Chesterton’s Fence

“Don’t remove a rule, process, tradition, design, or constraint until you understand why it was put there.”

G. K. Chesterton said this in his 1929 book titled “The Thing: Why I am a Catholic.” He was defending older social institutions, especially domestic life, family, tradition, religion, and inherited social practices, against what he saw as shallow modern reform for convenience and culture.

We owned college student apartments for about 15 years. We closed on them in the summer, just a few weeks before the students moved in; therefore, the leases in place were created by the sellers.

They weren’t ours.

I noticed a bunch of weird clauses in them that didn’t make any sense to me. Or, they seemed to violate basic common sense. There was a clause about using the toilets only for what toilets were made for. There was a clause about not using grills indoors, keeping interior doors in their frames, keeping the heat on in the winter, and so on.

I looked at these and thought, “These are dumb. Let’s get rid of all this and simplify!”

Well, over the 15 years, we had tenants who:

• Built a campfire on the wooden floor of an attic (don’t worry, they put a stone ring around it).
• Removed all of the interior doors (there were 11) to create a beer-pong tournament in the yard.
• Used a toilet as a cooler, got a can stuck in the neck, and then broke the toilet trying to remove it.
• Charged friends to “rent parking spaces”, which was just the front yard of the house.
• Turned the heat off to save money. The pipes froze.
• Moved the grill into the kitchen because it was raining. The fire company showed up.

And many more, which still provide great story material for sitting around with friends and a couple of beers. By the time we sold them, our lease had a plethora of new clauses that I’m sure our buyers looked at and said, “These are dumb. They don’t make any sense.”

The new guy comes in, looks around, and says, “What is this old-timey BS? That’s stupid. Let’s get rid of it!”

OK, fair enough. Sometimes, that’s exactly what the situation needs. A fresh look. New eyes. A different point of view.

But also, what about the inherent wisdom built up through historical experience? We do it this way because… We have this policy because… We make you pay this tax because…

Institutions build knowledge through experience, and that experience often shows up in the form of rules, processes, and constraints.

Yes, you should occasionally look at these rules, but before tearing them down, ask yourself what problem, situation, failure, danger, abuse, or trade-off caused people to create them in the first place?