The Excavation of Conformity
Issue 228
When I was in third grade, my teacher brought a curious little glass jar into class and placed it onto her desk. It remained sealed, and the students were warned against touching it, though this mysterious, unexpected jar was to be the subject, the focus of a discussion that would come after we returned from lunch. For now, she said, it was for looking, in those ageless authoritarian words of parents and teachers and gift shop employees, but not for touching. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to look at, as the jar clearly held some ashy, not exactly exciting, dirt.
But this glass jar sat on her desk without explanation for the entire morning, a Chekhov’s gun introduced to the classroom, while we followed the routine that comprises the activities of third grade. I doubt that I was the only student who daydreamed about this mysterious jar, who felt slightly distracted by the abrupt addition of a new element into the room, who found a glass jar of dirt a perfectly reasonable place to park my thoughts during our morning lessons. This was probably the point, and fostering a feeling of anticipation for the afternoon discussion seems reasonable to me now, although I do wonder whether having students distracted by that suspense all morning was ideal.
I believe that this lesson occurred right after a holiday. The class had returned from a long time away and the jar was our teacher’s contribution to a discussion about the break, because the dirt, I learned after lunch, came from Pompeii. Our teacher had visited the site during the holiday and kept some dirt as a souvenir. Her excitement was genuine, there was a tangible, expansive quality to how she held the jar, to how she spoke about her trip, in a way that seemed stronger than merely a lesson for young children—the tone was jubilant, these were good memories, she felt proud.
Occasionally, you listen to a story that’s so effusive, that’s told so enthusiastically, that even if you react negatively, with criticism, the person who tells the story won’t hear your critique: the emotions that drive their words are too strong, too cheerful, and the speaker ends up hearing every response from the listener with the same exhilaration. For a roomful of schoolchildren, just back from a boisterous and sugary lunch, surely, that enthusiasm is easily matched, prompting the excitement and smile that’s present on her face to become the excitement and smile present on our faces. I wonder today how often she traveled. I wonder whether this trip represented a rare experience, if she was expressing the heartfelt enthusiasm of the novice traveler who has just returned from a first journey, or if she was an experienced traveler who never lost her sense of adventure. I wonder whether she continued, after this trip, to visit other, distant places, in a way that would probably be a bit unusual for most people in my city. And I wonder, too, how often she recalls this trip, now that so many years have passed, or if I just happen to remember this jar and her story more often than the person who actually made the journey.
What I don’t wonder, however, is why I remember our discussion, why this inconsequential lesson is rooted in my mind, because there was one detail, a stray word during her talk, that has always struck with me. I don’t believe that I would recall any of these memories if she hadn’t accidentally included this one extraneous fact about her visit. She just happened to mention, in an offhanded way, that you weren’t supposed to take the dirt. That the regulation was clear, and that it was against the law to remove dirt from the excavation site, but that she grabbed a handful when nobody was looking.
I believe that I know why she blurted out that fact. It was probably a slight brag, a moment of bravado, a desire to reveal a little rebellion. Nearly everyone likes to be seen as breaking the rules, and this fact also revealed more of her enthusiasm for the trip, so the extraneous sentence, in some ways, fit her story. But that one sentence about flaunting a rule is why this story has remained in my mind all these years.
When it comes to rules, I’m probably still trapped with the mind of a third grader, and not exactly the most mature when it comes to lines that can’t be crossed. That background seems pertinent for how I still remember her story. There’s the intellectual justification for rules—and that’s easy enough to comprehend—but there’s also my emotional reaction to lines, guardrails, regulations, strictures, standards, mandates, prohibitions, constraints—and that’s a tad more difficult for me. I don’t have the need to thwart the rules that surround life in society, I have little desire for artificial, childish rebellion, but I do find myself consumed with the notion that most rules in life are arbitrary, tedious, oppressive, and almost always unnecessary. Not too many people want to engage in a philosophical discussion about the authority and justification behind a stop sign, or a zoning law, but that’s where my my mind, with a surprising frequency, seems to drift. And I am forever shocked by the ease with which most people accept the legal code as indistinguishable from a religious code. They’ll argue the language, want a change, but never even consider the notion that the page where the law appears is gratuitous.
It also seems vital that at least some people push against the boundaries that we’re all expected to follow—which sounds radical until you consider the alternative: a society where everyone follows the rules exactly, thoughtlessly, obediently, in a situation that’s ripe for abuses of power. Anarchy certainly isn’t the answer, though a society in which nobody challenges or pushes or fights against even the most reasonable limits seems dangerous. While you don’t want everyone breaking the law in your society, it is more than a little portentous to live in a world where nobody breaks the law. Which is a very long way to say that the petulant child who forever asks why and complains about the unreasonableness of arbitrary bedtimes is a stage that I just haven’t passed.
And if you do happen to break the law, you want me on your jury, because I’ll most likely spend the trial pondering what theoretical justification the state possess to impose such an arbitrary set of rules upon an individual. The prosecutor will drone on about legal codes while my mind drifts to the foundations of representative government and the fictions that are necessary for nearly everything that we do. Yet there’s always been a divide in my mind—an implicit sense of how some rules exist because of scale. My mind, for whatever reason, seems attuned to the notion that some rules exist only because society ruptures if everyone breaks those rules, even if the individual act itself doesn’t trigger a negative consequence. How you leave your campsite doesn’t much matter, but we can’t all leave our campsites a mess; whether you spend all day fishing for endangered species doesn’t much matter, but we certainly can’t have the whole town fishing for endangered species; whether you rush to the front of a large crowd, skipping the line, doesn’t much matter, but it is quite the mess when the entire crowd tries the same tactic. In most cases, the distinctions in these rules seems clear, and I don’t need a paper or governing body or regulation to see the line, as the feeling emerges almost organically in my mind. And if you happen to break one of these more collective rules, the rules where you’ve done something that’s mostly harmless but that is really parasitic on everyone who follows the rule—then you don’t want me on your jury.
Which was my reaction to my third grade teacher. It was instinctive and immediate. It felt outrageous to do something that not everyone could do. The point wasn’t that she took an insignificant amount of dirt from Pompeii; it was that there’s a problem once everyone takes an insignificant amount of dirt. Even though I’m mostly apathetic about people crossing supposed boundaries, there’s something wrong, apparent even to a third grader, to crossing a boundary that makes you an exception. Without knowing the word, it sounded entitled to my young ears. It also felt, and I’m guessing that you’ve already considered this aspect, a very peculiar fact to tell a third grade classroom that you’re trying to teach to follow the rules. After writing all these words today, however, I can’t help but also notice that her statement about breaking the rules did, for at least one student, deliver the right lesson about rules, which is a nice paradox.
Twenty six years in law enforcement taught me that there is the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Some people violate the law for ill gotten gain, or because they just don't care about societal order. Others violate the law through inattention or mistake. Intent matters, but it is sometimes hard to discern.
I understand your point…if there is a foundation of discipline, there is basically little need for rules and laws…in the old days, parents educated their children on what’s wrong and right, nowadays children basically raise and educate themselves…so they grow into undisciplined adults that break laws and rules and don’t have the same common sense as you have…also, if governments would take care of people, there wouldn’t be a need for stealing, fraud, etc due to financial uncertainty…and there would be societies with better mental health…laws and rules seem to be the best way to control large populations….