This past weekend I took a trip to Amsterdam.

And unlike CMU’s campus, in Amsterdam, people don’t walk in the bike path.

In a place with such laid back laws on drugs and prostitution, I was amazed at how orderly and pleasant the city of Amsterdam was.

There were many distinct pedestrian traffic laws that everyone seemed to actually follow.

In many places there were individual walking lanes to show which direction people should go.

Even when there wasn’t traffic, the locals wouldn’t cross the street unless the crosswalk light said it was OK to go. A few times my friends and I decided to cross at the wrong times and we received some astonished looks because we had broken one of their social norms.

It’s just their culture. It seemed that everyone in Amsterdam abided by the laws all the way down to jaywalking.

At times it was funny to see how strictly the people would follow the pedestrian traffic rules. But it also made a lot sense and helped to ensure everything ran smoothly.

The locals seem to have an attitude that they don’t mind what you do as long as what you are doing doesn’t infringe on anyone else.

This laid back mind set seems to encourage people to follow the simpler rules like bike paths and crosswalks.

Many people in Mount Pleasant don’t follow these rules.

But why don’t we acknowledge things like the bike path?

I for one don’t enjoy getting nearly run over by bicyclists. Many people in Mount Pleasant don’t follow the rules on marijuana either.

In Amsterdam, people can legally carry up to 5 grams of marijuana on them. At times it did seem kind of crazy.

But then again, how is it any more crazy than buying a pack of cigarettes or alcohol?

An Amsterdam local told me he thought Americans were doing things all wrong.

“You make marijuana illegal and you make drinking illegal until you are 21, but you can go kill someone in a war at 18?”

“Marijuana, that’s a soft drug,” he said. “And with soft drugs, you’re not going to hurt anyone, you’re just going to laugh a lot, eat a lot of food and go lay on a couch.”

Maybe he’s right; maybe Amsterdam is doing things the right way. Maybe, people would follow rules more readily as long as the rules they were forced to follow were rational.

Maybe then people would start acknowledging the bike path.

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