Interconnection between Rules and Ethics

The beginning of this year has set off with a bang as we dive deeper and deeper in to what Golding has to say in his book, The Lord of the Flies. I believe the greatest point Golding instills in his book is how we all take better to ethics than we do rules. In other words we should be expected to rely on the pre-existing ethical principles of people more than the enforcement of laws when trying to make a well-established society. I think this statement is true but I look at all these other countries around us where poverty is abundant and suicide bombs go off, and I think to myself, "why aren't we like that?". Is it because we're all forced to go to school and practice proper etiquette? Or is it because we are better at enforcing laws than other countries are? I don't think I'm mature enough to fully understand every aspect of forming a well-to-do society but I think I have a theory. I have an explanation that truly voices my opinion on the subject. I believe at the heart of a strong nation there has to be standards and principles, but in order for that heart to work there has to be laws that act as the blood that that heart pumps through the body that is society. That blood nourishes and cleans that body and keeps it intact. Without the heart the blood cannot be pumped and without blood the heart becomes useless. I believe Golding was trying to say that laws enforced on people without ethical understandings to back them up become hollow and are easily broken. This concept applied to my friends and I a couple summers back. One day we decided we would improve our treehouse in our backyard by adding a roof , carpet, tv, xbox, dvd player, disco ball, and a couple kids who were too adventurous to stay inside the house. We lived in our own little world away from our parents when we were in that treefort. We could talk about whatever we wanted and do anything we wanted, as long as we didn't get caught. So we made rules to make sure none of us would ever make a catastrophic mistake and get us in a lot of trouble. Our rules were: 1. Take your shoes off before you come in, 2. Don't spill your drink anywhere, 3. Don't do anything Jesus wouldn't do. But after a while we forgot to take our shoes off, we spilled a lot of drinks and stained the carpet, and we did do a lot of things Jesus wouldn't do. So the treefort became a place where we would try to bend the rules. One day we bought a mega-phone and yelled at our neighbors telling them they were ugly and another day we threw urine-filled water balloons at them. The treefort became more about having fun than making sure we were taking care of ourselves. If we ever had a conch up there it would have been gone by that time. Much like in The Lord of the Flies, we stopped caring about rules, we just wanted to live our lives in the most lively ways we knew how, because we didn't fully understand the ethical principles of proper behavior, the rules were easily broken.