I posed this question on Facebook last week:

What would be your personal 10 Commandments? Create your own list of rules for living.

Here are a few of the responses I particularly liked:

David Jewell:

1. Love thy neighbor as thyself.
2. (See #1)
3. (See #2)

Lachlann Murray:

Just one. Don’t be a dickhead.

Michelle Hill:

Be Kind
Be respectful
Be happy

My first attempt:

1. Find the shared humanity in everyone – that means not owning people, not demonising, not stereotyping.
2. Don’t rape anyone – get enthusiastic consent and enjoy!
3. Recognise that we share this planet with 7 billion humans and trillions of other living things. Don’t take more than your share and live in ways that make it better.
4. You only get one go around, don’t waste it all working – remember to rest.
5. Give respect to everyone, seek to earn respect from everyone.
6. Don’t kill – heal, give life.
7. Don’t betray your partner sexually* – embrace, build, enjoy.
8. Don’t steal – give, share.
9. Don’t lie – seek the truth in everything.
10. Understand what you need in your life materially and don’t stress about getting more than that.

*Whatever agreements you have made, whether or not that includes exclusivity.

The order is a bit weird here because I’ve tried for the parallel – I’d move 2 and 7 closer together and 3 and 10. I don’t think these are exhaustive, but I think they’re better…

Bill and Ted:

1. Be excellent to each other
2. Party on, dudes!

Anthony Bishop:

Number 1: No rules, only heuristics.

Jennifer Nixon:

Be authentic
Be kind whenever possible
Be the change you want to see in the world
Remember that other people’s shit is not your shit
Love more than you think
Celebrate as much as possible
Connect

Alex Senior couldn’t stop at 10…:

1: First, do no harm.
2: Empathise.
3: Proportionality in all things
4: Make the best decision you can, with the information you have at the time according to your highest principles.
5: Be prepared to examine your reasoning
6: Take ownership of your decisions
7: Those that have the capacity, have the responsibility.
8: When faced with untenable alternatives, look to your imperative.
9: Entropy will get us in the end. There is freedom in the transience of all things.
10: Be informed.
11: Communicate to your audience. Be transparent and honest in your dealings, with very limited exception.
12: Be judicious when exercising power. More often than not it is better to stay the hand.
13: Think long and hard before you embark on a course of action that removes another’s freedom of choice.
14: Have greater expectations of yourself than you have of others. Only you can benchmark yourself, do so honestly.
15: To truly connect with others, to truely love others, you must give of yourself freely. You must give others unconditional faith and credit, until proven otherwise. Expect that in doing this some people will take advantage of you.
16: The experience of yourself and others is unique and valuable. There is always something to be learnt from others. Respect the dignity of life.

Heather Stathopottermus:

Add value, respect (all) humans, treasure life, be kind, be grateful, take care of the planet, don’t be an arsehole, be inspirational in your own niche, leave things better than you found them, and finally, don’t tolerate fucked up shit in others (it’s the same as doing it yourself).

Ryan Bishop asked “Can we rephrase these to be ‘do’ statements rather than ‘don’t’ statements?” I responded “I tried to add the ‘do’ bit in my list but keep the flavour, but we could probably dispense with the “thou shalt nots” entirely.” Harry Kanasa made the counterpoint: “Short, sharp, and punchy is the key to getting anyone to follow rules. ‘Don’t rape’ beats ‘only engage in consensual sex’ on all counts.”

Anthony Johnson added his list:

1: Be happy with what you have
2: Like ALL of my jokes :0}
3: Forgive idiots as they don’t know they are idiots
4: Don’t drink too much as you will get drunk and have a hangover for a week :0{
5: Believe in something. I believe in aliens :0}
6: Don’t piss your wife off. It’s not worth it
7: Learn to walk away from FACEBOOK sometimes
8: Start your own religion up and take over the world :0}
9: forget 8 I lost it for a moment :0}
10: Just remember when the aliens come, I told you they would :0}

Hmm – my last post in this blog was in early February this year, about 9 months ago. At that point I was tired of blogging and blogging was tired of me. I declared it dead…

But, as for Mark Twain, rumors of its death may have been exaggerated. A few ideas have come to me recently for which it seems like this is a better medium than Facebook, Twitter or a web forum. These are longer-form pieces and ideas, to which I want to have permanent access.

Facebook does immediacy well, but it also does ephemerality well… or durability very poorly, depending on your purposes.

So there’ll be a few more posts here: probably not daily, maybe not even weekly, but some. I think the links to Facebook and Twitter still work to alert my friends of new content, and I hope you’ll find the new content interesting.

If you want your comments to be durable, post them here, if you want them to be ephemeral, post them on Facebook or Twitter.