I have just picked my little girl from school and her teacher tells me she doesn't feed well and she doesn't follow instructions. So now I have to work on her listening skills and entice her to eat better. What I am doing and what the teacher is trying to do is socialize my little girl so that she can function in a system. She needs to conform.
Conformity will also kill her creativity. I know this because I have spent years learning rules and implementing them and in the process I forgot what it is to create. Everything was already created for me by the system, all I needed to do was perform my tasks dutifully and reap the rewards in the form of a successful career.
And I wouldn't have gotten this far if I was not good at toeing the line. Heck, I teach people how to toe the line, being a lecturer and all. Students who don't follow my instructions are particularly annoying! Such students (some of them utterly incorrigible) make me wish that corporal punishment was allowed at institutions of higher learning. I relish the thought of going around with a whip making sure students finish their assignments.
So now we have a catch-22, let the little girl be her creative self and do as she pleases, or straight-jacket her into conforming and obeying the system. (Can we negotiate a middle ground?)
Rules are necessary for the system to function and conformity allows us not to descend into total chaos, though the current state of affairs in most regions of the world is rather disconcerting. Maybe we don't need rules after all.
This is a potent topic requiring further discussion, but as a rule, I keep my posts short.