We can be Heros
One of the quotes that I find myself falling back on the most, comes from the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, "Seek not to follow in the footsteps of great men of old; seek what they sought."I see this as a warning against Hero worshipping, but also the removal of limits. I'm a huge fan of Leibniz, but I'm well aware that at times he complained like a small boy with a skinned knee.
So lets think of some heros. How do we telegraph our heros to the world, (other than name-dropping in a blog)? The first two methods that I can think of are posters and necklaces. The classic student poster of Ernesto "Che" Guevara or Albert Einstein.
So my question is: "Which poster would your hero have on their wall?"
(This produces an interesting recursive question - at which level do we stop?)
I have been told that both Jean-Paul Sartre and Nelson Mandela were fans of Che, but who would Che have on his wall? Karl Marx? Vladimir Lenin?
Albert Einstein had pictures of both Faraday and Maxwell, (and some other puffed up Englishman.)
Why do we have heros? What do they do for us? To some, I imagine, they embody rules for life.
The 10 commandments
- splits into two sections: the rules about god and the rules about man, (obviously god comes first.)To god
1. I am the Lord your God
2. You shall have no other gods before me, (how about after?)
3. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, for I am a jealous God
3b. If you keep these commandments God will love you
4. You shall not take the name of God in vain
5. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy - 6 days work before the Sabbath
To man
6. Honour your father and your mother
7. You shall not murder
8. You shall not commit adultery
9. You shall not steal
10. You shall not bear false witness
11. You shall not covet your neighbour's wife
Putting aside the obvious mathematical error, if you are an agnostic or atheist you are already down to just six rules. Murder can be euphemistically referred to as, "taking away life", so the seventh is a special case of the ninth, and your parents are part of humanity, (and you might not know which part). Along that line the tenth is theft of the truth. Coveting is a precursor to theft, (why would you take something that you don't want?) so we can distil these rules down to:
Theft and respect are external things, but wanting something is internal. So we end up with two rules. One governing external behaviour and the other internal behaviour. So once again the Daoists seem to have got there first.
7. You shall not murder
8. You shall not commit adultery
9. You shall not steal
10. You shall not bear false witness
11. You shall not covet your neighbour's wife
Putting aside the obvious mathematical error, if you are an agnostic or atheist you are already down to just six rules. Murder can be euphemistically referred to as, "taking away life", so the seventh is a special case of the ninth, and your parents are part of humanity, (and you might not know which part). Along that line the tenth is theft of the truth. Coveting is a precursor to theft, (why would you take something that you don't want?) so we can distil these rules down to:
- Be respectful
- Don't even want what isn't yours, let alone take it
Theft and respect are external things, but wanting something is internal. So we end up with two rules. One governing external behaviour and the other internal behaviour. So once again the Daoists seem to have got there first.