[MD] You can't do that, its not legal

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi John, you said
"If that still small voice is not completely stifled, they can hear it
and by grace, look away when you flout their rules, regulations and
reasons."

As I always quote
"Rules are for the guidance of wise men .... and the enslavement of fools."

Like any wise man, you weren't "flouting" the rules, but gracefully
applying a value judgement.

Regards
Ian

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 8:17 AM, John Carl <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> Whenever I hear that phrase, (and I guess I hear it a lot) I always sneer to
> myself over the stupidity on display.
> Of course I can do it.  I can make any choice available to me that I want,
> regardless of society's opinion, my values are not determined by the laws of
> the land.
>
> But most people, don't really want to examine the source of their values,
> and its silly to try and  argue with them when they don't wanna "go there"
> in the first place.    So I don't.  But deep down, it bugs me and I gotta
> vent to someone.
>
> Poor you.
>
> I thank Pirsig for turning an iconoclastic spasm into an actual moral
> stance, for heeding social patterns in the question of what is good, is the
> most immoral of behavior and I'm very proud that by inclination and
> training, i don't do it very much.
>
> I had time to contemplate this in the last 24 hours, during the time I was
> preparing for the first storm of the season,weather reports making out to be
> plenty energetic.  So I was doing the dance of the frantic procrastinator,
> my northern california mellow life transformed with pictures of all these
> projects and things left out in the rain.  Wood sheds not finished, logs not
> split, etc.
>
> So I worked 18 hours.  I was so tired, near the end, that my chest hurt.
>  Every step an aching, limping trudge.  But in a weird kinda way, fun.  I
> mean, I'm not talking Siberian outback or anything, I was right outside my
> front door, and able to keep an eye on the incoming storm via
> weather.comwhich offers up opportunity to track the rain at predicted
> 15 min.
> intervals.  Lu was amazed.  Made the comment, if we worked half this hard
> every day, our place would look like a palace, instead of the tin roof
> shack, teetering on the edge of the diggins.
>
> I agreed with her completely, and silently thought, "but I wouldn't like
> living in a palace.  I like living in a tin roof shack on the edge of the
> diggins.  I like the sound of rain on a tin roof, snuggled under an electric
> blanket in a back hanging, unheated  bedroom, dangling in space with my
> weird thoughts.
>
> I especially like it when my wood is all under the roof, and my woodsheds
> mostly done.
>
> Now what started this thread tho, was discussing the legality and all.
>  Because these particular structures are right on my property line,  which
> is illegal as hell, but as my house is four feet away from the property
> line, I can't exactly follow the county's ordnance of 10 foot minimum if I
> wanted to.  These are old houses.  I don't know exactly how old, but  built
> with square nails and hand-dug wells means it was before there was such
> thing as a county building department, and while I'm sure it's illegal to
> extend "grandfathered in" quite as far as I have, I really had little
> choice.  It's just unacceptable living next door to a whole 'nother
> household about 10 feet from my squalling brood.  I put that wall and lean
> -to roof up more than 10 years ago, just to make it livable for me and my
> neighbor.  Now,  they've come and inspected and ordered me to tear it down,
> but they haven't really forced me into anything because technically, they
> know I'm right.
>
> Somehow I was successful in appealing to that small sliver of humanity
> buried inside every bureaucrat, and they eventually just went away and
> stayed away.  It's a combinatin of a non-combative stance, while being a
> really good guy, just trying to get along.  If that still small voice is not
> completely stifled, they can hear it and by grace, look away when you flout
> their rules, regulations and reasons.
>
> Most of the warnings I get from people about flouting the law comes from
> those who've experienced very negative consequences or know some cautionary
> tale of negative consequences from flouting the law.  And I understand where
> they're coming from.  But the truth is, that same small sliver of humanity
> residing in every official functionary's heart that can detect good, can
> also detect self-interest.  In fact, that whiff of self-serving is what
> they're designed for, to regulate, to restrict and control.  You gotta
> by-pass the self-serving detector by being non-self-interested, and as we
> all know, once you can do that, you can do anything anyway.
>
> In my particular case, it's easy to seem disinterested because anyone would
> looking at my place would assume it.  But in my eyes and heart, and thanks
> to Pop Larkin, of the Darling Buds of May, I see in a whole different light.
>  My palace.
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