The modern word “blockhead” […] was Lucy’s favorite label for the too-trusting Charlie Brown in the Peanuts comic strip. Lucy never tired of snatching away the football; Charlie fell for it every time. We all know the feeling: when you’re inching forward in the freeway exit lane, say, and another driver flies past and swerves onto the ramp at the last second; when your child has to complete her college-entrance exams within a designated time period, but your neighbor’s child gets twice as long because of a suddenly diagnosed “learning disability”; when you pay extra to have your pet travel in the airplane’s cargo hold but the yipping poodle across the aisle, an “emotional-support animal”, gets to ride on its owner’s lap for free. You didn’t know that you could get an emotional-support card just by claiming an anxiety disorder and paying a fee to an online agency? What are you — a chump?
What makes these indignities so infuriating isn’t just that a few people game the system. It’s that their selfish gambits work only because the rest of us follow the rules. If every driver mobbed the freeway exit from the passing lanes, traffic would come to a halt. The student who fraudulently obtains extra test time gets a leg up only if most other students stick to the original time limit. And if every pet were designated an emotional-support animal, airplanes and restaurants would become full-time menageries. (Some airlines have begun tightening rules on support animals for just this reason.)
Thousands of norms, rules, and traditions make civilized life possible. Some, like paying taxes or not littering, are enshrined in law. Others are informal. Most of us take pride in adhering to basic standards of etiquette and fairness, to say nothing of following the law. And we have a deep emotional investment in having the people around us follow these norms as well. There’s a reason that we call selfish, disruptive, or criminal behavior “antisocial”. We know that if everyone stopped paying their taxes, or started running red lights and shoplifting, our society would be on its way to collapse.
James B. Meigs, “The Chump Effect”, City Journal, 2020-11-15.
October 19, 2026
QotD: The “social norms” that enable society to exist
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