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The Law of Laws Posting Date: May 18 2008 1:03AM As far as we know, it started in Mesopotamia, which is one of those countries without an Olympic team, like Guernsey.
In Mesopotamia, nearly 5,000 years ago, Hammurabi was in charge. He was so in charge, in fact, that he was able to describe himself, without irony, as “the prince, making riches and increase beyond compare; sublime patron who purified worship and conquered the four corners of the world.” Hammurabi did not, as far as we know, conquer Saskatchewan, so in retrospect, he looks like a bit of a braggard.
What Hammurabi did do was to set down on paper, or perhaps it was on tablets or rock or whatever, the first recognizably modern code of law. In fact, his code of laws was 282 laws long, which probably made the Mesopotamians of the time complain until the cows came home about red tape and top-heavy bureaucracy, but looking back now, you have to admit that sounds pretty efficient. Today, you can’t enter a contest for an Oh Henry without signing legal documents longer than that.
Hammurabi’s laws make for interesting reading. The first law, in fact, begins with the entertaining subordinate clause, “If any one ensnare another.” So, right off the bat, you have to admire a society that creates some sort of prohibition against ensnaring, because I’ll tell you right now, ensnarement is a blight on our culture that is rotting us from the inside out.
It turns out that the punishment for ensnarement without proof is death.
Hammurabi meant business. In fact, death was also the penalty for receiving stolen goods, purchasing a slave without a witness or contract, breaking a hole into a house, and bringing an accusation against a man who does not sink in the river. Most of Hammurabi’s laws governed commerce and affairs financial, such as inheritance, restitution and the buying and selling of cattle, grain and asses (both the four legged asses and the other kind).
As diverse and comprehensive as Hammurabi’s laws were, they had one thing in common – they were laws because Hammurabi declared them so and he had the power to enforce them. Over time, the laws evolved and changed and it is important to remember that at no point were the laws universally and identically applied across the entire known universe.
This is true of most of the laws we would call laws. One society has a law against internet fraud, another does not. One society decides not to enforce strictly its laws against marijuana use, others do. These are human laws and they are subject to the vagaries, changes and inconsistencies of human nature and human society.
But there are other laws, unchangeable, natural laws that apply universally. We do not write these laws, we simply observe them. The most famous of these is Newton’s Law of Gravity which governs the way apples fall to the ground. Newton didn’t invent the law. He didn’t enforce the law. The law existed without him and it governs the movement and attraction of objects in the universe without him and without prejudice, rest or corruption (I don’t want to hear any grumbling from you physics professors out there. I know I’m simplifying things. I’m writing an internet column named after a monkey. If you want scientific rigor, go listen to Quirks and Quarks.)
So clearly, there are two kinds of laws – those like Hammurabi’s which are created by human authorities and are malleable, and natural laws that are immutable and exist beyond our influence whether we want them to or not.
Now this is my question … since when did fast food delivery become one of the second type of law? Pizza and Chinese food get delivered. Sometimes submarine sandwiches, possibly fried chicken and now Pizza Hut is offering delivery pasta. Shouldn’t there be more options? How did this happen? How did it become an immutable law of nature that Thou Shalt Not Deliver a Cheeseburger? How come I can’t dial up and have someone bring a nice chocolate cake to my door? Or maybe a tower of onion rings?
There are clearly powers at work here that defy my understanding. |
