The spirit vs the letter

As a long time player and enthusiast of all sorts of games, from board games to roleplaying games to wargames using dozens of miniature soldiers, I've spent more than my fair share of time reading various rule sets. Some are simple affairs, designed simply as a framework for people to have fun. Others are more complex, designed to be a simulation of some aspect of real life. And yet others fill multiple volumes of books spanning hundreds of pages.

In the case of miniature games, many sets of popular rules start out as slim, simple affairs, and as they grow more popular, they also grow in size and complexity - especially if the rules become popular among a crowd who play them competitively in tournaments. The reason these rule sets get so complex is because as the rules become more popular, the people playing them become more removed from the rules designers. And the more removed they become, the harder it is for these players to distinguish the spirit of the rules from the letter of the rules.

In games, determining the spirit of the rules shouldn't be that difficult. After all, the primary purpose of a game is to have fun. So whenever a situation occurs in a game that isn't clearly defined by the letter of the rules, it should be pretty easy to determine the designers intent, right? After all, the intent is to have fun.

Or so one would think. The problem is that not everyone's idea of fun is 100% the same. Plus, in a game, the way a rule is interpreted can make the difference between who wins and loses. So sometimes even the simplest rule can cause discussions and even arguments among players. In most regular gaming groups, the outcomes of these discussions and arguments usually evolve into sets of house rules.Informal rules that resolve these disputes to everyone's satisfaction.

Each group tends to create it's own set of house rules. In some cases, these house rules are fairly common among groups for any given game. Particularly where there is good access to the rules designer and/or their designer notes.  Designers notes in particular outline the thought processes of those who wrote the rules, and quite often give a good insight as to their intent - or the spirit the rules are intended in.


That's just the natural evolution of friendly disagreements about the rules.  Exasperating the situation are those players who actively seek out and exploit the letter of the rules. They will use every ambiguity, every bit of semantics to twist things to their advantage. The adhere to the absolute letter of the rules, while often blatantly in violation of the spirit of the rules.

And so, between that, and the times when those house rules aren't so close between different groups, the rules tend expand to clarify those situations.  Especially for officially sponsored games and tournaments. The letter of the rules become more restrictive to reinforce the spirit of the rules.

The reason I mention all this is the same thing applies to the law. The legislative branch writes the laws with a certain intent.  The executive branch is supposed to uphold those laws in accordance with that intent. And the judicial branch is supposed to make sure both of the other branches stick to the intent of the Constitution.

The reality is, though, that the legislature will write the law, and the executive branch will follow that law to the letter. Fortunately, the legislature expects that to some degree, and tries to write the law specific to their intent.  But no matter how well they do write it, there will always be some exploit, something the judicial will have to clarify.

Recently, the original author of the Patriot Act, Wisconsin Representative Jim Sensenbrenner expressed his concern over the revelation that the NSA had been using the Patriot Act as a means of sweeping up the phone records of millions of Americans, as it was "never the intent" of the law.

This is really the problem of certain laws - their intent may be pure, but someone, somewhere in the executive branch will push past the spirit of the law into the letter of the law. And maybe even beyond it - like has been done with the Patriot Act.

This is why it's important to look at every law in how it could be abused, not with just what the intent is. Because a lot of people operate with the belief that rules were meant to be bent, if not outright broken.

Remember that...

Dealing with the Absurdity of a Pop Tart Gun

Many years ago, during my time as a junior petty officer in the Navy, our division got a new senior chief, and almost immediately, everyone in the division hated him. Yet, by the time I left there, he was my favorite chief. To this day, he still is, because of the many leadership lessons he instilled in me, mostly by example.

The base we were at had an absurd rule regarding when and where command baseball caps vs traditional naval white hats could be worn. I don't know how long the rule had actually been in place, but from at least before I got there. For the most part, the sailors most affected by the rule ignored it, as did those who should have enforced it. Everyone was happy.

Until this senior chief showed up. Almost immediately, he began requiring strict enforcement of all the rules in his division, including this absurd one. Most of us in the division were pretty understanding of the enforcement of most of the other rules, but the one about the baseball caps really, really rankled us. It didn't take long for us to hate our new senior chief over it.

After some time – probably only a couple of weeks, but it seemed like months at the time – he confessed to us that he, too, thought the rule was absurd. “Then why are you enforcing it!?!”, we practically screamed at him.

His answer was enlightening. Because sometimes the best way to deal with an absurd rule is not to complain about how absurd it is while ignoring it, but to show how absurd it is while enforcing it. That was the gist of his explanation. And with that explanation, the rest of the division got on board, and the rule began being enforced outside our division as well, to the point that no one liked our new senior chief. Not too long after that, the base commander changed the rule to a more realistic one we could all live with.

That lesson has stuck with me. I've rarely had need to use that method since, but when the story of the schoolboy disciplined for chewing his pop tart into a gun shape came about, I realized it's another great place to apply that lesson.

In case you hadn't heard the story, a 7 yr old in Maryland was suspended from school when a teacher overreacted to him chewing his pop tart into a gun shape. There has been a lot of various outraged reaction to it in the media, but it got me to thinking about how I would react if it were to happen to any of the children at my kid's school.

I've decided that my old senior chief's example is the best way to proceed. Let the school have their way, with the only response from me being “you realize you're setting a precedent with this absurdity, don't you? I will use that precedent against you in the future, and you will not like it.”

Then wait for the opportunity to arise, and because it's a school, it surely will. The teacher sends home an assignment with a map of Florida or Oklahoma on it? There's an opportunity (because those two states are as obviously as gun shaped as a pop tart can be) to storm into the school and demand that they apply equivalent disciplinary procedures to the teacher as they did to the child for sending home “images of guns.” Or show outrage at a student assignment or teacher handout that shows an image of the flag of West Virginia (which has guns upon it), or the Virginia state flag, (which could be considered worse, because it has a man standing with one foot upon the chest of a fallen (slain?) foe.)

The cool thing about being educated or just knowing how to do a little research is that you can find these things within their curriculum pretty easily. Things that should be right under a teacher's nose, that they should be aware of, but never, ever consider when they become a little too overzealous.

Situations like this highlight the problem with zero-tolerance policies, and over-zealous political correctness. But it can almost always be used against the very people applying the policies, if someone can remain calm enough to realize it. And frequently, until it's used against them, most of these types of people won't ever realize when they've crossed the line into absurdity. Indignant outrage rarely moves them, but a decent helping of common sense and critical thinking applied against them in the same manner they used almost always gets their attention.Or the attention of someone in a position to do something about them.

Never be afraid to fight absurdity with well-reasoned absurdity.

A quick footnote:

I'd like to make it clear that I'm not ranting against teachers, or school administrators here. In my experience, for every teacher or school administrator who does this, there are a hundred more whom are reasonable people, have common sense, and are good people. But given the multitude of educators that a child comes in contact with through out their school years, it's inevitable that most parents will encounter at least one like this. In most cases, another adult within the school will already be on your side, but just in case – remember, you can fight absurdity by taking it to the next level!