Human beings are born amoral. Infants know no rules, and obey none. They learn a few at home, then go to school and learn more. Everyone agrees rules are necessary. On what the rules should be there is less agreement; less still on the degree of obedience rules call for. There are times and places where anything short of total obedience can get you into trouble. But staying out of trouble isn't always moral. Sometimes it's immoral.
Sometimes it's against nature. Consider the pumpkin. Pumpkins grow on vines. Vines stretch. No boundary line can stop them. Once upon a time there was a pumpkin whose vine stretched beyond the bounds of the field in which it had been planted. Adjacent to the field was a road. Along the road cars passed. Splat went the pumpkin. The moral of the story?
Stay within bounds. Yes, but, said veteran elementary school science teacher Masaki Kosano in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun last month, it's a vine's nature to grow. It couldn't help itself. What was it to do?
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