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There was an interesting segment on a Sunday evening news program a while back about "social happiness," in which test groups from different nations were polled and asked a number of questions about their views of their society and government, their personal sense of happiness and contentment, and their loyalty or cynicism about the social order in which they lived. The researchers then ranked all of the nations included in the survey from top to bottom, based on a measure they called "social happiness" or something like that.

To their surprise, the two nations of the world that graded at the very top were Denmark and Singapore. It was a surprise to the researchers because they initially couldn't find anything in common between them: Denmark was known for being democratic, laid-back and libertarian, while Singapore was known for its fast-paced economic climate and its pretty repressive government run by a ruling family.

The two countries that ranked at the bottom of the list were Iraq and Italy.

When they looked a little closer, what the researchers found was that "happiness" was not primarily a function of freedom vs. repression in a society, but by a sense of objective order. Despite the perception among outsiders that Singapore's government was repressive (or even brutal, in some cases), what gave its citizenry a sense of contentment was that they lived under a legal system that was governed by an objective order in which all people would be treated just as harshly as the next if they violated that moral/legal code. They were perfectly fine with that, and the presence of that underlying objective order was the one key element that was common to both Singapore and Denmark.

Iraq and Italy, on the other hand, were marked by large-scale discontentment because most of the people in those countries went through their daily lives with the expectation that their government -- and even their entire social order -- was rotten to the core and corrupt beyond repair.

It dawns on me that children respond the same way. One set of rules, understandable, evenly enforced, but enforced without fail gives a sense of security. The law is not the threat, because it is plain and known, and administration is fair. No matter how 'strict', the penalties are known and inevitable, thus avoidable as well by following the rules.

While that can be carried to opressive extremes, it is the ambiguity, stupidity (on occasion), and uneven enforcement of our laws which makes the system stressful to the average person who is not ludicrously naive.