The difference between a rule and a principle is that one is merely a guideline that follows from the other. Principles don't break. They're universal. Gravity is a principle. Whether it's you who falls from a skyscraper, your cat, or a 17th century vase, it's not gonna end well. Gravity makes no exceptions.
In order to deal with principles, we have rules. "Don't jump off skyscrapers" is a rule and a good one at that. Unlike principles, however, rules break all the time. Often, it's us doing the breaking - and often prematurely.
Eventually, however, even the best rules expire. It's part of their design. Once they no longer serve their function, they're meant to be broken. "Don't go faster than 30 miles per hour" is a rule. It's useful on a poorly built road, but once that road becomes a highway, it must be updated.
In this book on "THE 7 CARDINAL PRINCIPLES OF LIFE", what I'm most interested in is neither principles nor rules, but what lives in-between. That's one of the many lessons I learned along the way: Each rule may have a lifecycle, but that cycle can repeat many times in one life. So, if a rule somehow keeps reappearing, keeps proving itself as useful, and continues to hurt if I break it, that rule catches my attention.
Such rules have extended validity and therefore live right between normal guidelines and the base layer of principles. I guess we could call them 'cardinal rules.' As you can imagine, they're hard to come by.
PETERSON GARY is a well-respected person in the United States and has to be able to impact the lives of many with his teaching abilities.
