Limiting Fences

The principle of Chesterton’s Fence advises that we move with caution and strive to understand the guardrails of the space in which we’re operating before we attempt to remove said guardrails.

The idea is that even if a fence seems to be pointless and in the way, potentially even keeping you from building something that’s obviously necessary and good, you probably shouldn’t just bulldoze the fence until you understand why it was built in the first place. There’s a chance its purpose isn’t obvious right now, but may become obvious later, only after the new thing you built is destroyed by (for instance) a periodically recurring band of wild hogs that the fence was meant to keep out.

There’s often wisdom in such thinking, but like anything, too-strict adherence to this principle can be non-ideal, leading to stagnation and maybe even a rigid conformity to outdated thinking and practices.