Maybe Fewer Laws to Obey

Years ago, walking through the Old Town section of Pasadena, my hometown, I saw something that has stuck with me over the years that I think points to at least part of the reason why we in this country are experiencing the divide we are. 

It was at the intersection of Colorado Boulevard and Raymond.  The intersection has a pedestrian scramble, where traffic is allowed to go East & West, then North & South, and then all vehicle traffic is stopped to allow pedestrians to cross in any direction to get to where they want to walk.  

When the motor traffic is allowed to flow pedestrians are supposed to wait until the vehicles are stopped and their WALK signal lights up.  This is to allow the vehicles to make smooth turns without having to wait or worry about people crossing the street.  Unfortunately, while I make a point of waiting to help the system work, other people will cross in the direction cars are going, forcing cars to wait to make their right hand turns, backing up traffic behind them.  

Long ago, relatively soon after the system was established, I remember standing at the southeast corner of the intersection waiting for my turn to cross when I noticed this “old guy,” who might have been only a little older than I am now, crossing with the traffic.  His wife, standing on the corner behind him, called out to him.  

“Henry!  HEEN-REEEY!”  

“Wha—?”  He waved his hand over his head without looking back and kept walking.  

“You’re doing it wrong?  Henry!  Ya hear me!  Look at the sign!”  

Henry looked up, finding one of the diagrams posted there showing how it was supposed to be done.  

He waved his hand over his head again, this time in the general direction of the sign he’d just spotted.  

“Ya can’t obey ALL the laws!”  

Henry kept strolling across the street.  His wife, hesitated, shifted back and forth, and then sprinted after him as fast as she could to catch up.  I’ve always assumed that she was afraid of what trouble he might get to on his own if she waited until the pedestrian WALK signs came on.  

The United States is, without a doubt, the country where individual liberty and the sanctity of personal choice is most supported.  It is the one thing, at least in our shared stated language, got right.  And it’s our best political ideal that we export to the world, finding proponents everywhere that work to make such ideals of self-determination real for them and the people of their countries.  It is one political concept we got right.  

Mostly.  We mostly got it right.  

Where I think we experience problems is when it becomes unbridled.  Or is never questioned, especially when the concerns of society or a group comes in contact with it.  

On the opposite side of the spectrum is Japan.  It is a country that has very similar laws as ours (we created their constitution for them after World War Two, modeling it on our own), but have a very strong sense of social and group responsibility.  The term they use is 集団意識, shuudanishiki, which means “group consciousness,” or putting the harmony and smooth running of the group ahead of your own personal desires.  

When I was younger, I thought that personal liberty, being able to say or do whatever you wanted without fear of reprisal or censor was the idea.  And I still think that it’s vitally important to ensure that we do not become like some autocratic society where “right thinking” is necessary to survive.  

But it was during my first trip to Japan back in 2007 when I started to reconsider that position.  

It coalesced for me walking back to my hotel from the Pacifico Yokohama Conference Center where I was attending the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) being held there.  I had been attending some of the after-convention parties usually thrown during the week.  It was late.  Or rather, very early.  About 2 AM.  I was strolling back to my hotel when I reached the Sakuragicho train station.  There, hanging out in front of the station entrance were three or four teenage girls, Junior High School to High School age, laughing and chatting with each other.  

Immediately, I started looking around.  Looking to see if there were any shady characters scoping out the girls.  I remember thinking something like, “IF I had a daughter, and IF I found out she had been hanging out in front of Union Station in Los Angeles at two in the morning, I would tan her hide something good to make sure she didn’t even think of doing anything like that again.”  

My thoughts can sound a lot like the way my dad spoke when I was growing up.  Especially if he’d caught me doing somthing like this.  

After a couple of moments, I stopped searching for danger.  Because, it came to me, there wasn’t any.  The girls didn’t feel threatened because there was no threat.  And that was because the Japanese sense of shuudanishiki had created a society where the threat was significantly less than it was in my country.  

That was when I made the decision that, IF I could get my country to move toward a more group/societal way of thinking, and IF I could motivate the Japanese people I met to move their country to have greater tolerance and respect for individual differences, then the societies of BOTH countries would be “better.”  Would improve their balance between individual freedoms and group/societal harmony.  

I can’t say that I made it my life’s goal.  I can say that, given the reaction to such simple steps to protect others from Covid, such as wearing masks and refraining from gathering in groups, we here in the U.S. have made not strides forward in this regard.  We probably took several steps backward, in fact.  

It is not an EITHER/OR proposition.  To me, it is an act of respect.  Of caring.  Caution and concern over how what I do may impact others.  I did not visit my family at all this holiday season because I don’t know with certainty that I wouldn’t carry something to them that would do them harm.  Not the type of present I want to bring with me.  

Right now, this country seems to be in the worst shape overall when it comes to the virus.  The highest rates of infection, the most deaths, the most people hospitalized.  Other countries where people are more inclined to comply with government guidelines, like Japan and South Korea, are doing much better.  Right now, politically, we’re more divided and angry with each than since 1860, right before the country nearly destroyed itself in a bloodbath that last almost five years and killed more people in combat than all the wars we fought from the American Revolution to the Korean War combined.  A division where I feel we’re losing the ability to even discuss our differences because we have already convinced ourselves that “they” are wrong. 

With 2021 right around the corner, combined with my efforts to be more optimistic and proactive in my efforts to change the circumstances of my life, I’m going to dedicate myself to my still firmly held belief that things will be “Better” if we think about how what we do will impact others before deciding what it is we individually want to do.  I’ll do my best to move myself in that direction.  And I’ll encourage others “over there” to do the same.  

And I won’t have to worry about “obeying all the laws,” because we won’t need so many laws anyway if we do.