A friend sent the following "commandments". Would you label it ecology? religion? science? philosophy? ---- THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THE UNIVERSE 1. THE COMMANDMENT OF OMNIPRESENCE: I am the Universe within which you shall spend all your days. You shall never leave me, not even by death. Wherever you shall be is within me. 2. THE COMMANDMENT OF INEVITABILITY: From my rules there is no escape, no exception. Unlike human laws, mine are never broken. 3. THE COMMANDMENT OF CONNECTION: All is interconnected. You are not completely separate from anything else. You never were. You will never be able to do just one thing. 4. THE COMMANDMENT OF CONSEQUENCES: Consequence is inevitable. Everything that came before this moment is an ancestor of this moment. All is a consequence of what went before . You are the consequence of that which came before you. What you are is the heritage of billions of years of evolution. Heredity is a consequence of the past. All has consequences. All you do, or fail to do shall have consequences. You cannot live without causing consequences. 5. THE COMMANDMENT OF UNIVERSAL INDIFFERENCE: There is choice, action, and consequence. Some actions will lead to your death. Others to your suffering. Others to the death or suffering of other beings. ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are but a shorthand people use to describe how desirable THEY judge the consequences of particular types of action are likely to be. But I, the Universe do not care. I enforce consequences, but I do not care about you. I am supremely indifferent. 6. THE COMMANDMENT OF TRANSIENCE: Time passes. Change is inevitable. Nothing lasts forever. All is process, all is flux. Even the hills and the sun shall not last forever. 7. THE COMMANDMENT OF EATING: You are a living system. All systems must eat something. The sun eats hydrogen. Green plants eat sunlight. You are an animal. You eat plants, or other animals that eat plants. You who live on the death of other living beings, are ultimately an eater of hydrogen too. 8. THE COMMANDMENT OF BALANCE: In any closed system there are limits of growth. Trees do no grow to the sky. Rivers do not make the sea overflow. Populations do not expand forever. Some balance shall always be restored. Often extinction occurs, often the new balance is not much like the old, but some balance will be restored. 9. THE COMMANDMENT OF MORTALITY: You will live only for a brief time. Your consciousness depends on your brain. Even before your brain is completely dead your consciousness will cease. Your ‘soul’ will never outlive your body. Before you an eternity passed. After you another eternity will pass. 10. THE COMMANDMENT OF CHOICE: You must always choose. You cannot escape this. Even choosing inaction or self-destruction are choices. I set the rules. I present you possibilities. What you do with them is up to you. What you do with your life is up to you. I give you no guarantee of health or happiness, only probabilities. Do not look for a merciful universe, I am not compassionate. I do not live by your laws. You live by mine. But accepting what you cannot change, and learning to distinguish what you can change from what you cannot, can be a path that leads away from sorrow. If you accept your mortality you may learn humility. If you understand your place in things, you may find the gift of laughter. If you cherish the beauty of each day, it may lead you to joy. If you love and comfort one another your lives can be happier. These are possibilities, not guarantees. Ability to predict consequences is practical intelligence. Making choices with consequences in mind is practical wisdom. If instead you choose misery, destruction, hate, rage, and folly, I really don't care. The choice is yours. ---- jeff owens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) homepage - www.bctonline.com/users/jko archives - [EMAIL PROTECTED]/
