AN ANCIENT BLUEPRINT FOR DECENCY

I didn’t read the novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, but years ago I saw a film version. While I didn’t find this a landmark of the cinematic arts, one line of dialog is indelible in my mind, and the longer I live, the more often I recollect it and the more relevant it seems.

Towards the end, a judge tells, to the best of my faulty memory, a courtroom of agitated spectators,

“Go home; go home and be decent people.”

I must believe that if we all practiced this – or, at least, tried our best to practice it – our country, any country, all countries, would improve by a percentage greater than that of Zimbabwe’s inflation. If we were conscientious about it, then our children would learn decency, perhaps without requiring extensive lectures on the subject. They, then, would grow up decent people, and the rule of decency would be self-propagating through the generations.

There are people that apparently find it advantageous to be indecent, but I believe a large-scale commitment to decency would eventually extinguish them. For an example, if a drug pusher finds many potential customers averse to his wares, he has to leave the trade. The same would apply to a porn peddler, possibly a Horrywood producer, whose sales drop dramatically before a largely decent population. How about a lobbyist that encounters decent legislators unwilling to accept bribes, or a corrupt contractor whose lines of municipal influence suddenly are blocked by decent administrators?

If decency doesn’t interest you, STOP READING.

All right! Decency interests you! “How, then,” you will ask, “does a person get to be decent?”
“Easily,” I answer. “Just follow the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.”

If you’re not a Jew or Christian, PLEASE DON’T STOP READING. THIS IS NO SERMON!

Ten? In different parts of the Old Testament, the list of rules has different numbers of items, but, for the sake of discussion, let’s take the ten found in the New Testament. In Yves Chauvire’s opinion, even if one ignores the ones mentioning God, what remains constitutes a blueprint for decency.

Decent people don’t kill, steal, commit adultery, tell serious lies about others, dishonor their parents, or vitiate themselves envying what others have. Personally, I believe the ones about graven images and having other gods applies to excessive, unhealthy pursuits of material things, but you decide. Don’t you think that if we just concentrate on the six that are purely secular, we’d become a better people, a better world? For a bonus goal, and even if you don’t believe he was divine, what if we’d try to adopt Jesus’ recommendation about loving neighbors as we do ourselves? If you think “love” is too ambitious, will you buy “like” or “don’t harm?” We wouldn’t lead others astray, then, would we?

What say we give it a try?
YC