alt Hacker News> Rules aren’t guidelines
I think that is the biggest disconnect for me. To me rules are guidelines and I will break them when they do not make sense. Following the rules just because they are the rules doesn’t fit my style, although I live in a place when population density is very low so I understand that people bending the rules here has less of a consequence than bending the rules in densely populated areas.
Exactly. There are some “rules” that are perfectly valid, like “don't kill anyone,” but those make perfect sense and don't need much debate.
Plenty of rules are actually retarded and sometimes harmful if you follow them blindly. This is precisely how they got Nazism, and they like to pretend that it was only the bad guy Hitler's fault and a few other people's. If you know Germans well enough, it becomes pretty clear that a large part of the population was actually responsible in a small but meaningfull way.
I had a German exchange partner who refused to use the crosswalk unless the traffic light was absolutely green, even if there was absolutely no car or traffic around. That's just beyond stupid, and mindlessly following rules like that is how you get tyranny…