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People Obey Or Disobey The Law Many Essay

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¶ … people obey or disobey the law? Many individuals are inclined to feel that the modern society is too rigid and controlling because of the numerous laws that have been imposed through the years. These people consider that humanity was meant to be free and that a free society would function much better than one that obliges its members to take on particular attitudes. However, the truth is that humans are probable to trigger chaos if they are not controlled by a solid system of legislations. This means that a healthy social order would have to understand and respect laws in order for people to be able to live in peace.

Although law is one of the principal tools that assisted mankind in experiencing progress, many communities in the contemporary society have differing understandings of particular laws. While it might seem that the whole world can act in agreement with a certain system of legislations, some groups live in accordance with their own set of rules and believe that it would be absurd for humanity as a whole to respect the same laws. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the best examples that illustrate how people have different understandings of a set of common laws respected throughout the world. "Ideas of right and wrong and good and evil could be found in all communities, but what constituted a human right in one community might be an anti-social notion in another community" (ARE HUMAN RIGHTS UNIVERSAL?).

Not all communities in the world in the present consider that human rights are one of the most important concepts when considering the relationship between the authorities and citizens. Whether they are paranoid or not, many states that are reluctant to adopt the human rights agenda as an essential element of their community. They put across this attitude because they believe that Western powers are trying to start a wave of neo-imperialism by having them behave in a particular...

These groups have been accustomed to performing certain practices for most of their existence. This means that they would virtually need to abandon all of their principles and appreciate human rights as an active element of their society. Taking this into account, it seems less surprising that they believe Western players to have hidden interests in promoting the human rights agenda.
While it seems that it is perfectly normal for some cultures to have different understandings of human rights, the truth is that the majority of people have a clear understanding of the difference between right and wrong and between good and evil. It is practically impossible for someone to claim that he or she encourages practices like genocide or that he or she has no problem with considering women as being inferior. However, the fact that some societies are accustomed to promoting such values makes it difficult for their members to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong.

Surely, it is difficult to determine whether or not it would be right to obey the law as long as one lives in a community where certain values have been strictly set for centuries and even millennia. Even with this, most people are probable to consider that some laws are absurd while others are responsible for preventing the social order from entering a stage of chaos. What the masses need to understand is that "everyone breaks the law sometimes, and some people break it often" (Tyler 3).

Rules need to be obeyed in order to prevent chaos from occurring, taking into account that people would walk the streets stealing everything they can and virtually doing everything they want to without fearing that they are going to be reprimanded as…

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Atkins Edmundson, William, "The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings," (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999 )

Morris, Stewart, "Do we have an obligation to obey the law?," Retrieved October 29, 2012, from the Stewart Morris Website: http://www.stewartmorris.com/essays/05runciman4.pdf

Tyler, Tom R., "Why People Obey the Law," (Princeton University Press, 17.04.2006)

"ARE HUMAN RIGHTS UNIVERSAL?," Retrieved October 29, 2012, from the Danish Institute for Human Rights Website: http://www.humanrights.dk/human+rights/history+and+documents/are+human+rights+universal-c7-
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