{"id":7760,"date":"2014-08-19T12:01:50","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T12:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/08\/19\/the-ten-commandments-as-survival-manual\/"},"modified":"2014-08-19T12:01:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-19T12:01:50","slug":"the-ten-commandments-as-survival-manual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/08\/19\/the-ten-commandments-as-survival-manual\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ten Commandments as Survival Manual"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent Richard Fernandez column<\/a> ends brilliantly:<\/span><\/p>\n

We often forget that the sacred texts of mankind began as practical documents.  They were checklists. And we may well rediscover this fact before the end. One can imagine the last two postmoderns crawling towards each other in the ruins of a once great city to die, and while waiting to expire engage in conversation to pass the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWaldo,\u201d the first said, \u201cdo you remember that tablet displayed in front of the Texas Statehouse. You know, back when there was a Texas?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, didn\u2019t it have a whole bunch of stuff scrawled on it? Tell me again what it said,\u201d replied the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWaldo, it said, \u2018thou shalt not kill.\u2019 And \u2018thou shalt not lie\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnything else?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes it also said, \u2018thou shalt not steal\u2019. Plus somewhere in the middle said, \u2018thou shalt not have sex with people you weren\u2019t married to.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I remember it now,\u201d the second post-modern said. \u201cWhat a bunch of hooey. It\u2019s a right wing, nutjob, racist document called the Ten Commandments.  It\u2019s a religious document.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo Waldo,\u201d the first replied. \u201cThat\u2019s where you\u2019re wrong. It ain\u2019t no religious document. I just figured out it was a survival manual.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Roger Scruton on the Decline of the Modern University<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent Richard Fernandez column ends brilliantly: We often forget that the sacred texts of mankind began as practical documents.  They were checklists. And we may well rediscover this fact before the end. One can imagine the last two postmoderns crawling towards each other in the ruins of a once great city to die, and … Continue reading “The Ten Commandments as Survival Manual”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180,60,574,433],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-decline-of-the-west","category-ethics","category-old-testament","category-survival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}