"You know the thing about chaos? It's fair." I was driving the other day and saw there was roadwork being done on the side of the road. There was a sign that said a flagman may be present to help direct traffic, but when I got there it was just three guys standing by the side of the road, looking up at the fourth man in the cherry picker doing whatever he needed to. They were standing to the side of the road and it was apparent they were banking on the assumption that no one would go out of their way to disrupt their work. In that moment it made me realize just how many different aspects of our lives are being gambled on. The gamble is that since the past has shown the situation to be safe that it will continue to be safe. That and most rational people aren't interested in throwing the world into chaos. With a simple jerk of the wheel I could have disrupted the quiet order of the world. Not just their world, but everyone associated would have been affected because when others heard about it, they would have realized safety is an illusion.
There are a lot of assumptions when it comes to the rules. We assume that for the most part that everyone is going to play along with the rules that society has set out. Only those on the fringes will disregard the laws. In a way there is an assumption there too. Drug dealers will deal drugs and eventually get into fights with other drug dealers or the cops. If you don't take or sell drugs then it's assumed that your world will never bump into that one. We hear about crime, but for the most part that's all it is, something we hear about. It's when it comes wandering into our backyard that we see the rules are only for those who choose to follow them. It's a strange thing to know that we even have rules of engagement when it comes to war. We'd like to believe that we're more civilized that those that came before us. It's alright to shoot this person, but not that person. They blew this up so we're allowed to respond by blowing up that. It's expected. It's how we're supposed to behave, assuming everyone is in agreement.
I think that is part of the thrill we get from post apocalyptic stories. It shows us a world where the rules have been thrown out. Society is only polite as long as the lights stay on and there is food on the table. In those stories people only worry about one thing and that's to survive, regardless of what's necessary to get through to tomorrow. You can feel guilty about it later, but they know that you have to be alive in order to feel anything. There are times in our lives when it seems like the rules are put in place to hold us back or keep us down. There are times too when we'd like nothing more than to rage against the system. The rational part of our mind may understand that it won't help anything in the long run, but the part of us that's still behaves like a three year old wants what we want and anything less deserves to get smashed into a million pieces as we stomp our feet in anger. Every day we go out into the world and live by the unspoken rules where we're not going to rock the boat so that everyone around us can continue to go about their lives without incident. It's when there is a complete disregard for those rules that really scares us. Could it be that the next time it's easier to continue that disregard? Or could it escalate into complete anarchy?
