Law is an artificial thing, something that we have invented wholecloth.
What we know as law now, I agree. But I think it has an organic basis in cultural norms upheld by communities.
There wasn't any need to write down the rules, they were chiseled into your brain by being raised within that particular social environment. I don't have any reason to believe that this would fail as a system to enforce order - the common criticism of "subjective" loses meaning when everyone involved shares the values and outlooks that give weight to that subjectivity.
Eventually, communities consider dealing with people outside their community. Whether it's the formation of a large town or even the simple tolerance of a merchant, these communities end up being asked and expected to produce a concrete list of rules that must be followed. The purpose is clear: to allow outsiders to interact with the community without accidentally breaking the rules. This easily shifts to allowing outsiders to comingle, immigrate and integrate successfully.
However, it invites some dangers. First, now any time that the community has a need to update its rules/values, it must engage that concrete list to update it. What was a simple process of communal understanding now demands the extra step of formalization, but this may involve negotiating with a law master when the community has to share territory with other communities. Second, because the purpose of the concrete ruleset is to be understood by outsiders, these outsiders must be consulted when writing the rules because what's easy for the community to understand may be hard for outsiders to understand. So now you've got outsiders able to sneak loopholes in with clever wording. Third, it invites outsiders to challenge the rules as written. Challenge is a good thing, but the process of making the results concrete can create the start of legalese by making the rules overcomplicated or harder to understand. Example:
Say a community has the rule "don't eat meat on rainy days". An outsider would challenge it, saying "rainy days" is too broad because one might eat meat for breakfast and end up breaking the rule due to rain at noon. So now the rule is "don't eat meat during periods of rainfall". Well what if the meat's in your mouth when it starts raining? "don't put meat in your mouth if it is currently raining". How much rain counts as raining? "don't put meat in your mouth if it is currently raining audibly". My hearing isn't good, can you give another indicator? "don't put meat in your mouth if it is currently raining audibly or the rain is enough to cover your hands in water" etc etc until you need to create a new job for the sole purpose of translating the rules.
The history example you give is solid. My only proper counter is that while the positives outweigh the negatives, the positives do not increase over time while the negatives do increase over time. It only really demands reform and/or rebellion, but that can get really messy.
Even with all this, I can't quite say that making communal rules into a concrete form for outsiders is a doom flag. I am autistically bitter about it, though.
[tagging u/exilde since I'm butting into the conversation]
I don't have any reason to believe that this would fail as a system to enforce order
It wouldn't fail on order.
It would fail to respect liberty.
Eventually, communities consider dealing with people outside their community.
History shows quite convincingly that communities with strongly enforced cultural norms inevitably choose a very specific way of "dealing" with outsiders.
I remember the 90's. The word Bosnia will always be a synonym for "fucking slavic neighborhate shitstorm" to me.
That's difficult to counter. On a level, I agree, and I'm forced to side with liberty. On another level, it is not inherently impossible for an insider to challenge their community's values/rules and succeed in creating an exception. I think that's a basic form of liberty. Obviously it becomes a problem when a community punishes every insider challenge with death, but I'd also say that such a community has doomed itself to annihilation. Similarly, I could go so far as to say that the ability to engage liberty by permitting insider challenge is an essential quality for long term success.
History shows quite convincingly that communities with strongly enforced cultural norms inevitably choose a very specific way of "dealing" with outsiders.
Yes, and those often caused problems for otherwise successful communities. But I have to consider "strongly enforced" to be a bit loaded because to me that means that they went beyond banishing undesirable members and violently threatened them into compliance, which I'd consider a liberty violation and proof of failure. Then it's a matter of how many outsiders they'll try to drag down with them before the outsiders hopefully make use of their successful policies to find sufficient military aid. And that is messy and ugly, but I think it's acceptable.
I'm unfamiliar with Bosnia, so maybe I've missed your meaning. If they're bothering people outside their own territory, I'd say they're inviting retaliation. If they're keeping to their own turf and being assholes, just cut off all exchange with them.
Yugoslavia was a political creation in the aftermath of WW2. It was outside the Warsaw Pact, but not much better for it. Six different slavic cultures (Bosnians, Croatians, Macedonians, Montenegrans, Serbians, and Slovenians) mashed into one nation governed by Josip Tito.
They all hated each other, but to his credit, Tito was probably the most competent dictator of the 20th century. Certainly the most successful. But eventually he died and whatever unity he contributed evaporated with him.
I can't tell you the difference between a Serb and a Croat... but THEY certainly can perceive a difference and it was enough for the entire country to spend pretty much all of Clinton's presidency trying to kill each other. And proper "shoot everyone in the village and then burn the village" kill each other. You only need to look at the map of AP minefields to grasp how bad this was. The whole country tore itself up in pieces and then fought over the pieces.
Looks a bit like a level from Sniper Elite, doesn't it? Well, that's basically what it was and whoever took this picture was probably shot at a few times.
NATO kept trying to get them to talk it out but the response of EVERYONE involved in the conflict was basically "NOBODY ASKED YOU!" and shoot at NATO until they could go back to shooting each other.
I want to note that this conflict saw the ONLY combat losses of F-117's (one shot down with the pilot being rescued, one damaged and written off).
Eventually things calmed down and now the map has Bosnia & Herzegovinia, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Kosovo, and the shooting is basically over aside from Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo.
I can't imagine what might have created tensions bad enough to erupt like that - I'm sure each party had an excuse they thought was valid. They probably lost sight of why the conflict started in the first place.
I don't think there's a satisfying solution to warring neighbors. You could jump in and force them to stop fighting, but you can't force them to negotiate. A skilled and neutral mediator wouldn't even be able to work if the parties involved refuse to cool their heads. You could try to install a new ruler, but there's no guarantee the new guy would help (and it sounds like some fucked up CIA stuff anyway). It's hard to solve even at a small scale of two individuals acting out a feud, so scaling it up to countries is naturally more complicated.
I assume no one really talks about places like Kosovo because the conflict has no end in sight? Well, it doesn't help either that I have no mental image to associate with them, so maybe it's hard for others to make an association as well. History stuff's cool, but I don't see how anyone can properly keep up with it all.
What we know as law now, I agree. But I think it has an organic basis in cultural norms upheld by communities.
There wasn't any need to write down the rules, they were chiseled into your brain by being raised within that particular social environment. I don't have any reason to believe that this would fail as a system to enforce order - the common criticism of "subjective" loses meaning when everyone involved shares the values and outlooks that give weight to that subjectivity.
Eventually, communities consider dealing with people outside their community. Whether it's the formation of a large town or even the simple tolerance of a merchant, these communities end up being asked and expected to produce a concrete list of rules that must be followed. The purpose is clear: to allow outsiders to interact with the community without accidentally breaking the rules. This easily shifts to allowing outsiders to comingle, immigrate and integrate successfully.
However, it invites some dangers. First, now any time that the community has a need to update its rules/values, it must engage that concrete list to update it. What was a simple process of communal understanding now demands the extra step of formalization, but this may involve negotiating with a law master when the community has to share territory with other communities. Second, because the purpose of the concrete ruleset is to be understood by outsiders, these outsiders must be consulted when writing the rules because what's easy for the community to understand may be hard for outsiders to understand. So now you've got outsiders able to sneak loopholes in with clever wording. Third, it invites outsiders to challenge the rules as written. Challenge is a good thing, but the process of making the results concrete can create the start of legalese by making the rules overcomplicated or harder to understand. Example:
Say a community has the rule "don't eat meat on rainy days". An outsider would challenge it, saying "rainy days" is too broad because one might eat meat for breakfast and end up breaking the rule due to rain at noon. So now the rule is "don't eat meat during periods of rainfall". Well what if the meat's in your mouth when it starts raining? "don't put meat in your mouth if it is currently raining". How much rain counts as raining? "don't put meat in your mouth if it is currently raining audibly". My hearing isn't good, can you give another indicator? "don't put meat in your mouth if it is currently raining audibly or the rain is enough to cover your hands in water" etc etc until you need to create a new job for the sole purpose of translating the rules.
The history example you give is solid. My only proper counter is that while the positives outweigh the negatives, the positives do not increase over time while the negatives do increase over time. It only really demands reform and/or rebellion, but that can get really messy.
Even with all this, I can't quite say that making communal rules into a concrete form for outsiders is a doom flag. I am autistically bitter about it, though.
[tagging u/exilde since I'm butting into the conversation]
It wouldn't fail on order.
It would fail to respect liberty.
History shows quite convincingly that communities with strongly enforced cultural norms inevitably choose a very specific way of "dealing" with outsiders.
I remember the 90's. The word Bosnia will always be a synonym for "fucking slavic neighborhate shitstorm" to me.
That's difficult to counter. On a level, I agree, and I'm forced to side with liberty. On another level, it is not inherently impossible for an insider to challenge their community's values/rules and succeed in creating an exception. I think that's a basic form of liberty. Obviously it becomes a problem when a community punishes every insider challenge with death, but I'd also say that such a community has doomed itself to annihilation. Similarly, I could go so far as to say that the ability to engage liberty by permitting insider challenge is an essential quality for long term success.
Yes, and those often caused problems for otherwise successful communities. But I have to consider "strongly enforced" to be a bit loaded because to me that means that they went beyond banishing undesirable members and violently threatened them into compliance, which I'd consider a liberty violation and proof of failure. Then it's a matter of how many outsiders they'll try to drag down with them before the outsiders hopefully make use of their successful policies to find sufficient military aid. And that is messy and ugly, but I think it's acceptable.
I'm unfamiliar with Bosnia, so maybe I've missed your meaning. If they're bothering people outside their own territory, I'd say they're inviting retaliation. If they're keeping to their own turf and being assholes, just cut off all exchange with them.
At a very high level...
Yugoslavia was a political creation in the aftermath of WW2. It was outside the Warsaw Pact, but not much better for it. Six different slavic cultures (Bosnians, Croatians, Macedonians, Montenegrans, Serbians, and Slovenians) mashed into one nation governed by Josip Tito.
They all hated each other, but to his credit, Tito was probably the most competent dictator of the 20th century. Certainly the most successful. But eventually he died and whatever unity he contributed evaporated with him.
I can't tell you the difference between a Serb and a Croat... but THEY certainly can perceive a difference and it was enough for the entire country to spend pretty much all of Clinton's presidency trying to kill each other. And proper "shoot everyone in the village and then burn the village" kill each other. You only need to look at the map of AP minefields to grasp how bad this was. The whole country tore itself up in pieces and then fought over the pieces.
THIS WAS SARAJEVO IN 1996.
Looks a bit like a level from Sniper Elite, doesn't it? Well, that's basically what it was and whoever took this picture was probably shot at a few times.
NATO kept trying to get them to talk it out but the response of EVERYONE involved in the conflict was basically "NOBODY ASKED YOU!" and shoot at NATO until they could go back to shooting each other.
I want to note that this conflict saw the ONLY combat losses of F-117's (one shot down with the pilot being rescued, one damaged and written off).
Eventually things calmed down and now the map has Bosnia & Herzegovinia, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Kosovo, and the shooting is basically over aside from Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo.
Wasn't it mostly about long unresolved arab/muslim encroachment?
I can't imagine what might have created tensions bad enough to erupt like that - I'm sure each party had an excuse they thought was valid. They probably lost sight of why the conflict started in the first place.
I don't think there's a satisfying solution to warring neighbors. You could jump in and force them to stop fighting, but you can't force them to negotiate. A skilled and neutral mediator wouldn't even be able to work if the parties involved refuse to cool their heads. You could try to install a new ruler, but there's no guarantee the new guy would help (and it sounds like some fucked up CIA stuff anyway). It's hard to solve even at a small scale of two individuals acting out a feud, so scaling it up to countries is naturally more complicated.
I assume no one really talks about places like Kosovo because the conflict has no end in sight? Well, it doesn't help either that I have no mental image to associate with them, so maybe it's hard for others to make an association as well. History stuff's cool, but I don't see how anyone can properly keep up with it all.