What is Chesterton’s Fence?

One day you are walking through a field and come across a fence. “What business does a fence have being here in this field?” You ask yourself. Seeing no purpose being served by the fence, you tear it down only to later learn of its importance. You soon regret your decision to do away with something that you did not fully understand its purpose.
The thing is that the fence was put there for one reason or another. Too often, reformers go up to the proverbial fence and say that they see no use for this and let us clear it a war. A more intelligent reformer will first understand why the fence is there in the first place.
Therefore, it is not enough to think of the consequences of our decisions, but also the consequences of those consequences. This is called second-order thinking. Anyone can do first order thinking which is pondering the immediate anticipated result of an action.
Do not remove a fence until you understand why it was put up in the first place.
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