Rules of Life Are Sacred

Rules of Life Are Sacred

Sometimes, in our fantasies, we imagine there was someone who thought like this:

We eat berries and roots. Nut and leaves. And dead animals. Some animals we find. Some we kill. We know which foods are good and which are dangerous. If we taste some foods we are struck down, in punishment for eating them. We did not mean to do something bad. But foxglove or hemlock can kill you. We love our children and our friends. We warm them of such foods.

When we hunt animals, then also can we be killed. We can be gored. Or trampled. Or eaten. What animals do means life and death for us; how the behave, what tracks they leave, their time for mating and giving birth, their time for wandering. We must know these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.

We depend on animals. We follow them – especially in winter, when there are few plants to eat. We are wandering hunters and gatherers. We call ourselves the hunterfolk.

Most of us fall asleep under the sky or under a tree or in its branches. We use animal skins for clothing: to keep us warm, to cover our nakedness and sometimes as a hammock. When we wear the animal skins we feel the animal’s power. We leap with the gazelle. We hunt with the bear. There is a bond between us and the animals. We hunt and eat the animals. They hunt and eat us. We are part of one another.

Rules of Life Are Sacred. Picture by Elena

We make tools and stay alive. Some of us are experts at splitting, sharpening, flaking and polishing, as well as finding, rocks. Some rocks we tie with animal sinew to a wooden handle and make an ax. With the ax we strike plants and animals. Other rocks are tied to long sticks. If we are quiet and watchful, we can sometimes come close to an animal and stick it with the spear.

Meat spoils. Sometimes we are hungry and try not to notice. Sometimes we mix herbs with the bad meat to hide the taste. We fold foods that will not spoil into pieces of animal skin. Or big leaves. Or the shell of a large nut. It is wise to put food aside and carry it. If we eat this food too early, some of us will starve later. So we must help one another. For this and many other reasons we have rules. Everyone must obey the rules. We have always had rules. Rules are sacred.

Imagination and Skepticism

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without imagination we go nowhere.

Understanding is a joy, knowledge is prerequisite to survival. The future of everyone depends on how well we know the Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky. This is called imagination.

But any exploration of the world, any progress require imagination and skepticism, both. Because skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact. Skepticism teaches us to test our speculations.

The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject… And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages.

Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced and our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate. Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all (Senece, Natural Question, Book 7, first century).