The old adage goes, "Rules are made to be broken." Rules are created as trampolines to take new leaps in culture. Do you agree? Or should rules be preserved? If so, how can you innovate in your field? If not, isn´t it true that your field would not exist without rules? What is the best attitude to taken towards established rules in science, medicine, politics, morals, art, literature, music, religion, athletics? Please offer specific examples of rule-conservation or rule-breaking drawn from fields that you know well. Name outstanding figures who obeyed or disobeyed rules and describe what they did.
Dear Nelson,
I reply to your question in context of breaking rules in the art. There are rules in art, which constantly tend to be broken by the artists looking for new creative solutions to understand phenomena. Artists before they reach success, in the artistic salons and galleries are often ridiculed after "shocking" the audience. That happened even with the way of painting by the French impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926), whose techniques aroused considerable consternation and resentment. The artist was mocked. However, due to the fact that Claude Monet did not succumb to the pressure of public opinion and unfavorable criticism - is today one of the world's leading impressionists. He broke the canon of "salon" painting and hyperrealism.
Artists provoke for centuries, however, I understand the difference between a talented ones or just needing the provocations. In my opinion not every artist who wants to break the rules in art is an artist. Sometimes it's just celebrity looking for provocations or fame.
Below his Garden in Giverny, France, 1900.
There are few greats Bill Gates, Zuckerberg- all were college dropouts and see their extraordinary contribution to the society, so in my opinion we should listen to our heart what we want, there is no point in breaking a law if you are not sure of why you were against the law.
http://www.indiabix.com/group-discussion/rules-are-meant-to-be-broken/
Rules are made to be broken. Nintendo experimented and came up with its own guidelines. The company found more frequent mailings can be a successful tactic
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2138290/nintendo-case-study-rules-are-made-be-broken
It depends upon the type of rule in question. With the changing scenarios it is necessary to adopt, and accordingly the rules can be amended to suit the current conditions. This will apply to all type of rules. If the rule is becoming an obstacle for progress obviously it needs to be changed.
A great discussion can be seen here:
http://www.indiabix.com/group-discussion/rules-are-meant-to-be-broken/
If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere. - Marilyn Monroe
You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.
Richard Branson
On its face value, it is a pragmatic approach. The rules must be followed, it gives stability to any orgnisation. Rules may be sacrificed higher causes or when they become irrelevant.
Actually, the answer to this complex question, to me, seems very simple. Rules are meant to be broken--but only when the scale of human experience diminishes rather than improves because of such rules. Laws, in a sense, are rules that govern members of a society, but, by their very nature are meant to be broken when they harm society.
In the USA there were laws that hurt society (Jim Crow, Poll Taxes, anti-miscegenation laws: Loving vs. Virginia, slavery, etc.) that were deemed essential to the proponents of these laws. Slavery was an economic engine (Tabaco, Rum, Slaves) in the founding century of the USA. However, slavery as a rule of law proved to diminished human experience and did not improve it! There are countless other examples of rules that needed to be broken to improve human experience because they proved to diminish it. Therefore, societal rules are meant to be broken; breaking such rules is an essential requirement for an improved human experience.
Dear Nelson,
In art, literature and music there is but one rule: quality. Question is who are able to recognise, understand and evaluate a new quality!
Dear Nelson,
Morals are built up on traditions. How is it possible to create new ethical rules without experience? See the newest pseudo-ethical rules which negate ethics!
Dear @Nelson, I think rules are made to be respected and rules to be preserved.
Dear Nelson,
Science needs collective approval of new rules (natural laws) thorough accepted methodology and evaluation. Reflecting systems in this evaluation are crucial. Subjectivity and authority often play a major role.
Dear Kamal, I appreciate your way of respecting rules at the Hashemite University. I just learned that politician speaks 2 languages: one for media on the phone.This is creative thought, dear Kamal, thank you.
My reflection and conclusion after reading many comments above is: we, academics, are mostly followers of the cultural rules, grounded in our countries. We do not break social life norms, health norms, safety norms etc., because we are mostly in good or well mental health conditions. We only try to be breakers in professional scientific creativity.
In my own personal view, a big yes. Rules are fundamental for conserving or preserving the world. But innovation and change do happen either against the laws, or else also in spite of the laws.
Conservative people will always keep the laws above anything else. Innovation and change, transformation and novelty imply breaking the laws.
The world would be dead boring if the rules could not be broken!
Dear Beata,
Generally, articles of rule breakers are often not accepted by journal editors. Many journals focus on mainstream ideas of a given scientific field. Please, ask some physicists how and where is it possible to describe original ideas?
Dear All,
Social laws should be binding legal statements to promote goodness and civility in society to benefit and protect each and every member.
Laws of society that are intended to favor and benefit a particular group of people and heart and demean others are destined to be not broken but thrown out ( being broken has a possibility of being amended).
For instance all laws Reginald mentioned above, laws imposed on colonized countries, were laws of inequality, subjugation and exploitation - which by modern thinking are barbaric and wrong, so should be abandoned as wrong.
But laws of science, that confirm natural laws should be obeyed flawlessly, since such laws are sensitive to small perturbations - cause huge and unexpected outcomes. Only when a law of science fails from its foundations and leads to a wrong result that it is destined to be corrected or abandoned.
Dear Beata,
I am glad I do not follow the present cultural “rules” of my country.
Dear All,
Who are able to have independent and original ideas can and should brake rules, who are not able should follow them.
Don 't you speak everyday Hungarian for ex. ? This is one obvious cultural rule of your country, dear Andras.
Just a tentative thought: Maybe there are rules “before”, “meanwhile” and “after”?
1. Rules “before”: E.g. some social facts like marriages etc. could not take place without preliminary regulation. We do not decide in that moment to establish a new rule. You can evade and you won’t get hurt.
2. Rules “meanwhile”: some rules that govern our social life are not explicit, e.g. mutual respect. The fact that they are not explicit can create a different relation to them in our daily lives. We do not ask ourselves every day whether we should go on with them.
3. Rules “afterwards”: breaking the rules of musical harmony led to fascinating new experiences. All the rules for the arts were “post festum”. They were a description of the past the very moment they were established.
As a matter of fact, it is probably the most salient feature of life in general. If you allow to put this way: physics imposes a number of laws upon life, but life is possible precisely because she breaks those rules.
The very concept of "law" or "rules"has a sort of physicalist aura - nothing related to life at large.
Another great topic from a sophisticated and deeply intellectual person, but still with a sensitive soul, gently oriented and open to cultural variety and changes, as I imagine Nelson Orringer should be... Am I wright...? :-)... Regarding this very challenging question, in my opinion, the answer is certainly not easy and it cannot be generalized, butin my opinion, in principle, yes - the rules are indeed made to be broken, otherwise no progress would have been possible... As in one of the most emblematic phrases in the famous "Pirates of the Caribbean" 1st movie: "...the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules."...
As far as I remember there was a game where the players could change the rules while playing. When it’s your turn, you could propose to change the direction - or propose that you should get money from the others just in case someone diced three times a six.Then there will be a voting on that proposal. The idea is to find out whether there can be an equilibrium that emerges without being directly planned.
When launching a question, the author must at first refrain from answering until the question generates a few responses. Despite the fact that I am not the sensitive intellectual that dear Svetlozar imagines me-- he must have caught the Portuguese habit of seeing people and objects in the best light--, I NEVER expected that this question would produce so many answers in so little time. I will respond to everyone in due time. But I want to offer an example of recent rule-breaking in medicine to break new ground in ophthalmology. If the researchers reading this response ever lose their vision, they can follow my example in undergoing a rule-breaking procedure.
From my mother I inherited AMC, age-related macular degeneration, a condition accounting for blindness in most aging individuals. Yet I write books and need to see. The drug Avastin was used until very recently to treat colon cancer by preventing colorectal vessels from spewing forth liquid. It occurred to some ingenious ophthalmologists to break the rule for Avastin usage and apply reduced doses to the macula. Liquid accumulating there reduces vision. The theory is that if the optical vessels are prevented from emitting their liquids, blindness can be prevented, vision recovered. Little by little, as a result of Avastin injections every eight weeks, I am recovering my vision in my ailing left eye and can now read with it again. "Rules were made to be broken"!!!
I think, if rules made by human, then yes it is made to be broken for development and changing the stream. However, rules and laws made by nature cant be broken but the application and interaction with it are varied to boost the development of the globe.
Not all rules are meant to be broken. There are few rules which needs to be upgraded for the well being of the present society.
Rules are always good to make to define boundaries for the benefit of mankind Unfortunately, two kinds of people break the rules: 1. Socially irresponsible one who is punished; 2. That person who was in rule-making committee, does not get punished
Yes, Venkata, you are right when you say that rule-breaking leads to innovation "sometimes," but not necessarily always!
Bernd, we are not aware of all the laws that regulate our existences. Hence, we cannot really tell whether we are breaking rules or not!
András, if I were a physicist I would join you in breaking rules.
Subhash, "That person who was in rule-making committee, does not get punished." How many times I have seen police breaking the speed limit when not even in pursuit of anyone.
Yes, Mahfuz, some rules are absolutely unimpeachable: those whose transgression would cause the society to fall apart, like laws on murder or stealing. As to rules needing upgrading, here in the U.S. we are in a quandary about how to upgrade our immigration laws in view of the illegal entry of so many useful immigrants.
Carlos, you sound like a vitalist, speaking of life in general transgressing its own laws. ¡Viva la vida!
Orkid, absolutely right: if only we could all be multicultural! Think of how few prejudices we would have!
Martin, this game of breaking the rules while playing sounds suspiciously like politics!
Dear Kamal, So you are an advocate of graceful rule-breaking! except as a university president-- no wonder you have said that you would rather return at times to surgery!!
Ehsan, a splendid two cents on rule-breaking, one allowing no room for argument!
Dear Beata, how grateful we should be that Monet was a rule-breaker. The painting of Giverny that you affixed offers graphic proof!
Martin, The linking of rules to major biographic events makes perfect sense. The simultaneity of making and breaking rules in art makes all art avant-garde by definition!
So, Arno, truth transgresses human rules! A profound observation.
The question, Nageswara and Kamal, is whether Marilyn DID get anywhere. I have seen arguments pro and con. (I have always been a big fan of hers.)
Mohammad, rules often masquerade as a "higher cause" and it is up to us researchers to unmask them.
Yes, Reginald: are rules life-promoting? Then keep them. If not, dispense with them. I wish we could apply this principle to our U.S. immigration policy in the U.S.!
Dear Beata, What you just said offers much food for thought: we researchers want to épater les bourgeois but only succeed in épater ourselves!! If we broke academic rules, all our tiny world of research would come tumbling down.
Dear Abadallah, In all my research I have tried to show that respecting rules and breaking them are strangely compatible. You can parody a composer in such a beautiful way that you actually show respect for his music. Maurice Ravel did this in "À la manière de... Borodine" by imitating Borodin´s musical style, yet coming out with a very beautiful composition of his own. I will affix the youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4jTZFgkGaE
If there is penalties whenever you break the rules thus breaking rules is minimized. I agree not all rules should be broken. If such things are happening, forest rules prevailed.
Rules in the arts:
There is a German painter, Marion Aschendorff, she makes drawings according to rules, she imposed to herself. As far as I understood her, it makes no sense for her to break these rules because the drawings would lose their particular character that makes them a family of drawings with an internal development.
https://plus.google.com/103078578878569754272/posts?hl=de&partnerid=gplp0
Estimated take your question and proceed to try to respond to your concern.
Every rule reflects the status of organizational origin, in order to set a parameter to base a process where a society, science or culture.
While the rules tend to keep a process, the same is divergent unsuspicious when we talk about human rules; since these are based on the experience thus rules are based on a knowledge of the past and the same; which as time goes by these rules can break or fade by the dynamics of society, culture and science.
In my particular field (sports, high performance, health); one in the first instance be based on natural rules, which go beyond the very limited human and that ultimately, it commands our future in the process of life and death.
However, despite these significant limitations, the human being does go some breaking by mechanical, chemical, physiological and even psychological environment; this because our future at the same time allows to evolve to what presents the environment (the great feature that highlights him from the rest of the other species, in my opinion).
Punctuate, I can point out for example the case of Emil Zatopec an average runner in the early 50s, which broke training schedules fashionable at the time, models based on pulse rate (140 bpm) and training volume; me explain ... at that time I thought the entrenameinto was based solely on maintaining a certain rate of beats per minute in large volumes of kilometers traveled. Nevertheless, Zatopec, in their relentless need to overcome their own limitations, made a change to the rule stating that pulsations should alter the maximum levels and bridging the gap with lapses that allowed repetitions cause adaptation.
This was no longer necessary to travel 20 km daily newspapers, but I could do a number of repetitions of 400 meters or less to high intensity (that will come to try to go) to comply with a certain time each repetition, that provoke the body the necessary adaptations favorable (higher oxygen consumption, drop in blood metabolites, mechanical efficiency, psychological strength, etc.) to lower test times.
Situation for which he was treated for "crazy", his unbridled and desvocada only way to train him tired before time is discussed; situation that he was in the Olympic Games in London (1948) and Helsinki (1952) refute and get gold background on tests in which he participated.
Well, at least for me, "rules are made to be broken", however those rules must necessarily be created by humans, as only respond to an action, attitude or thought of other humans whose experience has given the phenomenology of any particular act or claim to deliver a clear order for us to maintain a process over time.
I hope to be helpful, and thank you for inviting me to give my opinion.
Regards,
Dear Nelson,
I'm under impression of the rule you broke while changing the method of treating your AMC. Very brave step.
“The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.”
― Banksy, Wall and Piece
Watermelon is the most expensive fruit in terms of numbers but the cheapest per kilos! Rules don't change, find criterion!
Nope!
Dogma should be avoided and evaded when dealing with rules derived from policies based on principles as policies and/or principles are not perfect!
Period!
Rules are necessary for a society, but we should not forget that have been imposed by the established class. So breaking a rule might be good at soem instances and bad for some others. In an "ideal society" that the rules are compatible with society, and the rules express peoples wishes, then rules will not be braked!
Rules are made for running a society towards its development and stability. If some rules are not logical or convenient for human evolution or blocking they should be broken or upgraded. However the key question in some societies is who puts the rules never follow them, and/or puts short-lived rules for his benefit and /or dictated rules for some lobbies benefits. Agree with @Costas, that people in power make their rules for their needs, and for enhancing or absolute power ship;
Bernd, your comparison of rules to organisms interests me and could generate a whole monograph! You Viennese-- Mozartians and Freudians-- are genial.
Fairouz, we have often noticed in this thread the tendency of rule-makers to set themselves up as superior to their rules and become rule-breakers. Thanks for underscoring the point. By analogy, philosopher of religion Miguel de Unamuno envisioned God as irrational because He is superior to all rules of reason. Hence He is supra-rational.
Costas, you make an interesting point that rules are submitted to human wills.
Tobias, your distinction between dogma, principles, and rules requires much reflection! So does your distinction, Mahmoud, between rules and criteria (criterion from krinein, to select, to decide from among many possibilities).
Beata, today my ophthalmologist tested my vision, and there has been a dramatic improvement! How happy I am that I broke the rule! I recommend that other researchers who start losing their vision break the same rule.
Francisco Javier, I am so glad that you mentioned the case of Emil Zapotec and your own case of passing beyond your established physical limits. I needed to hear from a sportsman!
Martin, thanks for educating me on Marion Aschendorff. Your point is important because if the creator of rules has the option to BREAK them, she also has the freedom to RESPECT them, provided that such freedom obeys some greater scheme. The rule-maker is godlike in this respect.
Hashem, we never considered penalties for rule-breaking until your fine contribution. That raises the question of penal deterrents: how much do our prison systems deter future crime? Should capital punishment be universally banned? (I personally believe that it should.) I also believe in the universal prohibition of torture, and I deplore the existence of Guantánamo Prison as counter to whole system of ideals of the U.S.
Dear Kamal,
Your presidential "inflexibility" towards foreign dignitaries reminds me, on a much more modest scale, of my own career as university professor. Students are often more inventive at devising excuses than at performing their studies. Our university regularly excuses non-performance because of health reasons. What about delayed performance because of an alleged temporary deficiency in vision? I excused this delay because in class and submitted papers, the student in question did outstanding work. On the other hand, a student intended to miss a final exam because she would be attending a wedding. Her mother telephoned me begging me to excuse the student. I refused and failed the student (who was performing failing work all semester long). In another string, I mentioned the most inventive excuse of all: a student was absent from an exam because, as she afterwards told me, she was neutering her horse... and her knife missed the mark!!! Needless to say, she too failed the course (and had been failing all along).
Dear Nelson, your personal story is insightful enough. The most basic and fundamental criteria find their true rationale en facing life. I am not a Kantian (universal laws no matter what). Life teaches us wisely when and how to break rules. Your story about health is a conspicuous one. Hence...
I do have the impression that the one - in general - who favor breaking the rules are closer to life (sciences), biology, ecology and poetry. Formal disciplines and practices - such as law, management, and finance - become serious hurdles that impede getting the point on a such a marvelous thread as this one.
Of course, one may not generalize….!
Dear Nelson,
when I saw your question I immediately remembered a text I read a couple of years ago. It was one chapter from a book called "Transgression (Key ideas)" - Chris Jenks.
And what called my attention was the observation that whenever we transgress a limit, at the same time we are crossing boudaries we are somehow reinforcing them, because when we assume that we are crossing them, we ratify their existence.
But most important of all is that even when we assume that there are limits, boundaries (or rules), if we trangress them, we are also callenging them.
In the same way, I think that rules may have been done to be broken.
Rules may be a kind of attempt to control contingencies and give us some kind of stability. But is it possible to maintain such control and stability unchangeable?
So rules may be broken and transgressed in order to "maintain" their existence but also to be changed across time (and space).
I´m trying to find the text among my things but I can´t find it...
I´ll try to bring you some quotation later.
I´ve just found it!
"To transgress is to go beyond the bounds or limits set by a commandment or law or
convention, it is to violate or infringe. But to transgress is also more than
this, it is to announce and even laudate the commandment, the law or the
convention. Transgression is a deeply reflexive act of denial and affirmation.
Analytically, then, transgression serves as an extremely sensitive vector
in assessing the scope, direction and compass of any social theory, as we
shall see." (Jenks, 2003, p. 2).
See if you like it.
Many thanks, Maria Aparecida, for the Jenks quote. Hegel´s dialectic is lurking in its paradox about transgression. Transgression for Jenks means "Aufhebung," simultaneous denial and supercession. So the breaking of a rule means its conservation in potential. We see this in all the arts. Jenks is applying it to social theory.
(Incidentally, your English is superlative in style. I wish my Portuguese were a tenth as proficient!)
Dear friends:
I still await your responses to my questions about the institutionalization of sanctions against social rule-breaking: does the prison system function well in your countries? What about torture and capital punishment? In the next few days, I will be away from RG, visiting my grandbabies in Arizona, but will respond Tuesday.
If we compare the statistics of rules followed and rules broken, I would say that 80 percent of the time, rules are followed. Rules are made to be followed but sometimes they are broken.
Unfortunately rules are made for the weak people and not for those who have power. History has shown us that this is a fact for international relations too and not only for a society and its laws. I think that the law system should change and take care about that fact. How? It is very simple:
*Every time somebody breaks the rules, then he/she has a certain penalty which will decrease his/her personal rights at the future.
Dear Nelson,
many thanks for your reply, comments and compliment - I usually try to do my best because I´m an English teacher. But I´m always learning new things about language.
Concerning the dualism maintenance / questioning rules and limits, I´ve been reading a little about paradoxical ways of analyzing social phenomena and I´m delighted with the possibilities. As I am still reading a lot to write my doctoral thesis, as soon as I have some analysis and considerations I will share it here.
Have a nice trip and enjoy your family!
Dear Maria Aparecida,
All we language teachers are constantly learning new things about language. It seems to have no end. Also, rules in language are broken or bent in different ways in different periods. I suppose that this breaking or bending leads to linguistic innovation. For instance, I have studied the history of the Spanish language. Queen Isabella in the late fifteenth century, by Latinizing Castilian, made it more conservative than a number of the other Peninsular dialects. This is a clear example of bending rules backward. English has a different evolution. Read Chaucer´s English: unless studied, it is incomprehensible to the modern English speaker.
Dear Eddie,
Unfortunately, in that 80% of the time that rules are followed, their followers never reflect on them, but take them for granted as we take for granted the presence of the ground under our feet as we walk. We usually reflect when we BREAK the rules instead of when we follow them. I side with Demetris in calling for the penalizing of all who break them without exception (provided there is no pressing justification). Whatever the circumstances, the main purpose of my thread is to provoke reflection about rules, about the desirability of conserving them and about the possible needs for bending or breaking them.
Imagine if the Law System had such an opportunity:
*OK, you broke the 'rule', not the Law, but since it is not worth sending you in jail, I will cut a subset of your individual rights, just to understand the damage that you have done to a potential or existed colleague of yours.*
I also think that such a regulation could be established also in Academics...
Dear Orkid,
You will not be surprised if I tell you that, although far away from Texas, I can understand 100% what you have written... You see, here in Greece, even if I am a male, I am facing similar problems with yours, concerning the mentality of people who have the 'chairs' and the power.
It is our insistence that will break the ill connected status quo...
Regards,
Demetris Christopoulos
Dear Orkid,
Your information about anti-Semitism of south Texas is disheartening but not surprising. It sounds as if Austin-- and you can add Lubbock-- are liberal islands in a sea of rule-disregarding reactionaries. I have lectured in those two cities and so can attest directly to their scientific attitudes. As to the rest of Texas, I have no direct experience of it and will rely on yours. Good luck to you.
Dear Orkid,
I wish I had good advice about southern Texas, but I don´t really know that area. Come up and visit us in liberal New England, between the metropolises of New York and Boston. You will feel more at home as we do.
To return to the subject of making, keeping, and breaking rules, I know that many civilizations advocate imitation of nature. Does nature always obey laws? Does the natural order show any "lapses" in obedience? I can think of two examples of lapses: the stars and planets seem to move in fixed orbits, yet the comets appear to follow random movement. The genes of all primates are overwhelmingly the same, yet the human primate displays a minimum of genetic difference. Vive la différence! Mankind in itself is the exception to the rule of nature. So the 80% tendency to obey rules obtains in nature as well as in human civilization, while innovation is exceptional. Any comments?
Thus we end up again with the Pareto 80-20 empirical law? :)
We have lack of data about intelligence civilizations of planetary size, since, despite all, we do not have information about extraterrestrial beings.
So, we cannot conclude that Mankind is the exception, probably 'Mankιnds' are 'fragile entities' and need an isolated and protected environment like our solar system, in order to 'flower'...
So instead of universes, dear Demetris, we should speak of "multiverses" (see William James)? If these are the case, then we beg the question by calling mankind the exception to the rules of nature. We need to research the question much more.
Dear Nelson, I have been thinkiing about universe(s) many years...
My relevant question is here:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Should_we_move_towards_a_totally_new_cosmological_paradigm?_tpcectx=publication_detail#53dca048cf57d753198b4584
You are welcome!
I knew I had read something similar in Pascal: “The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short, it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God that imagination loses itself in that thought.”
Berndt, we only said that those of us who are weak (i.e., subject to law enforcements) have to satisfy the rules. The legislators and the enforcers themselves rarely have to obey them. Maybe you can add something to this thought.
Dear Bernd, I have visited Brazil on two occasions, and while there teaching philosophy at a seminary, I accompanied the seminarians and priests to a women´s prison in Brazilia to see them lead Mass. Seminarians and priests alike felt nothing but sympathy for the impoverished female inmates. This tells you that the weak languish in the prisons of the strong. More of the U.S. population is imprisoned than ever before, and the great divide between the economic classes grows daily here.
Another example of the dreaded divide between the weak and the strong in Brazil:
Before coming to the seminary in Brazil to teach as a visiting professor, I asked my hosts whether it was appropriate for the professor to wear a tie to class. "Oh no!," they responded, "You will be taken for a politician!"
Bernd, where were these learned young prisoners locked up? In Vienna? In the prisons of Brazília, I met only poorly educated women with no financial resources. What you tell me is most surprising.
Bernd, the jails that I saw in Brazil resembled giant barns rather than monasteries. Consider the quantity of natural resources in a subcontinent like Brazil as contrasted with the quantity in a small country like Austria. Is it any wonder that Brazilian politicians have so little respect among the general populace, at least insofar as I have been able to ascertain? If there are any Brazilians reading this thread who can correct me, I will welcome the correction.
Dear Bernd, Imprisonment, as far as I can tell, was much less systematized in Brazil. These women seemed relatively harmless. One can only imagine what trivial misdeeds they had committed. Consequently, they were treated with the utmost nonchalance by the authorities. What you describe in Austria is utterly unconscionable, but I can imagine it happening in other countries. For instance, leaving for a moment the prison systems and taking the celebrated example of neglect of war veterans in the U.S., the falsifying of records of veterans´ requests for health care in Phoenix, Arizona, resulted in deaths and uncared for serious illness. It was discovered that this gross negligence was widespread in veterans´ administration hospitals through the U.S. Although there were token firings of head bureaucrats, it remains difficult for everyone to believe that the system has changed.
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