Do Life’s Exceptions have to Become Rules?

Let’s look deeper into this, if you may.

If you say that an exception to a rule exists, doesn’t that mean you accept the rule itself also exists. What if a city employee put up a sign saying “No parking on Monday” then you are thinly recognizing that parking is permitted other days.

Before we go any further let’s look at the definitions that are pertinent to the statement;

According to Merriam-Webster, exception, is;

1: the act of excepting: exclusion

2: one that is excepted

especially: a case to which a rule does not apply

3: question, objection

Again, according to Merriam-Webster, rule, is;

1a: a prescribed guide for conduct or action

b: the laws or regulations prescribed by the founder of a religious order for observance by its members

c: an accepted procedure, custom, or habit

d (1): a usually written order or direction made by a court regulating court practice or the action of parties

(2): a legal precept or doctrine

e: a regulation or bylaw governing procedure or controlling conduct

As a general rule I would suspect that most of us would agree that if a given activity occurs less than 10% of the time, it’s an exception, and should be treated as such. What we need to confirm is, how often does this activity happen? Because even though these things are remarkably irritating, they are probably rare.

Now, I don’t want to confuse the issue, although if all rules have exceptions, then even the rule that states this common phrase must have an exception, or the rule is proven false. But if it does have an exception, the rule is also proven incorrect because then there is a rule without an exception, which is what the rule is saying cannot exist. In fact, it is a rule that is self- destroying. Hence the statement that all rules have an exception must be false.

Wouldn’t it be better to say that we can find exceptions to almost any rule? It has a much higher probability of being true.

Now, what about the idea that there are no absolutes or truths? This sounds as though the ‘truth’ idea experiences the same problem in the logical assumption that all rules have exceptions suffers from. Is stating that there are no absolutes an absolute statement? Is it a rule? Can it be proven?

What can be argued very successfully is that absolute truth can be found, and we discover it all the time. We can find it through what has become badly mistaken: relative truth. Relative truth is relative to something. In this case, I am writing that it is relative to objective conditions or circumstances, not a subjective perspective.

Truth is usually dependent on a set of conditions. For example, water boils at 100 degrees C. But only under specific conditions, which include the cleanliness of the water and the altitude or air pressure you will try to boil it at. So, if you change the variables, the truth about the temperature at which your sample of the water will boil will change. However, every time you repeat those conditions exactly, your water will boil at exactly the same temperature.

Did you know that rules are relative to conditions as well. Hence, people think there is an exception to all of them. If I put my hand in a pot of boiling water it will blister. That will happen every time I put my hand in that boiling water. But if I lower the temperature of the water to a point where I could bathe in it, my hand will not blister.

So, if someone changes the conditions and then says it is an exception to the rule, in fact, we may want to look at it deeper. As you know, new conditions often mean new rules about those conditions. A slight variation in the conditions may not produce a distinctively different effect, or it may change everything depending on what that change is.

To conclude, find a rule and try to come up with different exceptions to. At what point do you think the rule has become meaningless?