A Society Without Rules

What would society be like if we didn’t have rules? People choose not to follow rules at their own convenience, which puts society on a road to anti-civilization. The 1981 article printed in the New York Times, “The Rules Are All We’ve Got,” by Sidney H. Schanberg and the novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding relate well to the idea that you cannot have a functioning society without rules. In Schanberg’s article, he presents the idea that New York is becoming a city without rules because people don’t care about them, let alone follow them. The number of crimes committed in New York City increases everyday, and people will only follow rules when an important force, such as a police officer, asserts them. Schanberg relates the Lord of the Flies as an allegory of the New York society. In the novel, a group of English schoolboys are stranded on an island, far away from any civilization. Because there is no adult supervision, most of the boys choose not to follow any rules, which leads to violent horseplay, and the killing of two innocent boys. Both the article and the novel show us that without rules, there can be no civilization, and without civilization there is much disorder, resulting in the digression of human society as a whole.

In the article, ”The Rules Are All We’ve Got,” Schanberg makes it clear that order in our society is going downhill. Too many people are breaking rules everyday, without being properly punished for them, and some, not even recognized for them. The article states that about six murders, ten rapes, and about 300 robberies are committed each day. It has been stated that people torment and murder to have fun and because it gives them something to do. A 17-year-old even admitted that he likes to rob people. The depletion of the number of police officers does not help this situation either. Most of the robberies that are committed are not even investigated because of the lack of police force. Another cause of the high crime rate is that kids who cannot afford to buy things that they want, and feel they need to have, steal them instead. They don’t even care about getting caught because they know they will pay the consequences and be free again to steal something else. Also, people look and see that there is much disorder in the community that they are living it, but choose to look past it and let someone else handle the problem. This makes matters even worse. People don’t want to believe that there is anything wrong so they go on thinking that everything is okay, when in fact, it’s not. These lawbreakers do not realize what they are doing to society, and if they do, don’t care. In committing these crimes, these people are bringing down civilization. By not following the rules, which is the framework of society, order is slowly being demolished. If order is demolished, people will relapse into the primitive behavior that was practiced in the beginning of time, similar to what happened in the novel, Lord of the Flies.

In Schanberg’s article, he makes reference to the novel, Lord of the Flies, as being an allegory of New York City. In the novel, the boys follow the rules that they have made, in the beginning, but after a little while, they slowly deviate from them. No one is forcing them to follow the rules, so they figure that they don’t have to. What they don’t realize is how much disorder can be brought about by them not following the rules. Only the leader of the group, Ralph, and a few others recognize the importance of following the rules. But these boys cannot change the minds of the others on how important it actually is to maintain order on the island. Even when the group kills an innocent member, they still do not realize the harm that can be brought by not following the rules that they have set on the island. These boys torment and kill other humans and animals to have fun. It gave the boys something to do while on the island. This is similar to Schanberg’s article, which states that people murder others for fun. At one point in the novel, after the boy’s attempt to kill a boar had failed, they started to play a violent game in which Robert, another boy in the group, pretended to be a pig and the other boys attacked him.

“That was a good game.”

“Just a game,” said Ralph uneasily. “I got jolly badly hurt at rugger

once.”

“We ought to have a drum,” said Maurice, “then we could to it

properly.”

Ralph looked at him.

“How properly?”

“I dunno. You want a fire, I think, and a drum, and you keep time

with the drum.

“You want a pig,” said Roger, “like a real hunt.”

“Or someone to pretend,” said Jack. “You could get someone to

dress up as a pig and then he could act—you know, pretend to

knock me over and all that.”

“You want a real pig,” said Robert, still caressing his rump,

“because you’ve got to kill him.”

“use a littlun,” said Jack, and everybody laughed.

This passage from the novel shows how these boys like to act in a violent matter for fun. They killed innocent animals and people that could not fend for themselves, basically so that they did not have to be bored. These acts destroyed the little order that they had on the island, making it impossible to lead a civil lifestyle. Not following the rules destroyed their civilization, setting them back hundreds of years into the primitive lifestyle of human beings, degrading human society.

It is evident that rules are an extremely important factor in every civilization. Without them, there can be no order, and without order people cannot live civil lives. “The Rules Are All We’ve Got,” by Schanberg, and Lord of the Flies, by Golding, relay this message very well. Obviously everyone would like to have an organized civilization to live in, but this can only be possible if every single person in the civilization cooperates and follows the rules. Even following the simplest rules that a person may think may not have any effect on anyone or anything can, in fact, have a large effect. It only takes one person to make or break a society. If one person breaks a rule other people may think, “Well if he/she did it and didn’t get caught, then why can’t I?” Before long, everyone will be breaking all kinds of rules, whether they get caught or not. In order to have a civilized society and not be set back in time to primitive lifestyles, everyone must follow the rules.