The Ten Suggestions

Finally, I’ve translated the Ten Suggestions.

They are:

1. Maintain a general uneasiness about all things.

2. Try to minimize how many things you worship, because it gets confusing after a while.

3. You don’t know what God looks like, why are you even thinking about graven images?

4. Try to take a day off at least once a week.

5. Listen respectfully to your parents and then weigh that against what makes sense.

6. Although killing other people often seems like a really good idea, it generally is not.

7. Your neighbor’s wife probably doesn’t even like you, give it up.

8. Honesty is over-rated, but a good rule of thumb.

9. Stealing only seems right if it is somebody else’s stuff being stolen; do the math.

10. However, wanting what you don’t have is natural, because you already have the other stuff.

You can see these are excellent suggestions. I know that technically the 10th is not really a suggestion, nor does it even imply a suggestion, still, I’m just translating.

Some intrepid folks suggest that the Ten Commandments from the Hebrew tradition are a plagiarized version of the much more ancient Ten Suggestions of the Qualmish. I’m no expert. Obviously, a Qualmist would hesitate making such an accusation.

The Book of Pronouns has been the hardest to translate. I don’t always follow it. For example, in Pronouns 8: 3-4 “So it is written, ‘I am He, and the Son is Me and We are It, all of which are Me; so bow to Us, for We, being Me, Him, and It are They.’ ”

Truth is tricky, apparently.

Better progress is being made with the Book of Qualms.

Qualms Ch. 2.

1. There is great wisdom in Uncertainty.

2. There is the uncertainty of a coin toss, where the side facing upwards is difficult to know beforehand. If you toss a cat into the air similarly, it tends to land on its feet, so that is not a good example. In addition, it is difficult to toss cats into the air repeatedly because they become angry.

3. The Qualmish are qualmish because we have been burned in ancient times by the whore of Certainty.

4. For example, the Qualmish used to believe that heavy objects fall faster than light objects; in fact, the Qualmish still feel that heavy objects ought to fall faster than light objects.

5. Why don’t they? We don’t know. It is annoying because we were really pretty certain.

6. The Qualmish believe that God is large. If you hold your arms outstretched at your side, extending your fingers as far as possible, we believe that God is quite a bit larger than that.

7. All Qualmish hope that God has reasons for things that we cannot fathom. We would like to elaborate on this, but we cannot fathom it. It is possible that it has something to do with how extremely large God is.

8. Do not become paralyzed by Uncertainty. Such paralysis is the way of the Squeamish, not the Qualmish. Wisdom requires us to proceed in the face of Uncertainty. The face of Uncertainty is often cleverly disguised as Necessity, artfully backlit in a lovely topaz blue.