Quicksilver

Hippocratic Oath

Let's all take it, right now... The Hippocratic Oath, the oath to which physicians swear. We can skip the details and the rewrites. Let's just use the basic concept... "Above all, do no harm". Wouldn't that be a nice world to live in?

Now, I will make one of those non sequitur leaps by reason of phonetics alone. A hop, skip and a jump gets me to... Hipocrisy. I don't think the two words are really related, but sometimes it seems they might be.

I become ill from seeing the hypocrisy of people committing heinous acts in order to stop others from committing heinous (or lesser) acts. So many egos judge where they have no justification or they completely lack compassion. Again I repeat the refrain, "Do unto..." It seems forever twisted or forsaken.

But don't so many people look to their God for guidance? Um. It's not terribly noticeable, to be honest. I often think it's not just the messengers, but the messages as well. At least in terms of the Bible's holy truths, I might believe the untouched scrolls, the original record, from God's mouth to prophets' ears. I have a bit more doubt about the millenia of translations skewed by monarchies, governing bodies, ecclesiastical zealots and the catch-phrasing of the day.

I also wonder about concrete rules laid down for simple, illiterate, agricultural, geographically narrow, societies with little concept of soul or more than survival... when these are taken literally in the now, as if they could remotely apply. (Ex - We now know that milk and pork, if improperly handled, can be deadly. Do we still need divine laws and punishments to cover this? Isn't all of that a wee bit distracting from the bigger issues? Or have we just forgotten the original purpose of these encumbrances thereby restricting us from updating or removing them?)

On the other hand, even wrong information with the right interpretation, perspective and perception, can be helpful. Any who filter, by way of their own higher consciousness, may make good use of it.

What do we do? If our neighbor has his oxcart stuck in a ditch (on the sabbath or any other day), do we help him out of it? Do we give him a lift to the nearest oxcart service station? Do we let him stew there til he figures it out all by himself? (What? No hint of how levers work?)

If we are on an escalator with other souls and it breaks down to a stop, do we inform all those who are panicking that... pssst... we can be stuck here til it's fixed OR... whoa... we can use it like stairs? (The light of understanding may occur here.)

As far as the "Do unto..." in such cases, if I was doing a bunch of cluttering and unnecessary stuff while trying to get to a goal, and someone came by who felt they could teach me some efficiencies, I might like to hear about it. However, thumping me on the head with ancient writings or starting out with how stupid, damned or plain wrong I am, would not be very conducive to getting my open attention.

Maybe a nice personal anectdote would do, especially if it was prefaced with "This may not be exactly what you need, but this is what has helped me. Your mileage may vary." It's a compassionate way to be helpful, and respectful of each of us as individual, independent spirits of Creation.

Of course, it's easier to just kill all the 'Others'. Sheesh.

05.17.2001

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