CAWTBER as a Social Guideline

First, do no harm.

The CAWTBER Test is a guideline for social behavior and governance.  Henceforth shortened to CAWTBER from The CAWTBER Test, CAWTBER has many advantages as a political guideline, including that it is not dependent upon a particular authority figure, religion, or type of government.

CAWTBER, a logical morality test, stands for the Conflict Avoidance Axiom With The Bumping Elbows Rule and is pronounced kawt-bur.  See The CAWTBER Test for more information.  CAWTBER basically has two parts:  1) You cannot cause conflict with anybody else; and, 2) you can do anything else that you want to do.

Examples

CAWTBER can be applied as a guideline at many levels.  On a neighborly level, for example, you can keep whatever kind of dog you want, so long as you do not let your dog dig up the neighbor’s yard.  You can mulch or bag leaves in the Fall, but not burn leaves, unless you live in a rural area where the leaf smoke does not bother anybody else.  You can play music as loud as you want, until it aggravates somebody else (including *all* music: not only rock, but also church themes over bell tower loud speakers).

You can bicycle to work, so long as you don’t zip in front of cars or intimidate pedestrians.  Victimless crimes are not crimes.  Consensual sex is not limited.  One city cannot dump raw sewage into a river that is used as drinking water by the next city downstream.  One state cannot burn sulfuric coal that causes acid rain in another state.  One country cannot invade another country in order to take its natural resources.   A country cannot enslave its own people.

Just because you don’t like hippies does not mean that people who wear tie-dye shirts are rubbing elbows with you.  Gays are not rubbing your elbows just because you are homophobic.  Laws regulating women’s bodies are rubbing elbows with women.  The color of a person’s skin may offend you, and a hoodie might scare you, but that is not the same as a conflict having been created by someone else.

What about barking dogs?  Suppose that your neighbor’s dog barks a lot at night keeping you awake.  Is your neighbor rubbing elbows with you?  This situation is a grey area and illustrates why CAWTBER is a guideline and not a rule.  Ultimately, all laws and social guidelines are interpreted by people and are subject to argumental twists and turns of reasoning.

Fig. A, Three CAWTBER Examples

Fig. A, Three CAWTBER Examples, illustrates how CAWTBER is a sliding scale and cannot always be used as a hard and fast rule.  The sliding scale goes from 0%, colored black on the scale, to 100%, colored white on the scale, with 0% representing failing the test and 100% representing passing the test.  An example of a failure of the test is when your familiar digs in your neighbor’s yard without permission, definitely rubbing elbows.  An example of a pass is when your familiar plops on her back in order to invite you to give her a belly rub.  An ambiguous example is when your familiar barks persistently keeping a neighbor from taking a nap.  That barking is represented in the grey area of the scale in the figure at approximately the 50% mark.  Some people would consider barking familiars to be rubbing elbows and other people would consider barking familiars to be acceptable behavior.  This ambiguity prevents CAWTBER from being a hard and fast rule, although many situations do clearly pass or fail the test--thus CAWTBER is a guideline.  You can be clearly on one side of the guideline, clearly on the other side of the guideline, or you can be in the grey area.

CAWTBER is not a natural law unless you consider logic to be a natural law.  CAWTBER is not a call for pacifism and is not a plea for people to get along, but rather is a rational indicator for a genus of social behaviors.  CAWTBER did not originate from a certain religion or type of government.

CAWTBER is not a social contract although it can be used as a guideline to analyze social contracts.  *The* Social Contract (in capital letters) is a book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau published in 1762 titled Of the Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right.  One of the main tenements of that book is that citizens place themselves under the supreme direction of a general will.  While this was progress at the time from being ruled by royalty, it subjected minorities to subjugation.  A social contract (in lowercase letters) historically means that a person gives up some personal rights in exchange for benefits from living in a society.  Other types of social contracts also exist.  CAWTBER is not a social contract.

Conclusion

CAWTBER is a guideline for social behavior and governance that is not dependent upon a particular authority figure, religion, or type of government.  It is a logical morality test with basically two parts:  1) You cannot cause conflict with anybody else; and, 2) you can do anything else that you want to do.  CAWTBER can be applied at many levels such as personal, neighborhood, city, state, and international.  Sometimes CAWTBER has clear cut answers and other times it is ambiguous.

A social guideline,

The CAWTBER analyzer

Has a sliding scale.

Suggested Comments:

What are some other social situations that CAWTBER can apply to?