Welcome statement


Parting Words from Moristotle (07/31/2023)
tells how to access our archives
of art, poems, stories, serials, travelogues,
essays, reviews, interviews, correspondence….

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Why commandments, anyway?

A reader's recent question about my "New Ten Commandments" occasioned my reading them afresh to reconsider doing something about the fact that several of them can be combined.1 The only reason for specifying precisely ten originally was of course an allusion to The Old Testament (ignoring Mel Brooks's suggestion, in his 1981 film, History of the World, Part I, that Moses had actually received three tablets from God, with fifteen commandments, but had clumsily dropped and shattered one of them). And, as I admitted on July 8, 2008, George Carlin did Moses, Dawkins, and me eight better by pretty cogently (for a stage entertainer) boiling the ten down to two. I don't propose to compete with Mr. Carlin, however.
    In fact, I'm still very much in cogitation mode about this. Why have commandments anyway (over against civil laws)? What purpose could such a list serve, if little general assent could ever be gained for them, in competition as they would be with a multitude of local customs variously at odds with one another, even if they shared some common evolutionary features? In what sense would they be commandments, anyway? I suspect that this whole business of Mel Brooks's and George Carlin's satires, as well as of Richard Dawkins's revisionist suggestion in The God Delusion [p. 263], is about coming to terms intellectually with human cultural history. We want to understand who we are, in the best (truest) terms we can. And we want to help by sweeping out discredited understandings and recommending progressive insights. (And, of course, the folks rabble-rousing for displaying The Ten Commandments in our court houses want to continue to rail against us progressive upstarts.)
    By the way, the accompanying pictures are of The Georgia Guidestones, a large granite monument in Elbert County, Georgia. Says Wikipedia:
A message comprising ten guides is inscribed on the structure in eight modern languages, and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient languages' scripts: Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
For example, Guide #4:"Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason."
    The monument has been attacked by Christian fundamentalists as "The Ten Commandments of the Anti-Christ." Of course, a self-reinforcing principle of fundamentalist belief is that the less sense something makes, or the more difficult it is to believe it, then all the more glorious is the faith that it is true.

My Commandment #1, Imagine that "God" exists if doing so somehow comforts or inspires you, but don't fall down and worship it, was my wry, finger-in-your-eye take on belief in God, implying that nothing that followed emanated from "Him" because "He" didn't exist and so never issued any. That Book of Moses was brilliant creative writing, though.

My Commandment #2, In all things, try to do no harm, is suspect from the get-go with its "try," revealing that doing no harm is practically impossible. Even the Jains occasionally step on a bug, try as they might not to. Someone who trys to do utterly no harm surely harms himself occasionally in his attempts, if only in inner turmoil.

With #3, Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you, I was opting for the negative version of the Golden Rule, but I personally like the positive version better, with its call to take action (positive) rather than refrain from action (negative). I like to "do good," to help others, more than I like to simply avoid harming them. Obviously, both versions are worthy and have an august history (not that I'm intimately familiar with it). But it may make more sense to command avoidance than to command commission. I think that Jesus wasn't commanding people to do good (positive), but mainly trying to show them a way to live better, to realize "the Kingdom of Heaven" within. He didn't command anyone to love, he was giving them loving advice for personal betterment.

In the case of #4, Don't rush to judgment but give everyone the benefit of an open mind, I overlooked that mammals have evolved to act automatically, for self-preservation, to not give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I'm not sure I can advise anyone to try to reason with a desperate person who has dynamite strapped around his (or her) torso, whether for religious or other reasons. People do tend to be more closed-minded than they "ought" to be, however, for living harmoniously and progressively in civilized society.

About #5, though, Formulate laws as if you didn't know what your position in the pecking order would be, I cannot be too enthusiastic. Political philosopher John Rawls's principle of the "original position" was a brilliant concept for social justice. But who of us here on the street ever formulates a law?

My #6, Treat all living creatures humanely, is as noble a principle as there is and, in our age of caged animals raised for the commercial food industry, more dishonored than heeded. To stand on a corner with the principle lettered on one's sandwich boards would be a foolish use of one's time and energy. If "God" actually created the food chain (and was thus the first entity to dishonor this principle), then the captains of the food industry are his devoted disciples.

Ha, #7, Always be willing to revise your beliefs according to evidence and reason! Don't we wish! Few of us are able to cast the first stone. At sixty-seven, I've won my beliefs by effort and have waning energy and power to continue revising them, although I have read (in a science article in The New York Times) that "continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you 'bump up against people and ideas' that are different." Still, I hope I have the sense, until the minute of my death, to change my mind because of new evidence or consideration.

#8, Do not indoctrinate your children, but teach them how to think for themselves, is the chicken or the egg of significant cultural advance. If the huge majority of parents could and would stop indoctrinating their children against reason and evidence, religion could die a painless death in a generation or two. But what are the chances of that? Crying The Eighth New Commandment is pissing into the wind. No one is listening, no one will be commanded in this. Or few, anyway.

Speaking of pissing, #9, Support your country when it is right, oppose it when it is wrong, was another pee-pee of mine on the administration of George W. Bush. See my post of December 27, 2006, "Some Dogs I've Known."

And, finally, #10, Question authority; challenge authority that appears illegitimate, is just eighth-grade civics. Still, it's sad that so many downtrodden people (and peoples) of the earth haven't the power to challenge authority, they are so firmly under its boot.
_______________
  1. The version currently displayed in my sidebar I formulated on December 29, 2007.

4 comments:

  1. Enjoyed your blog on the topic. Thank you especially for the reminder of the Mel Brooks "15, uhmm 10" line, which may be one of the most hilarious yet sharply pointed moments in cinematic history. It is amazing to think how many versions there are of the commandments and the Catholic take is of course different from the Protestant.
        Would you consider doing a blog post on whatever became of the not so long ago discovered Gospel of Judas? I recall its being discussed as being at some odds with the other gospels and it hasn't exactly been embraced or promoted by religious leadership, so whatever is going on there MUST be a great story.
        Also, I have read that Charles Manson had more followers at the time of his arrest than Jesus did when he was arrested....
        Keep up the great blogging!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Paul, I would have to research the Gospel of Judas to comment usefully, having at this point no more than heard of it (and perhaps read an op-ed piece in The New York Times, I think; the piece might have simply mentioned the gospel in passing).
        Interesting that you should mention Judas now, for I am reading Fritjof Capra's 2008 book, The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, and Capra tells an amusing anecdote about Leonardo's Last Supper painting (a sort of Rube-Goldberg fresco, whose technical story is very interesting as well). A certain church guy complained how long the project was taking Leonardo, and Leonardo was called to Ludovico il Moro to explain why the delay. Leonardo explained, then added that if the church guy continued to complain he (Leonardo) might model the face of Judas on him (the church guy). Ludovico is said to have chuckled and relented. (Capra explains that all of the faces in the painting were based on people in town, whom Leonardo had spent many hours observing by visiting taverns, etc., and taking notes. He always had a small notebook with him.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I loved all the comments you wrote for each of the commandments. Number 3 is the same as a famous Confucius saying. Humankind shares the same wisdom. I like your #1 too. I guess the existence of a religion serves a purpose, i.e., to give some people comfort when they feel helpless. When I feel weak, I don't think of "God" or any other form of unreal/man-created being. We help ourselves. When I encounter difficulties, I tell myself that anything I have experienced has been experienced by others. If they can survive, so can I. This is one of the things I learned from my mother.
        My mother says that the earth buries dead everywhere; there is no hardship that people can't overcome; if others can do it, so can she. We never pray. We survived and thrived from our experiences, especially our hardships.
        Another thing about so-called believers, many of them are hypocritical.
        You are a very wise and insightful person, Morris. Thanks for sharing your thinking and writing. I like your commandments and read them carefully. I remember most of them now, if not all of them, and will apply them to my daily dealings.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Can't wait to see the reaction if your readers misconstrue that I was somehow comparing Jesus and Manson. I see a comparison between Manson and the leaders of organized religions. I've always seen Jesus as an amazing and basically innocent figure in history. Most "great" leaders of organized religion seem maniacal in their thinking and exploitative of innocents and innocence—thus their comparison to Manson.

    ReplyDelete