An explanation of the boy scouts law number 7 in the old boy scouts handbook. Law is written short, clear and powerful. An explanation should be provided for each law. And luckily the old explanation given in this 70-year-old book can also be considered acceptable (in my opinion) in 2020.
Of course, it must first be clear who deserves the right to give orders.
I was lucky during my scout period. I had “Turf” as a group leader and he was able to lead the entire Vorden scout organization without giving a single order. Later during my work in the industry, I often had to think back to the way he did it. And I think it helped me too …
“a smart scout manages to cope with all dangerous situations, a wise scout ensures that those situations do not occur”
BTW: on the photo you can read number 6 too.
An example of law text 6 now happens to be on our kitchen table … we catch house spiders with a glass and throw them in the garden … without killing
Wim Harwig 
I on the other hand found Law 7 always troublesome in the so-called good old days and I would say even more so today. Specifically in war situations this Law has severe flaws. [I am for example thinking of MH17 and the present situation in the Middle East]. [Also during and after WW2 a lot of people tried to argue that what they did was OK because they only followed instructions from their “Leaders”. I.e. “Befehl is Befehl”]. [Wir haben es nicht gewusst”‘]. Hence one should be be careful here. At times one has to refuse to follow the “” Law 7″”.
This is so because it may not be possible to argue afterwards and hence it is better to argue that you are not following such a stupid instruction because it is [correctly] overridden by one or more other Law(s).
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