I've heard a Jew and a Muslim argue in a Damascus café with less passion than the Emacs wars.

— Ronald Florence

The main issue is people treating rules / laws / "orders from above" / what other people think / social norms / scientific 'facts' - even religious decrees or the American Constitution or the laws of Logic or those of maths as absolutes and dogma rather than as mere guidelines.

I met open-minded, enlightened, even self-critical, observant Jews, Christians, or Muslims (and a Sri-Lankan woman, who took care of my grandmother during her later years, identifies as both a Christian and a Buddhist). I also met close-minded and "professionally fanatic" xkcd fans, or My Little Pony fans or haters (see this thread for instance), and professional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans. And this is to say nothing of fanatical fans or fanatical foes of Apple Inc., rust-lang, git-scm, the Emacs text editor, FSF/GNU, pro/anti-Israel (or pro/anti-"Zionism"), Python-Lang, and the BSD family of operating systems - all of which have or had notoriously ardent zealots.

I decided to try and (at least passively) incorporate memes from other idea-systems or franchises even if they have some fanatical zealots.

And naturally, the harm done by overzealous xkcd fans (who usually at most can ban one from an Internet subforum) is small compared to the destructiveness of the Nazis, or early communists to say nothing of Genghis Khan's army. Note, however, that I believe later communists were reformed and that most of the best contemporary "alt-right" bloggers are parody ones, by inspiration from the Colbert Report.

Similarly, I suspect chapter I of Ezekiel was originally intended as an exaggerated parody of Polytheistic visions of revelation by Ezekiel who was a standup philosopher/comedian. Generations of scholars who considered it holy have tried to divine meaning from it, but it is pointless: Ezekiel was just making shit up.

I also suspect Plato’s "Republic" was similarly half tongue-in-cheek by Plato who described how he thought a country really should not be run. That was for the entertainment and education of the Greeks, who may have heard or uttered similar sentiments, and found them ridiculous when lumped together.

Anyway, as humans, we are capable of challenging certain dogmata or taboos in certain cases. This includes: Peano's axioms of arithmetics:

For thousands of years, we have been plagued by mathematicians insisting that two plus two equals four. Who elected them? I, Stevie-O, am promoting an entirely new system, where two plus two equals FIVE ["2 + 2 = 5"]. Eventually, it will be extended to provide other stuff these power-hungry madmen kept hidden away for themselves, such as division by zero, cold fusion, the ability to solve the halting problem, and the secret to attracting hot chicks.

or Aristotlian Logic:

• Is qmail open source? Yes, and no."

  (That was written in a book I read before qmail's change of licensing.)

• I believe in God, and I don't believe in God.

  (As I overheard one local young school girl say to her friend a few weeks ago.)

And we can certainly challenge:

• Real Person Fiction ( RPF ): never do that!

  What about Last Action Hero, Chuck Norris factoids, and xkcd: "Venting"?

• No one will read screenplays which are not written in the Hollywood-blessed format

  ( See above )

• The redditesque "no self-promotion" (which was not enforced by Slashdot before reddit was conceived, and still is not enforced by Slashdot or by many subreddits).

If you’ve ever visited the ultra-orthodox Jewish communities of Jerusalem, all of whom agree in complete and utter adherence to every iota of Jewish law, you will discover that despite general agreement on what constitutes kosher food, that you will not find a rabbi from one ultra-orthodox community who is willing to eat at the home of a rabbi from a different ultra-orthodox community. And the web designers are discovering what the Jews of Mea Shearim have known for decades: just because you all agree to follow one book doesn’t ensure compatibility, because the laws are so complex and complicated and convoluted that it’s almost impossible to understand them all well enough to avoid traps and landmines, and you’re safer just asking for the fruit plate.

( Joel Spolsky )

By Source, Fair use, Link

I enjoyed watching the 1991 comedy film Nothing but Trouble, at the time (despite its vulgarity). It demonstrated that most judges (or juries for that matter) followed reason, gut feeling, prejudice, etc. rather than the letter of the bylaws, legal code, regulations, and legal precedents when formulating their judgements. This is given the complexity, volume, and the contradictory nature of the latter.

As hacker monarchs and action heroes, we should constantly challenge the 'rules' / 'laws' that we abide by to defy our fate. I do not encourage people to murder harmless people, vandalise property, rape, or steal for vanity (rather than for self-support like Disney's Alladdin) and you should try to "be excellent to each other", but there are many guidelines that were or seemed beneficial at the time that no longer are.

Guidelines are important for the philosophical processes of thought and communication. But they should not be taken as gospel or dogma.