sj_zero on Nostr: Reading through the stories of the bible in the with my son, the stories of the two ...

Reading through the stories of the bible in the with my son, the stories of the two books of kings were really interesting because it showed a long view of history we lack today.

Even Moses made mistakes, and upset God, and while he was blessed to lead his people out of the desert, he never got a chance to set foot in the promised land as punishment for his sins.

Many of the kings ruled justly, but decided to turn from God, and lived according to another way. Despite this, many of those kings decided to repent and accept their mistakes and change later in life, but while God decided not to destroy those Kings during their lifetime, but instead chose to take the leadership of Israel from their sons and give it to someone else, or have their sons divided so that Israel would no longer be unified.

It doesn't matter if you're theistic or an atheist if instead of looking at those stories as literal historical fact, you look at the stories as ancient wisdom passed down through generations meant to warn us to stay on a certain path or face the consequences.

Our contemporary view of history is much shorter. We've forcibly chosen to forget most of the stories of our past, both true and allegorical, that could help act as a lodestone to set our course through life based on the long history of man through many cycles of success and failure.

But even as we are doomed as a civilization to lose our way at times, there are also eras where we will find our way again, but it might take generations to do so. In the meantime, we personally need to pay close attention to how we manage ourselves, and carefully mind our business, and work with our hands and try to live in such a way that we're not too dependent on the civilization that has lost its way. The old morality didn't come from nothing -- it came about as advice on how to live in a world made up of cities and states, where you couldn't just rely on instinct any longer. The kings who lost their way weren't punished in their own lifetime, but in their children's lifetimes, and the kings who never strayed not only faced rewards in their own lifetime, but their kids were set up to become the future kings.

There was a big moment when I was writing The Graysonian Ethic that really made me feel small, but important at the same time. It was realizing that every single person who led up to my existence was a winner in a sense that they survived and reproduced. Many humans never survived long enough to have kids, and many of those kids would never have kids, but my parents, and grandparents, and great grandparents, going all the way back in a line of succession too far for us to imagine did succeed. It made me feel small because I was just the latest inheritor of wealth I can't even recognise because I was born with it -- instincts that help me succeed, that keep me alive, that help me prevent failure -- but I'm just carrying a torch for a short time I have on this earth before I must pass the inheritance on to my kids, and they in turn must pass that inheritance on, while building on that inheritance by teaching my son right from wrong.