We live in strange times, when customs and laws are becoming increasingly more difficult to tell apart. I spent most of my work day today taking an online course about harassment, which all companies are required by law to give to their employees. The training covers matters of federal law, but also concerns separate state and local laws. It also delves into company policy and offers advice on tactics that are more about behavioral change.

I have no idea what Montaigne might think of all this. He was certainly a conservative when it came to changing laws — he thought it better for people to just accept and abide by the laws in place wherever they live. That’s easy for someone like Montaigne to say, given that he was in the ruling class and the son of a government official (and one himself.)

But there are also the lingering questions of whether Montaigne might have maintained a strong attachment to his family’s Jewish roots and followed the Catholic rule of France in his day as a matter of personal safety and ability to integrate into society. It might account for why he refuses to put the laws of his time under the microscope — living during an era of religious civil war is dangerous enough, it would have been foolhardly to suggest reforms in the middle of it all.

Even still, Montaigne is unquestionably not on the side of human progress through better laws. While in some places he argues that democracy is conceptually the right way to govern people, he fully accepts Plato’s belief that it inevitably leads to tyranny. I think Montaigne, if alive today, might view the Chinese government as the most sensible form of rule.

This is a topic he returns to regularly in the essays and it’s more interesting when he raises it in context than when he tries to wrap a full theory around it like he does here. So, I’m going to return to my day again, and that compliance training that has become part of the American workplace existence in our times.

There are people on the right who consider this kind of training to be woke-ism, and therefore a tool of the liberal establishment to destroy their way of life. To liberals, this is confusing to hear, because while some governments do require this kind of training, its proliferation is more of a matter of private employers avoiding civil lawsuits due to employee abuses than fearing direct sanction of the government.

But I think the way many in MAGA interpret it is like this: the same people who want to control the workplace also want to control their lives, and they want to make it so you can’t ever tell a joke or flirt with a woman without getting your life destroyed.

I completely disagree with this mindset — and I think it’s used to rationalize some truly awful behavior — but I do have a sliver of agreement with people who express these thoughts. The expectations of how we should act in all circumstances can be quite hazy at times, not only for the things we do personally, but also, what we observe and how we respond.

I’ve been in the workplace long enough to have experienced a lot — being directly propositioned in the workplace, witnessing colleague behavior that might have crossed a line, feeling uncomfortable and not being sure what to do about it. I’ve responded differently in every case and am not sure I ever took the right approach. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything when I did — and might have spoken up another time I kept quiet.

Customs definitely need to change and, in the long run, will be the best way for people to work together in a respectful, safe environment. And in the meantime, it is a good thing that there are laws protecting individual rights, even if we have to sit through cringe-worthy videos once a year to reinforce it all.

Montaigne would argue that, ultimately, people have to apply their own judgment and experience to every situation to determine the right thing to do. I’m in general agreement with that, but I also have to acknowledge that I might be wrong — and given how law and rules heavy we are right now, you could also take the opposite approach to Montaigne and conclude that we should just follow the rule of law all the time and not apply our judgment.

In short, I’d like to live in a world where people are more respectful of one another and don’t do and say offensive things. Before we arrive at that point (which may never arrive) we probably still need rules and laws to hold society together, even if it touches off a rebellion.