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Comment by ihsw2 | Hacker News Reader

There are absolute rules that we should adhere to, to imply that they are a social construction is to embrace nihilism and anarchy.

There is a set of universal standards and expectations have existed for millennia in many forms. There has always been an implicit set of common rules -- common across all cultures and generations -- that we as a species live by. Implying that everything is a social construction mental laziness and a desecration of our fore-bearers at best and malicious destruction of the bonds of society at worst.

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"A is true because bad things will happen if not" is not a valid argument.

To the specific point, I struggle to find any set of rules which is common across all cultures and generations; care to name a few?

One is that empathy and self-control are the internal enforcers of the civilizing process. A lack of one or both is the sign of an uncivilized society or individual.

Another is that parents' authority over children is sacred, as well as the bonds of marriage and friendship.

These are very commonly recurring rules indeed, but that does not make them absolute nor are they universal.

Empathy and self-control are not rights. They may inform rights, but different cultures see those as creating very different rights.

parents' authority over children is sacred

That's completely false, many societies (ours included) have imposed restrictions on how parents can raise their children, and sometimes in quite extreme ways (e.g. the Agoge[1]). And the child protection services in our modern Western societies take away plenty of children.

The rights of parents over children are more like the authority of the king in the Little Price - absolute, as long as they only use it in certain ways.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge

"Don't urinate on your pillow."?

> There are absolute rules that we should adhere to, to imply that they are a social construction is to embrace nihilism and anarchy.

One can embrace nihilism without acting it out. We all have a choice to make: we can choose to follow the rules of our society or to not follow them. A small number of people choose to not follow them, and the rest of us choose how to deal with them to preserve the society the majority of us prefer. It happens every day.

It's all a choice, we have our free will that allows us to act however we choose. In the absence of absolute rules we can create our own rules to follow.

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