Obviously, there are conditions into which you may hit your ball which demand relief if you are to continue play. Generally, relief from the impossible lies cost you a penalty stroke, but unfair lies warrant free relief. Even though there may now be many examples of situations from which you may obtain relief, as compared to none when the Game began, they are narrowly defined and categorically few in number. You are still expected to play your ball and the course by executing an infinite variety of golf shots to overcome adverse situations. Bad lies or bad bounces of the ball should not be legislated away with a new Rule, else the game no longer be one of skill and character.
Golf is a game of bad lies, as well as good lies.
There are other, related principles in the Rules of Golf, which further define the Cardinal Rule. They are consistent with the above definition of golf, and may help you understand how the Rules are interrelated. For approximately its first five hundred years, golf was played in a match-play format, i.e., one side competing against another side, with one or two people on a side. Thus, one may take a 10 and lose the hole to a 4, but such poor play has no effect beyond the hole just played. Medal play didn't begin until the middle of the 18th Century, so its Rules are a modification or extension of those created for match play.