Rules to Live By: Ten "Commandments"

Excerpt from Smithsonian magazine issue from 2013.
File under Easier Said than Done. Or
Are we already too late?

Nobody Knows How to Interpret
This Doomsday Stonehenge in Georgia

We know where they are and what they say, but everything else is all hotly debated

Rose Eveleth

Contributor

September 10, 2013

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hippazoid

In Elbert County, Georgia there’s a set of stones called the Georgia Guidestones. They were put there in 1979, with a set of ten guidelines, in eight modern languages and four dead ones, carved onto the slabs. But that’s pretty much all anybody can agree on about them, as Jill Neimark writes this week at Discover Magazine. How to interpret the guidelines, who put the stone there, and what people should do about them are all hotly debated.

On the stones are ten instructions:

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.