“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Is a rule’s value to be found in its praxis? And since no rule can keep hardship, tragedy, or death away, is any rule “of use”? And what sort of rule might Chigurh mean? Can some rules accomplish a delivery, by transcendence rather than avoidance, from the sorrow and violence of ordinary life? Are those rules “of use”? What is the difference between transcendence and flight?
Does everyone’s life unfold according to implicit rules? Does it matter whether one understands the rules -or single unifying rule- according to which one lives?
