Ah, there you have it…the stickler. We live in a society… communal living. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that other people would define our morality? That they would tell us what to believe in, that they would dictate our reality?

On the other hand, what would our society be like without those, “principles that……people in general consider to be right, honest or acceptable”…chaos…Dodge City?

There is safety in numbers; when others want what you want, you’re more likely to get it. So what does the individual want? They don’t want to be victimized, certainly. They don’t want to be wronged. So who says it’s wrong? Society says it’s wrong.

So we have agreements in a society. We agree to conduct ourselves in ways that make the majority happy and feel secure. The majority believes that all individuals ultimately will benefit from this reasoning.

Society says it needs everyone’s cooperation. When there is resistance to cooperation, society passes a law. Behind every law there is a penalty that punishes wayward members of the co-op. This is a simplified version of why laws are enacted but it works for our purposes here.