Boundary crossing

An additional thought to append to the preceding note: "Crossing a boundary" means to take the rules from one domain into another domain. Bringing gang rules into a school is an example. Sexual advances from an employee to an employer (or vice versa) is another. The issue is not so much whether we like or approve the rules but that they break or conflict with the rules of the new domain.

To "fit in", we must comply with the rules for the domain we are in. It isn't an absolute necessity that we fit in; it's just a choice we can make. If we don't like the rules in a domain, we don't have to enter that domain unless the choice is forced on us. We don't care so much, for instance, if rival gang members shoot each other. We object to their behavior breaking our domain rules when their violence spills into the public sector.

In recent years, we have begun asserting the priority of an overall set of domain rules, which we call "human rights". We assert them to have priority over all local domain rules, which justifies our entering into other domains, by force, if necessary, to impose our higher priority rule set. This comment is not intended to criticise such action, but to point out that wars break out in order to assert the priority of one or another set of domain rules as "universal". Religions, in particular, generally assert their domain rules as superior and that all conflicting domain rules be changed. The assertion of human rights as a pre-eminent set of domain rules is no different than any other assertion, religious or otherwise.