Comment by amackera

15 years ago

Conversely, breaking all the rules almost always makes you a bad person.

Nobody can ever break all the rules - the laws of physics might have something to say about it.

If you limit your statement to "all the rules of the society in which you live", I'm not sure your statement is true. What do you think of Oskar Schindler? Womanizer, cheat, Nazi, fraud, and traitor. Yet he saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during the holocaust, and ended up as the hero of a movie.

The way I work this out is to consider that there are rules, and principles. Breaking some rules is ok, as long as principles are solid behind. Moral principles tell me I should not betray my friends or my family, for example. If the issue is whether or not I should game SEO, lie to my boss or scan competitor servers for vulnerabilities, it is more on the "rules" side.

If I break a rule, I still can stare at myself in the mirror, and I will even be able to tell this to my children when they will be grown-ups. If I happen to break one of my moral principles, it will be another story.

This is nothing new, Confucius taught this long time ago already.