Meta-rules

I wrote some thoughts on courtesy, but only recently thought of a good example of what I mean by "meta-laws." Take a three-year-old and tell him that he is not to play with the glass elephant. Shortly afterward you will hear a crash and an explanation that you had not forbidden touching it. After superglue and a new regulation you will discover that poking it with a stick is not covered. The end product is an overwhelming list of instructions to leave it alone in every way, shape and form, not to tip the table on which it sits, and not to enlist his sister in his nefarious doings. The meta-law is easily understood, but if the culprit does not want to follow it you wind up with disturbance and endless rulings, some perhaps more far-reaching than the original meta-law. Courtesy is this kind of "meta-law."