english grammar

Life would be meaingless if we always follow (the) rules.

Firstly, you can not have two or more verbs in a single (grammatical) sentence without conjunctions. Therefore, a conjunction has to be placed somewhere.

Here I have used the conjunction "if" because in translation it means "如果", a "cause" of something.

IF we always follow rules, THEN life would be meaningless.

Re-arranging the sentence then you would get,

Life would be meaningless if we always follow rules. Of course you don't use "then" before "Life" as it won't make sense if you haven't previously stated the cause.

The "the" I have placed before "rules" is simply there to emphasize the rules that are being discussed here. Without it it would just be a general rule, or that it implies a general feeling. You can choose to have it there or not as it won't change the meaning, just an emphasis.


And then it would be a grammatical sentence.

Hope this helps ^.^

2010-12-22 12:30:17 補充：
I have used "we" as a subject because, in philosphy we generalize everyone as a whole, including myself/oneself. So in many cases, we use either "we" or "you" as the subject of the sentence:

2010-12-22 12:30:26 補充：
Life would be meaningless if we always follow rules.
Life would be meaningless if you always follow rules.

The one with "you" is more directed to the audience.

life would be meaningless if we always following rules