⚖️ What’s the point of old an outdated laws?

I find it amusing when people get frustrated and even mock old and outdates laws, like getting a fine for leaving your dead horse in the street. That’s from the 1800s, during the time of horse and buggy, when ignoring a dead horse in the street was a sanitation issue. But, the cities and states are either too lazy to take them off the books, it’s somehow too expensive, or governments don’t even know they exist. They’re so arcane, no one runs into them anymore.

Equally, politicians and lawmakers don’t actually know how laws work, so they aren’t sure what’s on the books.

There are relic laws pertaining to piracy too. If you commit an act of aggression on water within certain boundaries of the city, it’s considered piracy. That body of water might be a lake or river and no one would consider its use to fall within the realm of piracy, but by definition, it can and has come up.

If you do something foolish while out on your party barge in open water, it just might make you a pirate. While you might be amused at the comparison to Jack Sparrow, piracy laws have wicked punishments. That is a hanging offense.

The federal and state law books are riddled with examples of these forgotten gems, and when they come up from time to time, people laugh and scoff at how old and foolish they are. They’re just so silly. We’re smarter than those people, we don’t need laws like that. Nobody rides a horse into town anymore. We have stop lights, you don’t have to jump out of your car at a cross road and light fireworks to warn other drivers you’re there.

We do have valid, old documents though.

The Constitution is old, but it’s the foundation of society because it deals with the rights of citizens, which is awesome.

Let’s not forget the Constitution is outdated because of its language, bias, and prejudice. Yes, the Constitution is prejudice and could use a bit of a refresh if we’re being honest. That, “All men are created equal” phrase is a pretty exclusionary. We see the trouble it keeps causing.

Obviously we need to keep the Constitution, but we can throw away those other laws because of how old they are, right?

Another example is the King James Bible, commissioned by King James of England in 1604 and published in 1611. This isn’t when the Bible was supposedly written, but merely an attempt at translating it from the arcane language no one understood, except the elites, into something the commoners could read. Or at least into a language regular priests could pass on to the masses, because the masses couldn’t read. And pass it along without their own kind of spin. A priest would never dupe his illiterate congregation, right?

This isn’t a direct translation either, there are a lot of added flourishes, as there always are with translations. Because, when “scholars” didn’t understand a particular word, they merely substituted something that sounded good in its place.

Let’s look at the 1600s. It was an awesome time of plague, famine, and pestilence, with no such thing as sanitary conditions. In the 1600s public executions were in fashion. It was all the rage to gather the family, including the kids, and throw produce at the poor bastards who were about to have their necks stretched, or heads lopped off.

The original colonies of Virginia, under English guidance and rule, hadn’t been established. The passengers of the Mayflower wouldn’t set sail for another decade. There is no Constitution, or Bill of Rights, because obviously America and it’s Declaration wouldn’t be coming along for more than a hundred years.

But, in 1604 it was decided it would be a smart idea to translate a document that was already hundreds of years old, to control the citizenry for the common good. A document of dubious origin, put together from the hands of dozens or writers with no last names. These writers recorded events that happened hundreds of years before they were born. This original book was assembled by voting through a committee. Some chapters were included while others were left out because they didn’t fit the narrative. Not to mention it’s been rewritten and revised countless times through the same committee process.

The scholars put together a translation and thought they were quite clever.

These same clever people didn’t have toilets, plumbing, or electricity. They had no concept that sticking your dirty ass hands inside a body during surgery was a bad idea. Washing your hands wouldn’t be invented for decades. For them, fire was a pretty sweet trick. The benchmark for clever in the 1600s was pretty low.

When it was done, they patted themselves on the back for translating a super old yarn of fairy tales. Today that edition of the Bible is over 400 years old and is one of the most popular variations. And I say variation because there are dozens of Bible translations each with their own spin.

By comparison, everyone uses the same Romeo and Juliet.

Nevertheless, it’s an old translation of even older documents. It contains “laws” and guidelines on governing behavior for a society no one is familiar with, in a land most people aren’t familiar with.

As another comparison, in modern society, we demand each generation of computer be faster, cheaper and more capable than the version before it. How can I possibly survive using technology from 5 years ago?

People demand safer, faster, and more affordable air travel. There needs to be regulations and safety standards. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past.

Society needs safer and cheaper cars. A car without seat belts? A car without crumple zones? No air bags? Are you completely mad? That’s a rolling death trap! No sane person would get in such a vehicle!

Yet, this old ass book with ridiculously old notions on how society should behave and conduct itself, most of which have been deemed reprehensible, if not outright illegal, is the basis for making laws today. Plenty of politicians think it’s perfectly acceptable and reasonable to base our laws on the thinking from 2000 years ago.

Let’s have a look at these examples:

• There is no way someone would agree to surgery practices from 1910. Let’s dig inside your body without washing hands or proper anesthetic.
• You don’t give Laudanum to babies to soothe their cough
• Bayer doesn’t prescribe Heroine for aches and pains
• No one would sit in an chair and be on board with dental practices from a hundred years ago. A foot powered drill?
• Mental health treatments aren’t cold baths and thousands of volts through the skull
• Should we go back to steam and coal powered engines?
• Speaking of horses, who rides a horse and buggy into town? I believe that’s reserved for our Amish friends.

If we’ve moved beyond this “barbarian” age, why are we still making laws that are a thousand years old and even more archaic?

We’re horrified about laws from a fifty years ago. The laws that prevented people from voting, owning land, operating their own business, or drinking from certain water fountains. The recent past is kind of dumb. The distant past is the worst.

Yet, going back even further, into the stone age of society and making laws based on ideas from 400, 600 or even 2000 years ago makes all the sense in the world.

Color me confused.