I still think about it quite a bit.
I think some rules are valid for a point in time and become invalid over time (e.g. some of the old Jewish rules around food probably made more sense before modern food mgmt standards).
And pg's point is people / kids follow rules without understanding them for the most part. Or they don't follow the rules for the most part. And a lot of progress comes from the scofflaws who aren't wedded to the current rule set and reject the nonsensical ones.
At some point democracy and not having a blood line king/queen was against the rules. I'm glad some people decided to look past those rules.
2. master follows the rules because he understands the rules
3. guru breaks the rules because his knowledge transcends them
Doing these out of order doesn't work very well.
And to the idea that I can change what's in my power - my actions. I have to accept the things I can't change, like the actions of strangers.
And I'm not a judge, I don't like judging people. Who knows, they may have a good reason. Walk a mile in their shoes, and so on.
If there are enough people who think like me, the rules will still mostly hold. And if not, perhaps it wasn't a good rule.
It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad".
I never really understood that kind of mentality, for 2 reasons.
1) When someone breaks the rules, and goes unchecked, it just encourages them to do it more and reinforces their belief that the bad behavior is acceptable. And there is something to the notion that seeing people break the rules degrades respect for the rules in general.
2) Every time someone breaks the rules, it's a tax on those who follow the rules. Why am I inconveniencing myself by following rules when others just go ahead and break them? Or in another way of saying it, especially when rules are only partially enforced, the people who follow the rules are made suckers. Better to not have the rule at all.
I guess this became a bit more frustrating to me over time (or maybe because of age) as I understand rules better and have an opinion on their validity (especially the history of them), to see people giving up on the idea of enforcing rules or standards at the request of people who break the rules, or people who just have sympathy for them.
Well then, why did we create the rules in the first place? Just toss the rules out, and let everyone go free-for-all, so that the rule-abiding people aren't paying a tax while others go "scot-free". So easy, isn't it, for people coming later to forget all the work that it took to experience and solve for these problems that we can just toss them out now.
There was the example of the MIT admissions director who had faked her PhD the whole time (or say, how some people get meaningless paper PhDs from no-name schools to increase their government job pay), and one of my grad school colleagues (toiling away for his PhD!) said, "You would go out of your way to report that? What harm has it done you?". I was incredulous.
Maybe I'm getting more conservative in my old age.