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Rule life responsibly. It’s not only ruling your own life responsibly. It’s appropriately ruling all life — other humans, animals, flora, for which you have a responsibility.

Rule life responsibly. It's not only rule your own life responsibly. It's properly ruling all life-other humans, animals, flora--for which you have a responsibility.

Rule life responsibly. It’s not only rule your own life responsibly. It’s appropriately ruling all life-other humans, animals, flora–for which you have a responsibility.

Rule life responsibly comes down to how each person exerts their dual nature over the space-time they influence. How we take care of the living and non-living environment which we impact. Like the image above, life is a labyrinth of choices, moves, decisions. Negotiating life is meeting these daily, weekly, yearly challenges responsibly.
(Audit of Humankind, chapter 1.9)

Over the last nine weeks The Explanation, through the book Audit of Humankind, has focused on one vital, maybe the central, piece of the puzzle: Human Singularity.

We’ve covered eight individual singularities that make humans who they are: Dual nature of humans, management of space-time, creativity, imagination, education, choices, progress, and challenges. I could go on and write a chapter about each of the traits in this long list of 160 emotions, sentiments, moods, and attitudes. You can think of other characteristics like decision making, taking risks, personal talents, discovery, attaining success, and desire for fulfillment.

You have to wonder where such diverse traits come from, and why humans possess all of them (obviously in various degrees). And you have to ask the BIG QUESTION: What’s the relationship between ALL THESE TRAITS? There’s an even deeper question that I’ll ask here, but not answer until later. WHY do humans possess ALL these characteristics?

The characteristics 2-8 (in bold in the 3rd paragraph) to which I devoted a blog post are not a random list. There’s a definite order that leads to today’s final overview of human singularity–rule life. For humankind to master space-time, we must be creative by using our imagination. Once we’ve imagined our project, we need the education and right choices oriented towards the accomplishment of our project. We then make progress towards that goal meeting the challenges that arise along the way; this alone leads to a sense of success and fulfillment.

Rule Life Responsibly

Along the way we’re learning one overriding quality: RULERSHIP This is what I mean by Rule life.

I haven’t forgotten point 1, our dual nature. Our human singularities can set both positive and negative goals. They can take positive and negative directions at any of the seven characteristics. Both ways there’s rulership, but one leads to hardship and ruin the other to peace and prosperity.

Humans are decision-making beings. By the way, that’s another human singularity. We make decisions about how to conduct our own lives. And to the extent we’re involved, we make or impact the decisions of others in our sphere of influence.

Let’s look at some events to corroborate this. In France, we just had a ‘hero event.’ A young child was seen suspended from a fourth-floor balcony. While everyone gazed upwards in shock, a Mali refugee, Mamadou Gass scaled the facade of the building and plucked the kid out of a sheer-death situation. Granted, this is an extreme case of how to rule one’s life and that of another person, but it’s an example nonetheless.

Mamadou was honored for his brave gesture and will be naturalized French. He already has new employment with the Paris firefighters. He met French President Macron, who said this to him in essence; You’ve shown great bravery, you’ve now become an example, and have to take responsibility to continue to show that in your life.

Indeed a courageous act that illustrates how to rule life. One’s own, through the act, another’s in the person of the saved boy, and thirdly Macron’s injunction to take responsibility and continue to be an example. It reflects the above image: Rule Life Responsibly.

Over the last couple of decades, books on how to rule life have been in high demand. In general, people know they need to manage their behavior and are looking for guidance. And then along comes a how-to guru who has some experience, a new twist, and good penmanship–penpersonship–and writes about this subject. Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently by Caroline L. Arnold or Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer. Here’s a list of five such new-habit forming books, designed to help you rule life.

The latest guru in this field is Jordan Peterson with his book: 12 rules for life. He kicks off with a real twist: Stand up straight with your shoulders back, and goes on to show how lobsters spread themselves out to the fullest to impress opponents. Such action gives them a psychological edge that pushes them upwards in the hierarchy.

It’s certainly worthwhile, but the bottom line is all these authors, including ourselves, are aware that we need to rule life; be it our own or those in our sphere.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been in the news a lot lately. Here in France that has meant a lot about the Royal Family on TV including Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation and particularly the upbringing of the future King of England, Charles. It shows how they’ve all had to learn how to rule life based on their particular function as public figures. Meghan is in the midst of a complete makeover to rule her life according to a new protocol.

Another way of expressing rule life is the term govern. In French, this is gouverner, associated with gouvernail, which is the rudder of a ship. In English, it comes from gubernare, to steer, rule, from the Greek kubernan, to steer. We all need a rudder to guide us in the right direction. We need perspective to know where we came from, where we’re headed, and what our destination is, just like a ship. That is the role of a ship’s captain or a city or state governor–for themselves and those they serve. In that sense, we’re all governors of our own lives and of those for which we have a particular responsibility.

Rule life covers all the twists and advice of all the how to books and all the singularities of humankind. It is the number one goal of each human being. Regardless of race, location, age, physical and mental capabilities this is a key characteristic that all humans have in common.

Knowing how to rule life covers all the twists and advice of all the how-to books and all the singularities of humankind. It is the number one goal of each human being. Click To Tweet

Human singularity is just that – No other life on Earth rules life

Stephen Jay Gould wrote about it in Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms – Our Unusual Unity

I could not imagine a greater difference between earthly communities–a senior American Ivy League professor, and an illiterate Malawian farmer, twenty-five years old, with five children (the oldest already eleven), and an annual family income of about eighty dollars. Yes her laughter, her facial expressions, her gestures, her hopes, her fears, her dreams, her passions, are no different from mine.

One can understand the argument for human unity in a purely intellectual and scientific sense, but until this knowledge can be fleshed out with visceral experience, one cannot truly know in the deeper sense of compassion. … Our current times … with an unusual biological unity to undergird our fascinating cultural diversity

I’m referring precisely to this human unity; the Singularity of Humankind. We’re all ONE, and there’s nothing else living that even comes close. Gould refers to cultural diversity, but human diversity is much deeper than that as we’ll see. Right now, I want to emphasize this social unity in our quest to rule life, individually and collectively, for better or worse.

Have you ever wondered why? Why only humans possess this characteristic? Why it’s so universal? Universal not only geographically but across all ages and layers of society?

The Explanation delves into fundamental subjects and dares to ask basic questions that you might never have thought about before. Most of us don’t know what a human being is, why they’re here, and what their purpose is.

How to bring peace and prosperity to Earth and all the beings living upon it? In the book Audit of the Universe, we addressed that question by investigating how peaceful and prosperous each aspect of existence is. We’ve looked at the Cosmos, Air, Water, Land, Flora, Fauna, and multiple facets of humankind. We’ve seen how we are uniquely gifted with the cognitive abilities necessary to create peace and prosperity, and we’ve looked carefully at how we use that gift.

Humanity’s dual nature, coupled with our broad spectrum of attitudes towards each other and the rest of the universe, present a challenge to peace and prosperity. Can a being so divided bring true peace and prosperity to anybody?

As we move forward in our audit of life on earth, in Audit of Humankind, we shift focus from the natural world to the human. I’ve established that human life is singular. But, how do these unique humans function?

Let’s find out.

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 1.10 of the book Audit of Humankind.

 

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