The Necessity of Rules and Structure

Greetings all,

I have been thinking about this concept of structure and rules. I have always been a bit of a rebellious person and usually despised structure and rules because I always felt they were stifling. As a creative person, rules and order seemed evil.

I have grown up over these past few years and have begun to see that having structure and rules in one's life does not have to lead to stifling of creativity.

I never liked the way this Western society was structured. It was too rigid for me and I always felt like there's more to life then just doing things by the book - doing the whole typical go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, retire and die. I think in my search for meaning in this life I did realize that there is nothing wrong with pursuing those things because pursuing those things can lead to happiness.

I guess it boils down to creating a life that you desire and many of us actually desire the same things. Being fulfilled, love, friendship, etc. All these inner qualities must manifest in the physical world to attain true happiness. You can't have one without the other. You can't just have the inner qualities without the materialized and you can't have some material object or desire without some understanding of your inner world.

I think the simplest example from my own personal life is that of my desire for a companion and love. I have many lovely and supportive friends but there is that feeling of missing something. Some people may be happy to be single but it causes me a certain discomfort. I am still happy for the most part but having that companion would make things happier for me. You can never have too much happiness! This inner desire can only be fulfilled when the corresponding materialization appears.

Anyways, I see structures like governments and businesses as just inevitable. I think I got over my detest over the government early on because I understand why we have governments. They are necessary structures to have to keep humans organized. We have so many people in a country and there has to be a way to organize things to maintain some level of peace and order. There are always going to be people trying to organize ways that are unhealthy and destructive but the ideal is to have these structures that foster healthy human behaviour and the peak of attaining a structure and system is one where people feel freedom and feel in control of their own lives.

I guess if you look at countries in the world where there is a lack of government, there is quite a lot of violence, ignorance and disorder. There's that as well in democratic countries but not to the same degree. There is still that sense of law, order and justice. I see the lack of democratic government in these nations as well as a result of a lack of education but does not the desire for education stem from the realization of needing things to be organized? To have structure?

I probably have more to say on this topic but perhaps another time.