, and less able to recognize forms of value that have nothing to do with money. We assume that since we see the world through the lens of money, everyone else must too. The resulting feedback loop can be difficult to see, let alone escape.
We may understand the rule but fail to appreciate what it protects. We see what we stand to gain by breaking it, or what we have to give up by following it. The benefits of restraint are less visible than its costs—and superficially, the benefits appear to accrue to others, while the costs accrue to ourselves. We notice that moderation requires us to give something up, but not necessarily how it preserves our capacity for pleasure. We see that prioritizing people over money may cost us a financial opportunity, but not how it protects our relationships.
We tend to believe we are different from the people who suffer the consequences. We recognize that drunk driving is dangerous, but believe we can get home safely. We know excessive drinking can lead to dependence, but believe we can manage our own use. We know that the naked pursuit of wealth creates problems, but think they will be manageable. We understand the general rule while quietly making ourselves an exception.
None of this means that every rule is good or that we should follow rules without examining them. Rules can be arbitrary, outdated, or unjust. There are times when breaking a rule is justified, even necessary,, and times when following one causes harm. Yet many of these principles recur across cultures, historical periods, and traditions. They have been passed down in different forms because they address enduring features of human life and relationships.
Many of the constraints that guide our behavior are not simply restrictions imposed to protect other people or to create a smoothly functioning society. They also protect us from ourselves and preserve the conditions that allow us to live good lives. Fidelity creates trust and intimacy. Moderation preserves our capacity for pleasure and freedom of choice. Reciprocity makes meaningful relationships possible. Honesty allows us to live without maintaining a distance between what we have done and what we tell ourselves about it.
Rules are not just about preventing us from doing harm to others, they help us avoid creating lives we would not want to live. They protect other people from us, but they also protect us from the burden of causing harm—and from the changes we might make to ourselves in trying to avoid facing it. Sometimes, the most important reason to follow a rule is not that someone else might suffer if we break it. It is what breaking it might do to us.
Love,
Doc
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