Thursday Night Bar Fight #14: For I am your Tod, and you shall have no other Tods before me
Good news, everyone! Scientists have discovered an unstable wormhole through time and space, located in Umatilla, Oregon. Objects cannot pass through the wormhole, but it is possible to observe and send messages to the other side. It is widely considered to be the greatest discovery of all time, as well as (trust me on this) the only interesting thing that has happened in Umatilla, ever.
The other end of the wormhole opens up on another planet, remarkably similar to Earth in almost every way. Geography, atmosphere, fauna and flora are all almost identical to our own planet prior to human civilization. In fact, there is even a species of tribal hominid that, at least from our vantage point, appears to be as close a duplicate to Homo sapiens as one might imagine. Anthropologists and linguists have established contacts with what might best be describes as “leaders” of the different tribes.
These hominids are hunters and gatherers, and are quite similar to how we human might have been five thousand years ago. However, there are two major differences between the wormhole hominids and our ancestors. The first difference is that even though they have a developed and relatively sophisticated language, they have no laws or religion. The second is that the wormhole hominids are far more war-like than we ever were. In fact, the anthropologists that have been studying them postulate that it is their constant inter-tribe fighting that has kept them from building a stable rudimentary civilization. If the hominids continue their current path of lawlessness, there is no question they will be extinct within the next few decades. The world’s collective leaders have decided to intervene in the hopes of saving the species, but we must act quickly because last night the wormhole began to collapse. Before it does, we will send them a list of laws – commandments, if you will – on which to build a fledgling civilization.
That’s right, dear readers: it’s time for you to play God.
And therein lies this Thursday Night Bar Fight quandary:
What will your commandments to this group of primitives be?
Be sure to think carefully about all the possible intended and unintended consequences of your commandments being followed. For example, disposing of all weapons might solve some problems, but might it also create others when faced with food supply and defense against other tribes who do not subscribe to your words? Feel free to copy others’ ideas and collaborate with fellow commenters to come up with the best list. (Provided that you, ya know, collaborate in a bar-fighty kind of way.)
Keep in mind that, as always, there are some additional rules and stipulations:
- For complicated reasons that have to do with quantum and stuff, each commandment must contain no more than eight words. Any commandment with nine or more words will be lost in the wormhole for all time.
- For other complicated reasons that have to do with quantum and stuff, there must be at least five commandments, but there can be no more than ten.
- These commandments may be religious in nature, or entirely secular, or a combination of the two.
- The wormhole hominids can easily understand anything we communicate at an average fifth-grade reading level. However, the more advanced you get in your word choice after that, the more likely the chance of mistranslation and unintended consequences due to the limited comprehension skills of the hominid leaders. (Thanks a lot, hominid versions of Obama!)
- Cultural, political, and technological references will have no meaning, and commandments that use them will likely be disregarded. So, for example, a commandment regarding the free use of weapons would likely be understood, but a commandment about the free use of the press would certainly not.
And it probably goes without saying, but all of these commandments are off limits in this bar fight.
Ready? Go!
Follow Tod on Twitter, view his archive, or email him. Visit him at TodKelly.com
Be excellent to each other.Report
You can append the appropriate “dude” and still come in under the limit.Report
Tagging on to this most excellent start:
You are who pretend to be
When you’re dead, you’re dead
Make love when you canReport
pretty warlike, eh?
– Obey the voice from the wormhole, for now
– Calm down
– Avoid pain for others as for yourself
– He who cares for others is a warrior
– Make merry
And in case they don’t listen, and still survive
– Do not travel among the starsReport
Slavery is evil.
Never choose war.
Women are equal to men in My eyes.
Wash yourselves daily.
Teach everyone you can to read.
Buy and sell honestly; harm no honest traders.
Honor strangers.Report
I’ll sign on to Jason’s list; the most honorable list of commandments I can imagine.
I’d probably add one to protect gays, lesbians, and transgendered people, but the eight words I’m not certain of yet.Report
Respect all mutual love between people.Report
I’m not so sure if “reespect all mutual love between people” is really the best phrasing for a noble idea. A lot of people in abusive relationships claim that they love their abuser and their abuser loves them. Asking people to respect this can constitute an invitation to stand passively by in the face of horrific abuse and domestic violence. Not a good idea.
How about “romantic love transcends gender.” This way you get equality for homosexual relationships while avoiding an excuse to passively accept domestic abuse.Report
Well, I guess it depends a lot of how one defines “respect.” One can respect love between people without using it as a justification for overlooking domestic violence (which, I note, would violate at least two of my own list of commandments below).
[Edited to add: I also wonder if “transcends” surpasses the reading comprehension stipulated in the initial question.]Report
Okay, how about “romantic love makes no distinction for gender.” I really can’t support “respect all mutual love”, I think it would lead to many instances of not intervening when their should be intervention.Report
+1.Report
I’ve been pondering, because I think the third has some faults. Men and women might be equal in My eyes (and who am I, anyway?), but that might have zero real-world consequences. So I might say instead:
Use equal laws for men and women.
It’s practical, non-mystical, and it has real-world bite.Report
Good amendment.Report
Since I have ample room in my list, I’d like to add the following from elsewhere on the thread:
Test ideas to see if they are right.
Respect all mutual love between people.
And, because I’m still only at nine:
Punish no one for wrong ideas.Report
Is number 4 a commandment against hippies?
🙂Report
Objects cannot pass through the wormhole, but it is possible to observe and send messages to the other side
Wait, doesn’t this require wave-particle duality, and isn’t that a disputed concept? Are we allowed to fight about physics ideas in this bar?
the only interesting thing that has happened in Umatilla, ever.
Hey, I was there once.
Ok, my commandment:
“Respect all others’ life, liberty and property.”Report
“We find that by taking your property and redistributing it to people who need it more is exactly what the Lord was speaking about when he talked about respecting it.”Report
Yes, that sort of thing is an issue. You never know what things will be twisted into once you’re dead and buried if your words are remembered at all.Report
Dance naked for my amusement!
Umatilla? Ugh….:)Report
Since the hypothesis says we understand their culture well enough to determine they are literate enough to compose messages, as a linguist, the first thing I’d do is retrieve as much of what they’ve written down as societal guides as possible. Before I would send any advice back, I would couch it in their own terms. That’s what linguists and missionaries do, you know. They know better than to send in messages without context.
But I would send this, if I knew they valued the virtues of warriors.
Let your goal be victory, not lengthy campaigns.
The army’s leader determines the people’s fate.
He determines a life of peace or peril.
Capture is better than destruction.
Profitable victory wins without fighting.
This they would understand. It is, as clever readers will already know, a reduction of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. From there, I could teach them other things, the wars of commerce and trade, the values of tolerating many opinions, the elegant struggles of science against ignorance, that sort of thing.
Never play God. God doesn’t play at being God. People will only advance when they see advantages to such advancement.Report
I really like Jason’s answers above, but here are mine, anyway:
———–
1. Test ideas to see if they are right.
2. Truth is that which reality obeys.
3. Learn about your world.
4. Some diseases are germs too small to see.
5. Always seek to avoid war.
6. Treat strangers as your sisters and brothers.
7. Trade freely and honestly with all others.
8. Do not interfere with any honest trader.
9. Wash after you poop.
10. Value all life as treasure.Report
Instead of number 4, I might change it to “boil water before you drink it”. (Perhaps add a “try to”)Report
As I said above, I like Jason’s list.
But I would add:
Honor artists.Report
People are ends, not means.
Value learning and knowledge for their own sakes.
Stuff is not the meaning of life.
Doubt is a virtue. Employ it wisely.
These are my commandments; do not invent more.Report
People are ends, not means.
Off topic, but I find that there are few ethical rules more at odds with biological nature than this one. Ultimately, everything, including everyone, is a means to our own ends, and we use people that way even when we believe we are valuing them for themselves. I suspect we at least implicitly realize how socially fragmenting a true recognition and acceptance of that would, or at least could, be, so this rule provides a good myth to help us moderate and manage that dangerous potential.Report
It works a little better if we formulate it in a more Kantian way: people are not only means, they are also means, and therefore should be treated as such. This is both an excellent ground for the ethical treatment of people, and not obviously counter to our basic biology (particularly when you factor in cooperation, reciprocity, and other pretty basic pieces of our “nature.”Report
Ugh, they are also ends. I need more coffee.Report
Chris,
I get where you’re going, and I think it makes it easier for us to use as a sort of guiding myth. But cooperation and reciprocity really are–at least to a very large extent–self-regarding. We most often don’t reciprocate to those who don’t reciprocate in kind. Cooperation means I am getting something I otherwise wouldn’t–when you and I cooperate, it is a means to my end. It’s not that I begrudge your gains from that cooperation, and I may even be happy for you, but that’s secondary.
To the extent that our biological nature does give us an innate inclination to see some–I would argue very limited–set of people as also ends, I suspect that’s a function of the social fragmenting problem of seeing people solely as means. To speak very very loosely, a small society whose members do not have the “see others also as ends” inclination would likely to lack the individually rewarding benefits of sociality, leading to lower rates of successful reproduction of that group’s members, and vice-versa for those societies whose groups do have that inclination.
That, of course, is the contemporary group selection approach (which, contra the old debunked group selection approach, is based on the concept of inclusive fitness). But even then, at its biological basis, it’s about enhancing the individual’s probability of successful reproduction, so by its very nature it is using others in the group as a means to the individual’s end–even if that’s all completely outside the consciousness and intent of any individual.
And of course nature and nurture are not wholly separate. By virtue of that tendency existing, it is possible to nurture its expression culturally, although within some limits. And I’m not critiquing the goal/effort of doing so.
As a side note, this is the fundamental reason I dislike Ayn Rand. Her characters are literally not human because they wholly lack this tendency, and her philosophy of objectivism is not made for humans (maybe for sociopaths) because it denounces this inclination. The most significant moment demonstrating this is when Reardon gives Dagny Taggart the necklace of Reardon metal and emphasizes that he does so only for his own enjoyment of seeing how good it looks on her (or how good she looks wearing it, or something such), and absolutely cares not one whit whether she gets any enjoyment out of the necklace or not. Reardon sees her solely, completely, as a means to his own ends and disavows even the faintest interest in the ends of this person who, if not actually his love, is the closest he comes to love for another person, and in doing so Reardon is revealed as inhuman, not in the pejorative sense, but in the sense of literally not being a member of the species homo sapiens sapiens.Report
If we’re going down the Kant Road, might as well introduce Perpetual Peace as a backgrounder.Report
I don’t think it matters, in the Kantian formulation, if our actions in cooperation and reciprocity are self-serving, or even if there is no such thing as altruism (which is unlikely). It requires understanding — that is, we can’t just be automatons — but understanding is part of why the ends, not merely means, formulation is necessary.Report
This wormhole needs a platitude filter.Report
You want wormhole 2.0.Report
Ecch, all I need is to pipe stdout through a Bayesian bathos filter.Report
Kill only to defend yourself or your family.
Take only what you have honestly earned.
Pay your workers what they have honestly earned.
Have sex only when it is freely chosen.
Try to understand the world.
Always be kind if you can.
Never cause unnecessary pain.
Treat everyone as you would be treated.
Beauty is a blessing. Create more of it.Report
Shouldn’t commandments from a doctor include something about worshippign Louis Pasteur?Report
Do not listen to mysterious voices from the sky.Report
And don’r be a Cretan.Report
Or from wormholes, especially when those voices are those of a vicious little meat-eating hominid species who are busily fucking up their own planet to the point where they’ll soon need gas masks and eventually need space suits to get to work in the morning.Report
How about from my head?Report
1. You shall not treat people as things.
2. You shall not treat things as gods.
3. You shall strive not to be violent.
4. You shall not murder, rape, and steal.
5. You shall love your parents, spouses, and children.
6. You shall educate your children.
7. You shall strive to elminate poverty.
8. You shall find joy in life.Report
Can I add, you shall not treat gods as gods, or is that going to get me, umm, crucified? (Sorry!)Report
Erm — no? What sort of god would appreciate his creatures prostrating themselves, buns-up kneeling before some ill-made statue of himself? Men, not gods, wish to be worshipped. And it is men, not gods, who create these idiot religions, to put fear into the hearts of men and money into their own pockets.Report
What sort of god would appreciate his creatures prostrating themselves, buns-up kneeling before some ill-made statue of himself?
I’m pretty sure we know what sort. Fortunately its rational self-interest in good publicity could be appealed to by a wiser being.Report
You’re the political scientist. This planet is much like ours, except it suffers from perpetual war and no laws. The one follows from the other: laws can only work when they’re enforced. Religions emerged as a first draft of how man ought to behave. Granted, religion bears about as much relationship to political theory as Astrology does to Astronomy but religions’ absolutes about Thou Shalt Not have given rise to much, if not all, of what follows.
Most of what I see in these well-meaning lists doesn’t address the issue at hand. Wars happen because they can’t be prevented. What might prevent wars? Laws, of course. Nations exist in a fundamentally anarchic relationship to each other for each nation enforces its own laws and they all differ from each other, as religions differ from each other.
We have only traded one set of unworkable absolutes for another. The nation-state has replaced religion but has not given us any more peace, precisely because here on this planet, it has not given us common purpose.Report
I was trying to work in an anti-idolartry commandment. Treating things as gods is the defintion of idolatry.Report
Treating gods as things is most of the problem. Religions, like states, are the creation of men. Look at us, poor miserable, stupid saps, treating our constitutions like Holy Writ, everyone looking at the same document and none of us can reach the same conclusions. A handful of High Priests is tasked with interpreting these hoary old documents, cabals of politicians are constantly attempting to harness their mandate to their own selfish ends — and war is still with us.
Mankind gets the governments he deserves, as surely as he created gods in his own image.Report
Religions emerged as a first draft of how man ought to behave.
And upon the rise of agriculture and food surpluses were quickly drafted into the service of defending those who’d taken it upon themselves to control the distribution of those food surpluses. I’m a Marxist, believe it or not.Report
Heh. Marx said he wasn’t a Marxist. Thing is, you have actually read Karl Marx. If only some of these self-described Marxists would read him, they wouldn’t be jumping to conclusions, for Marx never did. He attempted to describe what he saw.
Egypt’s religions did a fine job of controlling and redistributing food and other resources. I’m given to understand there were periodic purges, attenuating corruption, It was a uniquely efficient structure, the government administrators acting as a check on the religious cabals, with the Pharaoh as a god incarnate. The levels of corruption varied with the effectiveness of the government, it certainly wasn’t perfect. And there were lots of wars of conquest and occupation, most of them useless and ineffective. Also costly.
I do believe you’re a Marxist, James. I’m one, too, though it’s rather like my relationship with Christianity. I choose to read Marx — and the Bible — for myself, interpreting it all in what little light I’ve been given.Report
What most Marxists, as well as most anti-Marxists, don’t really grasp is that Marx was a classical economist–he intentionally did an internal critique of economics rather than attacking it from outside (as has been pointed out by folks smarter than me, he wrote one of the greatest tributes to capitalism). While he made a few crucial errors that cause his conclusions to be rather bungled, his perception of states of affairs was often quite sharp.Report
And Marx was quite willing to be wrong, to be corrected, to enter new facts into evidence. He was a first-rate capitalist. I swear, if some clever prankster were to effectively plagiarise Marx, every Capitalist Roader would praise it to the skies.Report
I’m a monotheist, so I should have put in “There is one God.”Report
The Eight Divine Proclamations:
1) Life is constant problem solving
2) Learn to enjoy solving problems without creating worse
3) Take care of yourself, your family and community
4) Do not harm others to help the above
5) Cooperate with your fellow man to solve problems
6) Compete constructively with each other to cooperate better
7) The details are yours to discover or create
8) Flourish!Report
People, people. Pop culture has taught us all we need to know here.
1.) The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal development of alien civilizations (see #5)
2.) Relax, Don’t Do It
3.) 42
4.) Never Eat Yellow Snow
5.) Strange monkeys, speaking through interdimensional wormholes, distributing rules, is no basis for a system of government (see #1).
I think they’ll be all right.Report
You forgot the towel.Report
Thanks, Towelie!Report
Before it does, we will send them a list of laws – commandments, if you will – on which to build a fledgling civilization.
Will I have the power to enforce these laws with punishments of various kinds – instant karma? deferred karma? locusts? hell? I ask, because if I have no recourse to punishment then I’d just as soon make this my one and only commandment: don’t use religion to justify any laws or social norms!Report
OK, just read the word-rules, so: don’t use religion to justify anything.Report
Obligatory:
Let nobody know how much money you’re carrying
Never let them know your next move
Never trust anybody
Never get high on your own supply
Never sell where you sleep
Never give credit
Don’t mix family and business
Always Be Strapped
Stay away from the cops
Avoid selling on consignment unless circumstances are perfectReport
Know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
Know when to runReport
Don’t call what your wearing an outfit.
Don’t ever say your car is broke.
Don’t sing with a fake British accent.
Don’t act like your family’s a joke.
Have fun, but stay clear of the needle,
call home on your sister’s birthday.
Don’t tell them you’re bigger than Jesus,
Don’t give it away.Report
Don’t stand so close to me.
Don’t be a hero (especially if your name is Billy)Report
Life’s a ball so
Get up on the dance floorReport
Never play cards with a man called Doc.
Never eat at a place called Mom’s.
Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.Report
Let a young woman take you by the hand
And make love in your Chevy Van
That’s alright with meReport
Never get involved in a land war in Asia, nor go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.Report
Or trust a fart.Report
@stillwater – love that song, it’s on a mix that’s in the car rt now so I hear it a lot. (Though, given my GbV predilections, I take issue with the “fake British accent” line). But I do have a question about these lines:
Don’t tell them you’re bigger than Jesus,
Don’t give it away.
The way he sings it, it appears to be one thought. That is, he IS bigger than Jesus…but don’t tell anybody.
But is it supposed to be two separate thoughts (“Don’t give it away” maybe just being a generic injunction against “giving it away for free”?)Report
Glyph, from what I understand, the song is about the advice Jason’s father gave to him when he (Jason) decided to pursue a musical career. The “bigger than Jesus” thing probably works on a couple of levels. The “don’t give it away” is a recurring theme in Jason’s songs, even on his new album. Something about integrity and all that.Report
You know what happened to the guy who said he was bigger than Jesus.Report
Heh… my students and I just finished our rule making process. The results:
1.) Take care of bodies.
2.) Take care of feelings.
3.) Take care of materials.
4.) Listen to the teacher.
5.) Work hard, have fun, and learn.
I’d probably go with 1-3 and 5.Report
You are alive and wonderful.
Life is people.
Love life at all times.
Things other than people are only important to the extent that they help you to love life, or put differently, never elevate stuff over people.
Violence is the opposite of love.Report
Dream of unicorns.
Wear flowers in your hair (after you’ve taken time to stop and smell them).
Douse yourself with patchouli oil for it shall obviate the stench.
Run naked in the park. (Well, OK, I’m actually good with this one.)Report
Yeah, I figured I’d get called a hippie for this one.Report
And having suffered through San Francisco and Eugene, I’m just the guy to do it. 😉Report
Hippies may make for terrible roommates, but as gods go, you could do worse. I mean, it’s not like you want to live with a god anyway, right?Report
You may have a point, but I’d need to know just how strong that patchouli oil commandment is.Report
Different rules for different ages, I say.
Young people should live in cities and enjoy the hell out of themselves. There’s nothing sadder or more ridiculous than a young person trying to act All Serious or conversely, some Old Fart affecting the Current Trends of Yout Dese Days. Robert Frost:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.Report
Love.
Love well.
Love and do as you will.
Will the good for others.
Don’t cancel Firefly.Report
I expect the mysteriousness of the last commandment to cause no shortage of interesting interpretations.Report
Especially when I slip though the wormhole to the other side at the last second, and, when asked by the hominids who I am, reply:
“My name?
My name is…Firefly.”Report
I’m getting visions of a gentle and loving society that views God as a giant firefly. You could do worse.Report
What is another name for a firefly?…… A Lightening Bug…….don’t piss off any bug/god that has lightening at its disposal.Report
I think the rapists might take “Love and do as you will” in the wrong way.
I getthe value of vague, but maybe a little more specific than “Be loving” would be good.Report
My name is…Firefly
Upstart!Report
Unless it begins to suck.Report
Don’t cancel Firefly.
Whoa, Kyle Cupp’s gone libertarian? Who knew?Report
…I don’t know that humans are qualified for this. I’m opting out.Report
I like a lot of the choices here. Considering the state of the hominids, I would go with at least these three commandments:
Treat others fairly (or some other 8-or-fewer-words paraphrasing of the Golden Rule).
Follow fair leaders.
Obey fair laws.
Considering how potentially un-libertarian the last two are, I’m hoping that I’ll get some kind of reaction from you guys.Report
So I imagine that the goal is to get these people to be the dominant species on the planet and their culture the dominant one for Roman levels of dominance?
Let’s go with eight of the oldies but goodies:
Don’t shit where you eat
Diversify your workers: soldiers, farmers, merchants, smiths, etc.
Create and keep a common culture and language
Trade is always to be preferred to war
Sometimes you need a war to open trade
Allow locals to keep trivial local customs, gods
Replace ideas that work poorly with new ideas
Expand, expand, expand, expand, expand, expand, expand, expand.Report
I should probably put in a couple that deal with battlefield tactics
Incorporate battle formations into your leisure sports
Promote from the battlefield, not from political gamesReport
I forget, are you one of the Civ IV players around here? Because that’s what your recommendations remind me of.Report
While I have played it (recently for the first time), I mostly suspect that if I want my people to be the Romans during a time when they’re surrounded by barbarians, I suspect they’ll be more successful if they act like the Romans did.Report
I didn’t mean that as a swipe against your list, btw.Report
1. Most of your leaders should be women.
2. It is good to disagree about ideas.
3. There is no free will, so be forgiving.
4. Only use violence to lessen overall violence.
5. Avoid violence as much as possible.
6. Race, gender and sexual-orientation don’t matter morally.
7. It is irrational to believe in supernatural things.
8. Economic laws should protect the worst off.
9. Inherited wealth and position is not deserved.
10. All conscious creatures deserve to be treated well.Report
I hate to go for the obvious one, but if there is no free will, what’s the point of telling someone to be forgiving?Report
Perhaps your telling them to be forgiving is a cause (perhaps the first) in a causal chain that leads them to be forgiving with a greater probability than if you hadn’t told them to be forgiving.Report
Why would you want to do that? If there’s no free will, there’s no reason to pick sides between slaughter and non-slaughter. Your humanitarian or hominidian instinct has no more moral authority than an undigested bit of beef. I guess you could say you’re compelled to act on it, but then I’d have to ask why I should bother to read it, if it carries no more information than a seizure.Report
You are grossly oversimplifying things.
What is left of morality when we admit (or believe, whatever) that there is no free will is a tricky question. And it depends on what you mean by “free will” and whether you are a compatibilist or libertarian (not of the political sort, but the metaphysical sort).
Sam Harris is a popular intellectual with a book on this, and it is an important question in hardcore-academic philosophy. Let’s not pretend to hash it out here.
Let me revise my commandment to avoid all these worries about free will (though I’ll have to go way over 8 words)
3. People almost always act as they are determined to act by their upbringing, environment, and inborn dispositions, so be forgiving because people (almost always) can’t do better than they are doing, because they are just doing what they were determined to doby forces acting on them and on them that aren’t in their control.Report
I get that the eight-word limit requires simplification. I do think that telling a violent, primative civilization that no one can control themselves is going to lead to a world of hurt.Report
1. Help others as much as possible.
2. Don’t hurt others or use them as slaves.
3. If leaders tell you to hurt others, disobey.
4. Mingle often with other tribes and races.
5. Don’t assume anyone’s situation is their fault.
6. Don’t allow families to keep inheriting money.
7. Don’t waste the planet’s resources.
8. Neither mate has control over the other mate’s body.
(Let’s see, that’s all the moral ones, let’s help them a little in other ways.)
9. When sick, wash hands and cover mouth.
10. See something, think of the explanation, test that.
Incidentally, WRT to #8, I see a lot of people trying to make rules about LGBT and stuff, and have apparently missed the fact that a lot of homophobia is stuff to do with gender roles, and gender roles is stuff to do with men owning women, and frankly if we just nip _that_ in the bud they’ll be at a lot less stupid place later.
Likewise, a lot of violence is due to Othering, and if we can actually make a world where ‘Hang out with other societies’ is a rule, we’ll have stopped a lot of that.
The point isn’t to make rules aimed at _fixing_ our problems. Primitive societies don’t _have_ our problems…they have stupid patterns of behavior that, thousands of years later, became our problems.Report
David, I really dig your last paragraph. Very insightful.Report
+1Report
Do as you please, save harm none else.
What others have harms you not.
Own your possessions, lest they own you.
People are never possessions.
Happiness is why you are alive.
Do not fear death, nor fear this voice.
See the world for what it is.Report
Imma call BS on the 8 word limit. Of the actual 10 commandments, only 3-5 clock in at under 8 words (“Thou Shalt have no other Gods before me” and “Thou Shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife” are sometimes commandments on their own or sometimes combined with other passages, breaking the 8 word limit). Of course, the short ones are some of the best.
There are some cool suggestions on here. My first thought was “Thou shalt wash thy hands”.
Here’s a set of commandments that sets up a simple democracy. My hope is that it will also combat sexism and racism:
1) Five shall lead the village
2) One shall be woman, chosen by all women
3) One shall be man, chosen by all men
4) One shall be man, chosen by all women
5) One shall be woman, chosen by all men
6) One shall be a stranger from another tribeReport
That’s not too shabby.Report
My amended rules for a more caveman society:
1. No groin kicking. Except Dave.
2. He or she who smelt it, dealt it.
3. No poop eating. This means you.
4. Rapists must be burned alive.
5. Use your words.
6. It is better to die than kill.
7. The no poop eating is serious.
8. One day aliens will attack. Be ready.
9. The best defense is to be united.
10. There is a God and He hates you.
All in all, that list is better than Moses’s list.Report
OK, how about a different take, based on the four cardinal virtues:
1) Think well before you act.
2) All your actions should be fair.
3) Don’t lose yourself in fear of pain.
4) Don’t lose yourself in pursuit of pleasure.Report
I have to say, I’m a little surprised that none of our religious commenters just paraphrased the original 10 Commandments. I wonder what it says about us as a species when all of us, even the most devout, are pretty sure we can do God one better.Report
They show up. They’re reworded… but they’re here.
I want to say that all of them have been pretty much covered, though not all in the same list.Report
Yeah, there’s no doubt they do all show up – here and there. But it’s still interesting to me that no one said, “Hey, the Big Guy said these were the important ones, so we should probably stick to them.” Everyone tweaked, subtracted and added at least a little.Report
You know what? I was wrong. Nobody included a “keep the Sabbath holy”.
Nobody’s got a day off.
The other nine are here, though.
I did notice that the overwhelming tendency was to deal with the implicit issue of “what will this society look like in 4000 years?” rather than “how can I make sure that these people survive for 100?”Report
Yeah, which is why Jason’s early-on commandment about hygiene stood out as particularly brilliant to me.Report
I was thinking about this. I had two problems – neither of which I thought would be very interesting to write about, but here goes anyway.
First – do we know if these beings have souls? They’re described as like us, but more war-like and without laws. We’ve been pretty war-like – what are these guys like? With regard to laws, they stem from the human sense of morality and need to organize, I’d guess. What is a human without morality or mental order? I wouldn’t even know how to approach the idea of God in addressing creatures like that.
That occurred to me when I was thinking about the Sabbath for their law. The day of rest is such an important thing for the human psyche. But was I simply projecting to include it for them?
Then that gave me my second problem. What if God shows up? If I’ve told them to set aside a day for God, and then they encounter God, have I given them rules that would be hard for them to reconcile with divine teachings? Extrapolating on that point, do I have the right to give them a religion at all? Sure, the Sabbath serves a human purpose, but its true object is God. About half the commandments deal with our relationship with God, and if I don’t even know if they have souls, how can I tell them how they should relate to God?
I did include one of the commandments indirectly. The duty to honor your father and mother can be extended to the whole notion of obedience. That was the basis for my commandments to obey just authority and just laws. Beyond that, though, I didn’t specifically address the commandments. Now, when Jesus was asked to explain the law, he said to love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. I think we all included something about loving your neighbor.Report
The hypothetical is exact: they’re like us except that they’re constantly at war and have no laws.
The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Diamond Sutra, the Egyptian Book of the Dead — they emerge from specific cultures. How would those be translated into other cultures? Missionaries face this problem all the time. Translating the Bible, how do you translate terms like “grace” and “repentance” into some Bronze Age culture’s language? What if they don’t have the concept of “sin”? Many cultures don’t. They categorise it as a sort of selfish insanity, which isn’t far from the mark, philosophically / ethically.
No, I wouldn’t send these Warlike People the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” might sound like I’m God and I’m not. Nor do I think converting ’em is wise, either. It would only infect them with our excuses for warmaking, many of which, most, come to think about it, are religious in nature.Report