Carlin did Moses, Dawkins, and me eight better

Richard Dawkins

Revising the Ten Commandments

By Moristotle

[Author’s Note: Originally published on July 8, 2008.]

When I took Richard Dawkins up on his suggestion in The God Delusion that the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament needed updating to align them with the advances mankind has made in understanding what’s what (and what ought to be what), I rather slavishly followed him in retaining the number 10 when I developed “My ‘New Ten Commandments’.” Of course, he was only following Moses, so why not?

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.

Carlin did Moses, Dawkins, and me eight better

When I took Richard Dawkins up on his suggestion in The God Delusion that the Ten Commandments needed updating to align them with the advances mankind has made in understanding what's what (and what ought to be what), I rather slavishly followed him in retaining the number 10. Of course, he was only following Moses, so why not?
 
 
 
 

But since then George Carlin died (on June 22) and I've been looking into this great man's work. At a UNC library (on June 30) I listened to a CD recording of a live performance he gave not long after 9/11/2001. I was struck by the final segment of his performance, titled on the liner notes, "Why we don't need 10 commandments." Unfortunately, I didn't take notes, or I'd have shared this with you sooner. But fortunately, I discovered yesterday that in the library's copy of Carlin's 2004 book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, there's a section titled "The Two Commandments" [pp. 14-18, emphasis mine] that contains the same material (possibily edited and improved).

Carlin shows his brilliance right off. Unlike Dawkins and me, he's sensitive to having a numerical

problem with the Ten Commandments....Why are there ten? We don't need that many. I think the list of commandments was deliberately and artificially inflated to get it up to ten. It's clearly a padded list.
    Here's how it happened: About five thousand years ago, a bunch of religious and political hustlers....

Of course, Dawkins and I too knew about the hustlers, so why didn't we follow suit, perhaps along Carlin's lines:

...Ten sounds important. Ten is the basis for the decimal system; it's a decade. It's a psychologically satisfying number: the top ten; the ten most wanted; the ten best dressed. So deciding on ten commandments was clearly a marketing decision. And it's obviously a bullshit list....

In all fairness, I have to acknowledge Mel Brooks for having a similar insight. In his 1981 movie, "History of the World, Part I," Moses comes down from Sinai bearing three tablets and begins to explain them as "the "Fift—" but he drops and breaks one..."the Ten Commandments...."

Back to Carlin:

Okay, right off the bat, the first three commandments—pure bullshit. "Sabbath day," "Lord's name," "strange gods." [He's using the Catholic version "because those are the ones I was fed as a little boy."]...Spooky language designed to scare and control primitive people. In no way does superstitious mumbo jumbo like this apply to the lives of intelligent, civilized humans in the twenty-first century.

That leaves seven. Then he's quickly down to six by observing that the next commandment (about honoring thy father and mother) overlooks that

obedience and respect should not be granted automatically. They should be earned. They should be based on the parents' (or the authority figure's) performance. Some parents deserve respect. Most of them don't.

Then, in the interest of logic ("something religion has a really hard time with"), he skips the fifth commandment for a bit and proceeds to the sixth and seventh (against stealing and bearing false witness), which he points out "cover the same sort of behavior: dishonesty." He combines them as "Thou shalt not be dishonest." Down to five.

And then quickly down to four with the combination of the eighth and ninth (about adultery and coveting thy neighbor's wife) as "Thou shalt not be unfaithful."

And when you think about it further, honesty and fidelity are actually part of the same overall value. So, in truth, we could combine the two honesty commandments with the two fidelity commandments, and, using positive language instead of negative, call the whole thing "Thou shalt always be honest and faithful." And now we're down to three.

And the next (the final one on Moses's list),

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods" [note "that coveting takes place in the mind"]
    ...is just plain stupid. Coveting your neighbor's goods is what keeps the economy going: Your neighbor gets a vibrator that plays "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," you want to get one, too. Coveting creates jobs....You throw out coveting and you're down to two...,

one of which is the one we skipped, the fifth:

Thou shalt not kill.
    Murder....But, if you give it a little thought, you realize that religion has never really had a problem with murder. Not really. More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason.
    To cite a few examples, just think about Irish history, the Middle Ages, the Crusades, the Inquisition, our own abortion-doctor killings and, yes, the World Trade Center¹ to see how seriously religious people take Thou Shalt Not Kill. Apparently, to religious folks—especially the truly devout—murder is negotiable. It just depends on who's doing the killing and who's getting killed.²

He offers the revision,

Thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless, of course, they pray to a different invisible avenger than the one you pray to.

Finally,

Two is all you need, folks. Moses could have carried them down the hill in his pocket.

Carlin can be heard and seen delivering this deconstruction.
_______________

1. The World Trade Center is where Sam Harris starts in his own heraldic 2004 book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.
2. "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conquerer. Kill them all, and you are a god." – Thoughts of a Biologist, Jean Rostand, 1939.

Jesse Helms curbed their enthusiasm

When we moved to North Carolina (twenty-five years ago last month), we saw a fair number of bumper stickers around liberal Chapel Hill that said, "I did not vote for Jesse Helms!" Today's huge headline on page one of our local newspaper announces Helms's death yesterday:

1921-2008
JESSE HELMS
HE REDEFINED POLITICS IN NORTH CAROLINA, REINVIGORATED U.S. CONSERVATISM

An accompanying article, by Bob Christensen, explains that

North Carolina was a one-party state when Helms was growing up, and he helped transform it by making it acceptable for conservative Democrats to vote Republican....
    More than that, Helms changed American history.
    He and his political organization rescued Ronald Reagan's political career during the 1976 North Carolina Republican primary. Although Reagan did not win the nomination that year, it set him up to win the White House in 1980....
    Had Reagan not been elected, would we have had the two George Bushes?....

Later, as I was washing a few dishes and my wife was poring over the newspaper, I heard her cry out in disgust, "What did he do now? That's so stupid!"

"What did Bush do now?" I asked.

"No, not Bush. Me!" (She must have said, "What did I do....")

She was only doing a Soduko. Sometimes she screws up like that. But my reaction reminded me of another uproarious theme during Season Four of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Probably in the same opening episode in which Mel Brooks hears Larry David sing to Karaoke, Cheryl reminds Larry that their tenth wedding anniversary is approaching. For her wedding present, Larry agrees that they'll repeat the wedding ceremony, this time with more pomp apparently than Cheryl enjoyed the first time. "And what do you want?" she asks him. "Oh, don't you remember? You already told me what my present would be."

There's a ten-year flashback to the evening they agreed to get married. Larry was reluctant to take that step, their relationship was fine. Cheryl got him to go along with it by offering to let him have sex with another woman for their tenth anniversary....

Larry's attempts to find a woman to have sex with provide a series of entertaining situations throughout Season Four. There's the big, black hooker, who just doesn't quite appeal to Larry in that way. Besides if he's seen with her, it could put the kibosh on his attempts to join a new, very conservative country club....There's the randy wife of the local dry cleaner. They arrange an assignation (to which Larry brings a satin sheet with the hole already cut for his penis), but while she's telling him that the business about Hasids' only making love through a hole is bullshit, an earthquake begins to rumble....

Finally, it looks as though it's going to happen, only a few hours before the deadline imposed by Cheryl. Cady Huffman (playing herself playing the Swedish typist in "The Producers") invites Larry into her dressing room an hour before opening night. Everything's going fine until Larry spots a big framed photograph of Bush on the wall. "You're a Republican?" he asks, in disgust. Of course, it's all over.

Mel Brooks is Max Bialystock

Last night, while watching the credits for Episode 9 of Season Four of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," I noticed for the first time (incredibly) that there was a "story by" credit. It was by Larry David. And just a little while ago, at the end of Episode 10 (the seasons' final episode), there it was again, "Story by Larry David." I went back to Episodes 6 and 7 to confirm that their stories, too, were by Larry David. I didn't bother to check Episode 8. They all had to be by Larry David, and I suppose that all of the stories of all of the seasons (whose DVDs I've returned to the library) were by Larry David. I feel even more emphatically now that the EO (ExtraOrdinary) rating I've given Seasons Three and Four was deserved. Extraordinary story writing indeed and extraordinarily satisfying to this viewer's taste (and his wife's, who has also seen more than half of the first four seasons' forty episodes).

The final episode of Season Four, which we watched after lunch today, revealed the major premise for the whole. In Episode one, none other than Mel Brooks hears Larry sing to Karaoke at a club and in Episode Two approaches him about taking over the role of Max Bialystock in "The Producers" on Broadway, to play opposite Ben Stiller as Leo Bloom. It takes only a few episodes for Ben Stiller to become so irritated by Larry that he tells Mel, "It's either him or me." It barely occurred to me to wonder why Mel didn't hesitate a second to tell Stiller good-bye and start looking for a replacement...David Schwimmer. Larry and David's relationship is similarly rocky, but at last (in Episode 10) we're on Broadway for opening night.

And here's where that major premise was revealed and took my breath away: Mel, viewing the opening from the back of the auditorium, doesn't look as though he's enjoying what he's seeing. In fact, he looks as though he thinks the spectacle is putrid. Both my wife and I felt puzzled about this. "What's going on?" I actually said outloud. Then Larry David forgets a line and draws such a blank that the show seems to stop dead. Some members of the audience (including Jerry Seinfeld) get up and move toward the exits. Mel leaves for the bar and meets Anne Bancroft (his wife of 41 years, before her death in June 2005), whom he tells he was right, Larry David is terrible. "I knew when I first saw him he was a disaster, and everything he touches is a disaster...At last, we're going to kill off this show and be done with it!" In other words, Mel Brooks is trying to pull a Max Bialystock: put on a show that is sure to flop.

In the meantime, back on stage, Larry (and most everyone else in the audience) hears an altercation in the middle of the theater between a turbaned sikh and the man sitting behind him whose view is blocked. Larry knows both men. He has given them tickets to the show: the sikh handyman who has adjusted his hotel room thermostat and his cousin Andy. Larry smoothly seques into a monologue about his cousin and soon has the audience in stitches. The people who were heading toward the exits start to return to their seats. And eventually Larry remembers the line he missed and the show recommences.

Of course, the show's a big hit, just the way Bialystock's "Springtime for Hitler" is in Mel Brooks's original movie, with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder (and in its remake and original Broadway production, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick). Larry David places the capstone of his premise, and Mel Brooks's identity with Max Bialystock is complete!