With the warming weather, my wife and I took our outside-deprived puppy for some much-needed exercise this weekend. The observations made on those trips got me thinking about a well-known thought experiment.
The Thomas Hobbes’ “State of Nature”, described in his book, Leviathan (1651), asks the question what would happen if we didn’t have laws. This weekend showed me the answer, at least here in Lloyd.
Retail Roller madness
We began our trip at the local grocery store, where customers don’t have to return carts to stalls or designated areas. Although most people appear to adhere to the request to return their retail roller to a receptacle, some did not.
No laws require it, so some people decide they don’t have to.
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Dog do-do for you
Next, we ventured to Bud Miller All Seasons Park. Signs posted throughout the park state a bylaw requiring pet owners to pick up after their pets. So, a law to enforce what I hope most pet owners consider common sense.
One trip around the loop will tell you, although many responsible pet owners pick up their pets number-two, again, many do not.
I was appalled to see the number of feces, big and small, that dot the trails.
Apparently there is no regard to the safety of other pets and small children who also traverse the area. So, even with a law in place, some in our society flout it and believe it doesn’t apply to them.
Treasured, timeless, trash
Last but not least, as the snow melts around town, we see loads of hidden goodies near our home.
It was bad enough in the fall when students at a local high school blatantly left garbage throughout their parking lot.
The dropped bags, wrappers, and cups blew willy-nilly everywhere in the neighbourhood. Now, the same garbage is starting to plug up local drainage grates, preventing proper relief from thankfully-melting snowbanks.
There is a law in place for that one, too. Public littering is part of another bylaw in the City of
Lloydminster.
The Hobbes theory concludes in part that life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short without laws. A weekend excursion into our community has me believing, he might have been right.
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