I was in the process of explaining to mom that when I go to Finland, I will have to be on strict quarantine, and I can’t go to the store or take public transportation. And she said: but nobody can tell by looking at you where you came from! I told her that I would not break the rules and that Boris wouldn’t want me.
And then I started to think… With all my not talking about Russian politics, I can’t stop myself from expressing this puzzlement. At the peak of BLM, of looting and arsons, most of my Russian friends who wanted me to explain what’s going on would end up not taking my explanations. Their idea was that any revolt, any protest against any officials, and any authorities are something negative.
That’s one side of the deal. The other is that everybody is up for breaking rules “when nobody sees it.” Breaking regulations is commonplace, it happens often, and nobody cares. Like if there is no police officer with a gun watching each and a single person.
Mom is continually asking me about different things, whether they are allowed or not. And she finds it difficult to understand the concept of “use your own judgment.” But mom is eighty-five, and using your own judgment is not something she was taught at school. And when I see the same attitude from others, I can’t understand that
Hettie's Reflections 
The thing is when rules are too strict or too hard to follow or are imposed for too long people inevitably tend to try to break them. This is the same concept as one in parenting young children.
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I agree with you about strict and unreasonable rules in general, like the March lockdown, when people were not allowed to leave their homes. However, here I meant something different. What I do not understand is that the vast majority of people find all anti-government protests, in any country, for any reason, distracting and dangerous, and at the same time think that it is perfectly fine to break the rules (in any country) when “nobody is looking.” That particular stance was about Finland, and the way it is said in the rules “we ask you to stay at home.” It just does not look logical to me but on the other hand – that is not the first and not last illogical thing.
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It’s not that contradictory. Objecting in public gets you in trouble – ergo, those who do it are making trouble, ergo they are bad. Doing something not quite legal in less obvious ways doesn’t get you in trouble, so it’s fine.
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yea, but still – people not just NOT like going out on the streets, but they think that is is fundamentally wrong because it makes the society “unstable”
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