252. Learning The Rules

Education is a process of learning the rules. While we also learn many facts about the world we live in, what we are mainly taught is how to value and judge correctly. We are taught rules of reason and logic, of grammar and mathematics, of art and science, and so on.

We are often explicitly told the rules, but we mostly learn them through practice. We are shown a way of solving a problem or expressing an idea and we perform that method until we develop a habit of following the rule. Through this process of education, we are inculcated into our society’s shared normative structure, which is composed of all of the rules that make our society functional.

Our education is complete when we are able to adequately self-police ourselves according to the rules we have been taught. We then know how to measure and calculate, how to put words together to communicate, and how to reason from evidence to a conclusion. In each case, we can produce the expected result when we are given a certain set of inputs. Education thus makes us into more mechanical beings. The rules we learn help us perform functions that are socially useful and that promote order. We become comfortable with these rules and follow them — usually without question — in order to fill the roles we are expected to fill.

As we become more aware of how our judgments and values operate, we start to notice that judgments based on strict adherence to rules sometimes cause us to act in ways that are less than compassionate. Compassionate actions are intuitive and creative, so they frequently go against the rules, which are fixed and mechanical. Our shared normative structure is often too rigid and overbearing, causing it to become a source of anxiety that distracts us from compassionate action.

We might recognize that compassion is necessary, but still worry about the consequences that will come from compassionate actions that break the rules. But compassion remains the only path to joy for ourselves and others, and we cannot allow it to be hindered simply because we will also face consequences.