part 1

Once upon a time there was a tribe of wandering desert nomads who, in order to explain how they came to be, told everyone that they were the children of a man and a woman who were made instantaneously by magic by a supernatural cosmic extraterrestrial who also made everything else in the universe including the universe itself which is the size of, well, a universe. They also told a story of how, since life in the desert was very harsh, that when they all died, they would be taken to a special place made by the cosmic ET that was very nice, and they could live there together with the cosmic ET for as long as they wanted, forever, in fact, since they really had no idea what a very long time forever actually is. In the beginning, the cosmic ET had actually put the first man and woman he made in a very nice place as well, but, in a story that reminds some people of the loss in consciousness of holistic unity and the descent into subject/object duality, they didn't behave themselves and were told they would have to leave.

The nomads did not explain why it was the cosmic ET did all this, but it was probably for his own entertainment since it appears that before he made the universe and the people in it he had been all alone, by some accounts for an infinitely long time and quite possible needed something to do to occupy his spare time. It is widely believed that this was a mistake, and the cosmic ET would have been better off if he had just created a very big cosmic size TV with an infinite number of channels, but as it turns out he did not, he created the universe and people and there you have it we will just have to make the best of it.

The problem for the nomads is that they had low technology and simple social organization and what they were really good at was wandering and nomading and working on their story about how they came to be, and when they encountered other kinds of people who were imbedded in different belief systems that included reliance on scientific development, and tried to make friends with them, they were often made fun of, and sometimes laughed at by the other people who would push them around, and take their lunch money, and tell them to screw off. This, of course made them angry, and they would often fight the other people, but most of the time they lost, and since they were no match for superiority of technology, social organization, and often, numbers, they needed a new story to make themselves feel better, so they decided that, even though the cosmic ET had made everyone, including the other people, it was the nomads that he really liked, and if the other people didn't stop pushing them around, the cosmic ET was going to send a great military leader, quite possibly with supernatural powers, to kill everyone the nomads didn't like, and put them in charge of everything. And naturally, when these other people died, they certainly weren't going to go to a nice place like the nomads, they were going some place where they would be punished, not just for a little while, but forever and always, which as was pointed out earlier, is a very long time.

This did not frighten the other people, but it made the nomads feel better for thousands of years, and kept them from having to critically examine their belief system. Anyway, after many years of wandering and fighting and many adventures, the nomads found themselves in the middle of a desert again, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, and finally started to question the stories they had been telling themselves.

"If the cosmic ET likes us so much, why did he let the other people push around so much and for so long and why the hell did he leave us to rot here in this stinking desert?" they asked, and many other questions you don't want your children to hear and so came upon a need for a cultural catharsis, or at least something decent to eat.

So Charlton Heston went up on a mountain to talk to the cosmic ET about this, and ask for some kind of guidance, and the cosmic ET, who also pointed out he had no name, since intentionality of cosmic proportions can only be distorted and not contained in a two pound brain, let alone a name, said that he wasn't going to do anything nice for the nomads until they stopped acting like unruly children and started behaving themselves. He asked what level of moral reasoning he thought hominids could effectively cope with, and sent Charlton down the mountain with some rules of conduct, ten of them, which directed people to not kill each other, or take things that don't belong to them, and basically to think about something other than themselves from time to time. There was no mention of gun ownership.

These were pretty good rules, as it turns out, and the nomads decided that nomading in the desert was not all it had been cracked up to be, and decided to move to cities and small agricultural communities so they could get on with the business of getting out of having to follow the ten rules.