Good and bad defined social norms, which in turn created social order, which in turn influenced the rise of the judicial system. The first thought I had while writing that was : How did a random group of people, no different than you and I, come up with the idea of creating rules that everyone would follow in order to maintain social order and hierarchy? The first thing I could think of was mutual beliefs. I then started to dig deeper and deeper. Before religion, before language, even before humans were a dominant species. At this time, people followed certain unspoken rules. Everyone would do the same thing. Why? It’s not because someone told them. It’s not because they all telepathically told each other “you do this, I’ll do that, we’ll all come together to achieve this”. The most reasonable and best answer I could find to that question is copying. Or rather influence. I’m doing it because I see you doing it. You are doing it because he is doing it. He is doing it because she is doing it. This keeps going on and on till we realise that there was no beginning to this. There was no first person who did this. This was a revolution of some sort and really helped shape humanity as we now know it.
When thinking about good and bad, questions such as : “Wasn’t it you who trusted that so-called leader?”, “Wasn’t it you who trusted a different leader who would have done the same thing?” and “Why are you abiding by these laws?” pop up. Well, influence is the answer, the initial answer at least. Soon after all of these norms were set, certain individuals took control of the population. Slowly but surely, laws were formed and punishments were set. These punishments were very brutal such as slow roasting over a fire, leaving people alone in the forest and even killing the son of a “sinner”. We have more lenient laws now, why do we still abide when there isn’t much to lose? Fear. Fear is the answer. Previously, I mentioned that “influence is the answer, the initial answer at least”. The answer currently isn’t influence but is fear. Back then we were blindly following people, but now since the system is set, we are fearful even if the outcome isn’t as brutal as before. We fear that our money and time would be gone. We fear that we are putting too much on our loved one to which we have a special unbreakable bond with.
