Taking Moses for Granted

Some things are just so part of our culture that we take them for granted. I'm thinking of the things that make life decent and bearable—those things that make for a civil society. Most of the time, most of us, amble about our daily business with these things so deeply in the background that we hardly notice them. We notice them only when one of them is missing, or when one of them is broken.
Here's a list of the things we take for granted. They come from the third book of the Jewish Torah. Traditionally, it was thought that Moses wrote them (sixteenth century BCE or thereabouts). Scholars now tell us that it's much more likely that they were written in the sixth century BCE (which is significant, more below).
  • At least some of our stuff we should share with those who have little or no stuff
  • We shouldn't take other people's stuff
  • Nor cheat on transactions
  • It's bad form to tell lies to people
  • Making false oaths doesn't help
  • Defrauding your neighbor is bad
  • If you're a boss pay your workers on time
  • Care for those with disabilities—like those with hearing and seeing disabilities 
  • Don't be partial with regards to the application of the laws
  • Bad mouthing people is wrong
  • Don't take vengeance 
  • In summary: love your neighbor as you love yourself
It's easy to see how we take these things for granted if you imagine social life without them. Cheating, lying, stealing, broken promises, vengeance, not getting paid for work done—if everybody lived like that it would be something like the depressing future of many a Hollywood blockbuster.
The truth is that while we haven't got all these things worked out, all of the time, our species has gradually been working on them. We live neither in utopia nor dystopia. We do live in bearable societies with a great deal of civility.
And it's all down to Moses (or the Jewish scholars of the sixth century, or Laozi and Confucius, or Guatama Budddha, and a bunch of other unknown sages and scholars, east and west).
The list of prescriptions for a decent social mix listed above arose during what philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers called the "Axial Age." Jaspers looked at all the world's cultures and concluded that something major happened for homo sapiens around 700-200 BCE. For some unknown reason across the globe, and seemingly independent from each other, the wise ones of all traditions came up with the a similar idea of what makes for a better world. 
The prescription can be summed up in the words attributed to Moses: "love your neighbor as yourself." This is a version of the Golden Rule, "Do to others what you would have them do to you." Or else, "Don't do to others what you don't want to happen to you." Remarkably, this very simple idea pops up all over the place round about the same time in world history. It has been taken up most helpfully by Karen Armstrong in several of her books. 
Not only is this "Axial Age thinking" the bedrock of civil society, it is also the foundation for social justice of every kind. We need social justice when society is lacking in just the areas of Moses' list.
What seems to happen is that in society we see a lack and work on it quite hard. The issue comes to the fore and becomes a major talking point. Take child labor in the early nineteenth century. It became clear—to a few wise folk at first—that having little children working long and hard in dangerous workplaces breaches several of the prescriptions in Moses' list. The wise ones brought it to the attention of others in society, and gradually things began to change. When the changes had occurred the issue retreats into the background and becomes part of the conventional wisdom. We now take it for granted that to work kids until they die is wrong. Or take vengeance, for instance. It was once the case that if someone wronged you, your best recourse was to go and wrong them back. In time we realized the foolishness of that way of living. We now don't do vengeance. We rely on the civility of law and order, and procedures, and precedents. We take it for granted.
Currently, we are wrestling with just how to care for the poor among us. We are wrestling with what makes for social justice, and hence civility, with regards to gay rights and marriage. We are wrestling with the bias toward the able bodied. Just how ought we to treat those with disabilities? We still wrestle with the injustice of racism. There is much work still to be done. 
If we continue in the way we have for the past 2,500 years, pretty soon these issues too will be resolved, fade into the background and become part of the conventional wisdom. But, much work lies ahead before that becomes the case.
Today, as I reflect on the the third book of the Jewish Torah, I am not taking Moses for granted.
+Ab. Andy