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%LEGALISM & ADAPTABILITY 780806
Homo Sapiens have become the dominant life form on
earth through superior adaptability. The species has
developed in ways which facilitate adaptation to all kinds
of environmental situations. Adaptability has to do with
adjusting to changing circumstances, and entirely novel
circumstances. We sometimes tend to view adjustability to
conventional behavior as adaptability---which tends to
confuse conformity with adaptability. A conformist
society tends not to be adaptable, and so tends not to
survive radical changes in the situations which the
society must deal with.
Some people base their behavior on what they perceive
to be universal personal laws---seeking to adapt to nature
by acknowledging the existence of universal personal laws
which are valid for all places/times. Such a view
promotes the notion that some particular way of coping
(which is in conformity with such personal universal laws)
will be eternally the most adaptable way of coping.
Such behavior may become irrelevant as circumstances
change in ways which were not anticipated in the
formulation of the "universal personal laws". Notions
of universality/eternity of "laws" and "response-
patterns" are not the basis for survival. What counts
is the ability to recognize and respond in novel ways
to novel situations. Thus conformist societies do not
promote adaptability/survival.
Legalism is a particular form of conformist behavior.
Legalism seeks to freeze a particular response pattern
which was developed to deal with a particular human era---
with its myths, perceptions, ways of
understanding and/or feeling, etc. To take one era and
freeze it into "eternal laws" which are designed to
control human behavior---is to prompt the victims of
those laws to rebel in ways which promote personal
changes which the "laws" did not anticipate. The
attempt to "freeze" an adaptive pattern tends to
generate requirements for pseudo-adaptability---while
prohibiting genuine adaptability; thus generating a great
need for authentic adaptability to the changes which
are occasioned by legalistic behavior. Legalism is
counter-productive in tragic ways.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
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