So why did I go through the trouble of explaining my morning commute? I like to think of it as an example of bending the rules. In a normal scenario, a person would simply follow the WALK signal and cross the street accordingly. I know the traffic pattern. I know how the lights work. I don’t need the WALK signal. I can bend the rules and this comes from a deeper knowledge of the intersection and the traffic patterns there.

So why does this matter? Because it illustrates my point: knowledge can trump the rules. Take the case of trikinosis. Trikinosis ensues when pork infected with a roundworm called Trichinella spiralis is ingested producing cysts in your gastrointestinal tract. Jews and Muslims are forbidden to eat pork because it is seen as unclean. Perhaps they found people dying of this parasitic disease, attributed to pork, and came to the conclusion that pork = bad. They didn’t know about trikinosis and how to prevent it. We do. And so millions of people in the world are able to eat trikinosis-free pork without fear of repercussion. Here is a case where knowledge trumps the rules.

Recently, there’s been a furor over gay marriage and there’s a lot of people out there arguing against it on the basis that “the Bible is against it”. In short, the argument is it’s against the “rules”. I always find that the argument “the Bible tells me so” is a weak argument. In fact, it is a non-argument because it denies the debate entirely. It is a fair way to go about things as a child, but grownups have to think beyond these boundaries, for the world is not so Manichean. There’s a lot of gray out there. There are lot of difficult questions. Simply wishing away the complexities of life doesn’t get you very far. We should seek knowledge to understand the complexities of life and how to navigate them. That’s what grownups typically do. I don’t know why people are so afraid to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Hell, it gets me through the intersection faster.