An article in the February 2014 issue of Prospect magazine about recipes, of all things, set me thinking about the tendency to legislate for exceptions.

The author deplores the preoccupation with precise recipes, instead of allowing the cook to experiment and adjust food for taste. “From farm to fork”, Julian Baggini says,” the trend to rely more and more on codified recipes, rules and regulations is diminishing the role of judgment and creating the conditions for just some of the problems we are trying to avoid. How can we revive the art of practical wisdom? Isn’t it too risky to loosen formal systems and leave more to individual discretion?”

The problem of formal recipes – the “correct” way to cook, can be applied to other things in life where we have become too prescriptive. Baggini writes : “We should stipulate only what must be stipulated and leave the rest to discretion. Rules should cover minimum standards and not try to achieve optimal ones, as to do that necessarily means leaving little or no space for anyone to exercise judgment”.

A few years ago a dentist deliberately infected his patients with AIDS because he himself had contracted it. This horrible, but singular, incident caused new procedures to be forced upon all American dentists, including putting plastic over their equipment and sending all their linens to commercial laundries, where temperatures were higher. This is a good example of “legislating for the exception”. The mantra is, ” We must be seen to be doing something,” even if the incident is a total one-off. Often this runs counter to simple common sense. You cannot legislate for all contingencies.

A good Epicurean trusts those he deals with, until they prove themselves to be untrustworthy. He leaves as much as possible to judgment and (most people’s) good will. If one cannot bring yourself to do this one ends up with a North Korea, where no one is allowed to think for himself at all.