The Precepts: No. 6 in my New Series of Mythmaker Posts

     So how did I come up with these Precepts?  I’m really not quite sure.  I only know that somewhere back when I was composing The Termite Queen, or maybe even earlier (when I was writing “Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder”), I started writing them down.  It’s almost like they just emerged from the void.  I knew I was creating a humanistic civilization and I felt guidelines were needed.  The only revision I’ve done recently involves the final four or five, which I reordered and renumbered.  This has caused some of the numbering to be off in my previously published books, I’m afraid, and if I ever update those books, I’ll fix that, but I figure nobody will pay much attention, since the whole list of Precepts doesn’t appear in those publications.  Everything should be correct in The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.

       The list begins by dealing with religions and gradually progresses to what it means to be human.  Most of the ethical material is in the middle along with the nature and value of science and art.  The order is pretty arbitrary, however. 

       All I'm doing in this post is presenting the list so you can get acquainted with the Precepts.  Remember, they are not meant to be laws or rigid rules – they are meant to be guidelines, capable of interpretation.  They are intended to make you think.   In subsequent posts, I intend to discuss the individual precepts, some in groups and some as stand-alones.  In the meantime, I welcome any comments or questions.

The Mythmaker Precepts

Precept No. 1: No one can know deity; neither can it be proven that it does not exist.

Precept No. 2: Humans have within themselves the ability to see beyond themselves and hence to act rightly without supernatural stimulus.

Precept No. 3: Since the purpose of deity for humans, or even whether it had a purpose for humans, is unknowable, it is incumbent upon humans to look within themselves and find the way to right action.

Precept No. 4: Humans must take responsibility for their own behavior, not seeking to put blame on imposed rules (of deity or human) or on fate, chance, or the intervention or willfulness of deity.

Precept No. 5: Humans will never succeed absolutely in achieving these goals; nevertheless striving for right action is its own purpose.

Precept No. 6: The closest humans can attain to deity is the symbolism of myth and art.

Precept No. 7: If a human have nothing else, it has its own soul, which must remain inviolate.

Precept No. 8: Science has a soul; technology is soulless.

Precept No. 9: Conduct your wars with words, not weapons.

Precept No. 10: The Right Way is universal; the Truth is parochial and divisive.

Precept No. 11: Institutions that grip souls merely for the purpose of gripping souls will always become destructive.

Precept No. 12: To achieve understanding of the unlike is a divine goal.

Precept No. 13: Love is as unknowable as deity, but every soul attests that it exists.

Precept No. 14: Let men and women make the vows of love in the music of the bedchamber, not with empty words.

Precept No. 15: Evolution has failed to structure the human organism for moderation; nevertheless the ability to recognize and strive for this virtue distinguishes human beings from other animals.  [Corollary:  The human organism is not innately a peaceful animal, but its ability to recognize and strive for peace sets it apart from other animals.] [Corollary:  Moderation promotes peace.]

Precept No. 16: Animals neither punish, seek revenge, forgive, nor blaspheme, nor recognize a need for any of these things.

Precept No. 17: Study history and learn from it, but look to the future and do not let yourself be trapped by nostalgia or revenge. 

Precept No. 18: There are creatures on this planet [amended later to in the universe] who speak, form symbols, and share emotions; these may be called human.

Precept No. 19: The humans of our planet are all the same species; therefore they should care for one another and avoid the destruction of their own kind.

Precept No. 20: Since humans share their genetic heritage with all the bio-organisms of this planet [and of the universe – amendment added later], they should always seek to preserve life.

Previous posts in this series:

No. 1: What Can We Expect from the Future?

No. 2: How Will Humanity Lift Itself out of the Second Dark Age?

No. 3: Humans Are All the Same Species!

No. 4: The Mythmaker Canon

No. 5: The Valley of the White Bear

Humans Are All the Same Species! No. 3 in my New Series of Mythmaker Posts

DNA: Humans are all the same species!
From Pixabay

I had decided to review some of my notes on who the Mythmakers were before I wrote about the Precepts, but this distressing upsurge of racism and bigotry during the campaign and after the Presidential election made it seem imperative to touch on that subject first.  Suddenly we’ve once again received a license to hate the unlike, a really ominous phenomenon.  Who would have thought the progress made during the last half-century was so fragile?

I’ve touched on this subject before in one of my earlier posts (You Say Alien and I Say Extraterrestrial) and I’m going to begin by quoting from that piece:

“‘Alien’ carries a lot of unfavorable connotations.  If you look it up in Dictionary.com, it means a person who has been estranged or excluded; and as an adjective, it can mean "unlike one's own, strange" and also "adverse, hostile, opposed."  Of course, it also means an extraterrestrial.  What gets me is that we have so many aliens living among us right now -- all those human beings who moved without permission from one geographical unit of the Earth to another.  How can a member of our own species be an alien?  Why should being from inside another nationalistic boundary make such a person "estranged, excluded, strange, adverse, hostile, opposed, unlike one's own"?  Why should stepping across an imaginary line alienate a person from his or her fellow human beings?

“On my future Earth there are no nationalistic boundaries.  Earth is united and while administrative regions exist, freedom of movement is universal.  No passports, no visas. One currency.   If you come from Scandinave and you want to work in Ostrailia, all you have to do is buy a ticket on a flyer, disembark, find a place to live, and go to work.  People may be encouraged to move to certain parts of the planet in order to equalize the distribution of the population, but nobody is forced to do that.” 

Now I’m going to present the last three Mythmaker Precepts (nos. 18, 19, and 20):

No. 18: There are creatures on this planet who speak, form symbols, and share emotions; these may be called human.

No. 19: The humans of our planet are all the same species; therefore they should care for one another and avoid the destruction of their own kind.

No. 20: Since humans share their genetic heritage with all the bio-organisms of this planet, they should always seek to preserve life.

And then I’m going to quote from Part One of The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  In this scene fifteen-year-old Robbin Nikalishin has made an unfortunate mistake and is being counseled by Prf. Alise Doone, the head of the Humanities Dept. at Epping Science Academy and his moral philosophy teacher.

“The final three Precepts deal with the basic evolutionary nature of the human being.  Which do you think epitomizes what the Mythmakers were trying to say?”

Robbie took a deep breath, desperately dredging his brain.  “The last one, I suppose.  About how humans should always try to preserve life because they share their genetics with all creatures.”

“Well, that awareness is central to the survival of our planet, of course.  But it’s Number 19 that takes precedence – The humans of our planet are all the same species; therefore they should care for one another and avoid the destruction of their own kind.  Until Earthers accorded this reality an emotional acceptance, they were doomed to oppose each other along racial and ethnic lines.

 “And you should also keep Number 18 in your mind: There are creatures on this planet who speak, form symbols, and share emotions; these may be called human.  The entire thrust of the Mythmaker philosophy is about what it means to be human.  Keep that in your mind, Robbie.  It may not mean so much to you right now, but possibly it may at some later point of your life.”

This passage encapsulates what I’m trying to say here.  I put the salient points in bold face and I’ll stress this one again:

THE HUMANS OF OUR PLANET ARE ALL THE SAME SPECIES!

Anybody who has been acquainted with me for a while has seen that statement pop up on a FaceBook post or elsewhere.  Here’s the definition of a species from Wikipedia : “A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which two individuals are capable of reproducing fertile offspring, typically using sexual reproduction.”  There are various ambiguities related to this definition, which are discussed in the Wikipedia article, but for our present purposes, let’s accept this definition given above. 

HUMANS ALL SHARE THE SAME DNA.  Any human can breed with any other human. 

It doesn’t make sense for groups within the same species to try to destroy each other.  While animals of the same species do kill each other at times, their basic motivation is to ensure the survival of their species.  Therefore, they kill to gain mating rights, to protect territory, and to ensure food resources.  Some primates do mount internecine group attacks, but again it’s to protect territory.  Humans, however, practice mass killings of their own kind all the time and the motivation can be for territory or food resources (hardly ever to acquire mating rights, at least in our modern times; courtship is more an individual matter in our species), but the most common motivations are to acquire power, to gain revenge, and (most unfortunate of all) to forcibly spread their religious beliefs.  Animals never kill for revenge, they don’t give a fig about gods, and they don’t organize wars (except for some insect species, certain ants, for example).

Humans evolved to be different from other animals.  Supposedly we acquired a mind capable of reasoning out our difficulties and resolving them through language and empathy (Precept No. 18). The minute differences in DNA that exist among the various races and ethnic groups of humans are inconsequential; WE’RE ALL THE SAME SPECIES.  I have predicated the Mythmaker ethic on an innate ability of the human consciousness to recognize and act upon the fact that peace and cooperation are better than conflict and destruction at structuring a world where our species can ensure its survival and even thrive. 

But first we have to get past the outer shell of our fellow humans.  Dogs and cats differ widely in appearance, but they all recognize each other as a fellow dog or fellow cat instinctively, regardless of color or hair length or size.  For some reason human beings have a hard time getting past the outer shell and appreciating what’s on the inside.  Skin color, eye or nose shape, hair texture – these characteristics are of no value in determining a person’s worth.  Yet the fear of the unlike – fear of the alien – seems to be part of humanity’s genetic makeup.  I suppose this also had something to do with survival when we were evolving, but it’s essential for present-day humanity to rise above this misperception and learn how to subdue this instinct.

Lately, I’m not so sure whether I was right about the fundamental ability of humanity to discern what the Mythmakers called the Right Path.  We have made progress at eliminating discrimination based on race and ethnicity, but too much of that has been just lip service and political correctness.  What we must do now is achieve that emotional acceptance of the fact that among humans there are no aliens!

WE ARE ALL ONE SPECIES 

 That is my mantra, and I will keep repeating it as long as I can utter words.

Links to other posts in this series:

No. 1: What Can We Expect from the Future?

No. 2: How Will Humanity Lift Itself out of the Second Dark Age?