This article was sent to me by friend of the blog SeeASea.
If you ever find yourself in Georgia and feel like taking a road trip, how about checking out the Georgia Guidestones? Some guy had them erected (hee!) in 1980; sometimes referred to as the American Stonehenge, the guidestones consist of six granite slabs with ten guidelines for a better world, written in eight different languages.
Humanity does a pretty good job of following rules written on stone slabs, right? Let's see how we've been doing with this bunch:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature.
Well... there's the United Nations... and Esperanto... so... we're screwed. Although if we kill off 11 out of 12 people, we might be okay. (Consider my finger on my nose for this one.)
Not to mention that some people are apparently really super grumpy that there's a fancy new set of ten rules chiseled into stone strutting around, competing with the older set of ten rules. Seems like the same people who always get their panties in a twist regarding environmental messages, too. Did their moms not yell at them to keep their rooms clean or something?
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3 comments:
When I heard about this, I was told it was erected as instructions to a future civilization, one that might develop after an apocalyptic disaster.
So, not so much instructions to current people (guess we've already blown it) but guidelines for rebuilding society.
On the matterof lanmguage,I would like to see wider use of Esperanto,the planned intertnational
language.
Esperanto hasn't yet gained the recognition it deserves. However, all things considered, it has actually done amazingly well. In just over 120 years, it has managed to grow from a drawing-board project with just one speaker in one country to a complete and living natural language with around 2,000,000 speakers in over 120 countries and a rich literature and cosmopolitan culture, with little or no official backing and even bouts of persecution. It hasn't taken the world by storm - yet - but it's slowly but surely moving in that direction, with the Internet giving it a significant boost in recent years.
We're close to uniting humanity with a living new language. Broken English is a living new language, no? Score one for the guidestones.
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