the_gazelle

Table of Contents



Introduction to The Gazelle .......................................................................................................................... 1

Theories of the Origin of the Earth .............................................................................................................. 4

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 4

Chapter 1 .................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Chapter 2 .................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Chapter 3 .................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Chapter 4 .................................................................................................................................................................. 13

Social Laws ...................................................................................................................................................20

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................. 20

United States Bill of Rights: .................................................................................................................................... 21

Religious Laws: ........................................................................................................................................................ 23

Suffering .......................................................................................................................................................25

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................. 25

Chapter 1: Dreams .................................................................................................................................................. 26

Chapter 2: Faith ...................................................................................................................................................... 27

Chapter 3: Class Struggles ...................................................................................................................................... 29

Chapter 4: Reasons Why ........................................................................................................................................ 30

Drama ...........................................................................................................................................................31

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................. 31

Hamlet on life and death ......................................................................................................................................... 31

Hamlet’ instructions to the players ........................................................................................................................ 32

Romeo’s and Juliet’s farewell ................................................................................................................................. 33

Romeo swears his love ............................................................................................................................................. 33

Romeo on seeing Juliet on the balcony .................................................................................................................. 34

Juliet on Romeo’s name .......................................................................................................................................... 34

The Road Not Taken ............................................................................................................................................... 35

Parables ........................................................................................................................................................37

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................. 37

Explanation of the Parables .................................................................................................................................... 37

Parables .................................................................................................................................................................... 39

The Book Generica .......................................................................................................................................45

Comments on the Book of Generica ....................................................................................................................... 45

Chapter 1 .................................................................................................................................................................. 47

Chapter 2 .................................................................................................................................................................. 50

Chapter 3 .................................................................................................................................................................. 51

Chapter 4 .................................................................................................................................................................. 52

[Zaphod’s Lament] .................................................................................................................................................. 53

[MOTiON]................................................................................................................................................................ 54

Destruction of Our Home, Planet Earth ......................................................................................................56

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................. 56

Chapter 1 .................................................................................................................................................................. 56

Chapter 2 .................................................................................................................................................................. 58

Chapter 3 .................................................................................................................................................................. 60

Chapter 4 .................................................................................................................................................................. 64

Introduction to The Gazelle





The Gazelle is a work of scripture unlike any other. Found in a backpack that had been



discarded by an unknown party, the Gazelle has become the world‘s best selling and most widely



read book. Billions have left their more conventional religions in favor of following the



teachings of this revolutionary work.



The organization of the Gazelle seems to follow the outline set by other major scriptures,



such as the Christian Bible. The Gazelle starts with an origin account and ends with a



destruction account. Sandwiched between these extremes is a guide for everyday life. The



teachings range from actual laws to parables to poems. There is something in the Gazelle for all



who are willing to open it.



The Gazelle begins with ―Theories of the Origin of the Earth‖. In this book, different



theories of the origin of life are presented. While these theories do not always agree, they all



point to a higher power, be it God or life itself. Scholars are often frustrated by the seeming



inconsistency of the views presented in this book, but most have come to the conclusion that the



real heart of the Gazellism lies not in origins, but in everyday actions.



The Book of Social Laws sets down a brief guide for how to live a life according to



Gazellism. By following the basic precepts given in the Book of Social Laws, many have



released themselves from ―feeling guilty‖ about their actions. While other religions offer strict



laws and forgiveness for those who do not follow them, the Gazelle offers suggestions for how to



act. When acting according these suggestions, one finds their true place in society.



Suffering is an inevitable part of the human experience. The Gazelle tackles the hard



questions in the Book of Suffering. While the main theme of the Book of Suffering is the









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inevitability of pain, there is an underlying theme of hope. To live a true Gazellist life, one must



look beyond the suffering and see the larger picture. If one stays true to Gazellism in the midst



of suffering, there is surely a great reward awaiting him.



Drama is found in every aspect of life. It is present in family relationships, at work, and



in school. The Book of Drama touches on this subject with valuable insights into relationships



and the choices we make. Studying the Book of Drama helps believers experience emotional



consequences to actions without actually performing these actions. This gives those who study



the Book of Drama great insights into what it truly means to be human.



The Book of Parables is the most easily comprehended book in the Gazelle. By



explaining the basic principles of Gazellism in ways even children can understand, these parables



make Gazellism accessible to all. In fact, it is common tradition for children to be taught to



memorize these parables in hopes they will learn the fundamentals and apply them to their lives.



The main theme of the Book of Parables is a need to live moral lives. This theme echoes the



Book of Social Laws, but is presented here in a much more accessible format. Many of the



parables tell exciting and fantastic stories that capture the hearts of children of all ages.



The Book of Generica is best described as existentialist and visionary writing. The



Gazelles Scripture is a work that represents the spiritual disillusionment present in turn-of-the-



century America. In specific, the Book of Generica takes this as an attempt to turn the



conceptual reality of the frenzied and schizophrenic tendencies in America into a concrete work.



Using William S. Burroughs‘ style of describing a fracturing stream of consciousness through



conflicting imagery and situations, the Book of Generica begins as a flowing narrative of aliens



possibly seeding life on Earth, through a collage of lyrics from common pop songs, to audio bites



from pop culture movies. The effect the author was attempting was that of switching stations on









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a radio or television very quickly, only catching fragments of beliefs and society in the process.



Truly, the herald of the early 21st century is the quick-click remote control junkie and the jarring



editing of MTV-style video.



The Gazelle ends with a warning of the coming destruction of the Earth in ―Destruction



of Our Home, Planet Earth‖. While the environmental destruction of Earth may seem an



inevitable future after reading this book, a closer study reveals that the message of ―Destruction



of Our Home, Planet Earth‖ is a prophecy much like those given by the Jewish prophets of



ancient times. The message is that destruction is imminent unless changes are made to our



lifestyle. While the signs of the coming destruction are already upon us, there are definitive



actions we can take to ensure our salvation.



While the Gazelle may seem like a loosely bound conglomeration of random works,



common themes permeate the scripture. The most consistent theme in the Gazelle is Hope.



Even in the ―Destruction of Our Home, Planet Earth‖, there is a message of hope that destruction



and death can be avoided. In the Book of Suffering, there is hope in the midst of suffering. In



the Book of Drama, Love is seen even in the midst of death.









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Theories of the Origin of the Earth



Introduction

By Natale Sisk



The chapters within the section, Theories of the Origin of the Earth, introduce the reader

to the many theories behind the origin of the earth and the species on it. I did not want to focus

on just one theory, but have several for the reader to learn about. This section is not intended to

persuade anyone to adopt any of these beliefs, but is used to help the reader understand what else

is out there and how they can strengthen their own beliefs.

The main theme that runs throughout the chosen books for this section is the origin of the

earth and how we came about. For each main theory I chose what I felt was the most important

book that would back up that theory. There are many other books and information on the internet

out there that can help with distinguishing and understanding each theory.









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Theories of the Origin of the Earth





Chapter 1



This section compares and contrasts the three main beliefs about origins: Naturalistic

Evolution, Creation Science, and Theistic Evolution



Overview:

The media delight in talking about the warfare between evolution and creation science. However,

there are not just two conflicting belief systems concerning the origin of plants, animals,

humans, the rest of the world and the rest of the universe. There are literally many hundreds of

theories:



Hundreds of religious views: According David Barrett there are 19 major world religions which

are subdivided into a total of 270 large religious groups, and many thousands of smaller ones.

Among these various faith groups, there are probably at lease 500 different creation stories to

draw from -- all different.



1. Creation science: This is one of the approximately 500 religious belief systems described

above, and is very popular among conservative Christians.



-New Earth creationists form the majority of creation scientists. They believe that the earth, its

current life forms, and the rest of the universe were created by God, less than 10,000 years ago.

Only very minor changes within various species have happened since creation; no new species

have evolved or been created. This belief system is mainly promoted by people who believe in

the truth of the Hebrew Scriptures (a.k.a. Old Testament) when interpreted literally.



-Old Earth creationists believe that geology, radiometric dating has shown that the world is

billions of years old. However, they believe that God created the earth and the rest of the

universe.



2. Naturalistic evolution: The origin of the universe occurred about 14 billion years ago. The

earth coalesced about 4.5 billion years ago. Life subsequently began, probably as bacteria, and

has been evolving ever since. The process of evolution has been driven by purely natural forces,

without input from a God or a Goddess or multiple deities.



3. Theistic evolution: Evolution happened just as supporters of naturalistic evolution believe,

but it was a tool created, used, and/or controlled by God.









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Chapter 2



Creation Science:



Scientists who call themselves "creation scientists" are professionals, typically with

advanced degrees from major universities, who are generally involved in the same types of work

as the average scientist. The difference is that creation scientists have a "world-view", or

"model" for their science which is based on the belief that an intelligent designer ("God") exists

who created our universe and the natural things in it. The creation events were one-time events

and are not taking place today. A large subset of creation scientists could be called "Biblical

creationists", who take the first eleven chapters of the Bible to be real history, including the

creation of all things in six 24-hour days, the existence of Adam and Eve as the first man and

woman, the unnatural introduction of "death" into the perfect creation because of the

disobedience of Adam and Eve, and the occurrence of a world-wide flood (Noah's flood) which

destroyed most life and greatly affected the processes operating on the earth. Most creation

scientists believe that the earth is "young" (on the order of ten thousand years), but this is a

secondary issue. Biblical creationists believe that the Bible and true science are in full harmony

with each other - there is no need to "check your brain at the door" when entering a church.

A major goal of creation science is to point out the weakness of evolutionary theory,

because basically there are only two alternatives for how we got here, and if naturalistic

processes are incapable of the task, then special creation must be the correct answer. On the

positive side, creation scientists are developing alternative models and theories in many areas to

help our understanding of how the universe works. It should be noted that much of day to day

scientific activity is not heavily influenced by either evolutionary or creation assumptions, but

much scientific energy has been wasted over the last century in the search for evolutionary

evidences and experimental proofs, which have been unsuccessful so far and will continue to be.



Book of Genesis: The first book of the Bible that creation scientists base their beliefs on about

the origin of the earth on the species on.



001:001 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 001:002 And the earth was

without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God

moved upon the face of the waters. 001:003 And God said, Let there be light: and there was

light. 001:004 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the

darkness. 001:005 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the

evening and the morning were the first day. 001:006 And God said, Let there be a firmament in

the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 001:007 And God made the

firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were

above the firmament: and it was so. 001:008 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the

evening and the morning were the second day. 001:009 And God said, Let the waters under the

heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 001:010

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and

God saw that it was good. 001:011 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb

yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the

earth: and it was so. 001:012 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his





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kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was

good. 001:013 And the evening and the morning were the third day. 001:014 And God said, Let

there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be

for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 001:015 And let them be for lights in the

firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 001:016 And God made two

great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the

stars also. 001:017 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

001:018 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness:

and God saw that it was good. 001:019 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

001:020 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,

and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 001:021 And God

created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth

abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

001:022 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas,

and let fowl multiply in the earth. 001:023 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

001:024 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and

creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 001:025 And God made the

beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the

earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 001:026 And God said, Let us make man in

our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the

fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that

creepeth upon the earth. 001:027 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God

created he him; male and female created he them. 001:028 And God blessed them, and God said

unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion

over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth

upon the earth. 001:029 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which

is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to

you it shall be for meat. 001:030 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and

to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb

for meat: and it was so. 001:031 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was

very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. 002:001 Thus the heavens and

the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 002:002 And on the seventh day God ended his

work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

002:003 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from

all his work which God created and made. 002:004 These are the generations of the heavens and

of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the

heavens, 002:005 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the

field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was

not a man to till the ground. 002:006 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the

whole face of the ground. 002:007 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 002:008 And the

LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

002:009 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the

sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of

knowledge of good and evil. 002:010 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from

thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 002:011 The name of the first is Pison: that is







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it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 002:012 And the gold of

that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 002:013 And the name of the second

river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 002:014 And the name

of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth

river is Euphrates. 002:015 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of

Eden to dress it and to keep it. 002:016 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of

every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 002:017 But of the tree of the knowledge of good

and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

002:018 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him

an help meet for him. 002:019 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the

field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them:

and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. 002:020 And

Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for

Adam there was not found an help meet for him. 002:021 And the LORD God caused a deep

sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead

thereof; 002:022 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and

brought her unto the man. 002:023 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of

my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.









Chapter 3



Naturalistic Evolution: www.religioustolerance.org



In this model, the universe started in a "big bang," -- a natural phenomenon, not involving God in

any way. The evolution of the earth, its life and the rest of the cosmos are also viewed as having

proceeded strictly by natural processes. A minority believe that species evolved more or less

regularly over the past hundreds of millions of years. Most believe, on the basis of the fossil





8

record, that species evolved through a process of "punctuated equilibrium". There were long

periods of relative stability, each terminated by a mass extinction and the relatively sudden

appearance of many new species. They assume that there was no intervention by a God in any of

these processes.







Big Bang Cosmology



The Big Bang Model is a broadly accepted theory for the origin and evolution of our universe. It

postulates that 12 to 14 billion years ago, the portion of the universe we can see today was only a

few millimeters across. It has since expanded from this hot dense state into the vast and much

cooler cosmos we currently inhabit. We can see remnants of this hot dense matter as the now

very cold cosmic microwave background radiation which still pervades the universe and is

visible to microwave detectors as a uniform glow across the entire sky.



Foundations of the Big Bang Model

The Big Bang Model rests on two theoretical pillars:



General Relativity



The first key idea dates to 1916 when Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity which

he proposed as a new theory of gravity. His theory generalizes Isaac Newton's original theory of

gravity, c. 1680, in that it is supposed to be valid for bodies in motion as well as bodies at rest.

Newton's gravity is only valid for bodies at rest or moving very slowly compared to the speed of

light (usually not too restrictive an assumption!). A key concept of General Relativity is that

gravity is no longer described by a gravitational "field" but rather it is supposed to be a distortion

of space and time itself. Physicist John Wheeler put it well when he said "Matter tells space how

to curve, and space tells matter how to move." Originally, the theory was able to account for

peculiarities in the orbit of Mercury and the bending of light by the Sun, both unexplained in

Isaac Newton's theory of gravity. In recent years, the theory has passed a series of rigorous tests.



The Cosmological Principle

After the introduction of General Relativity a number of scientists, including Einstein, tried to

apply the new gravitational dynamics to the universe as a whole. At the time this required an

assumption about how the matter in the universe was distributed. The simplest assumption to

make is that if you viewed the contents of the universe with sufficiently poor vision, it would

appear roughly the same everywhere and in every direction. That is, the matter in the universe is

homogeneous and isotropic when averaged over very large scales. This is called the

Cosmological Principle. This assumption is being tested continuously as we actually observe the

distribution of galaxies on ever larger scales. The accompanying picture shows how uniform the

distribution of measured galaxies is over a 30° swath of the sky. In addition the cosmic

microwave background radiation, the remnant heat from the Big Bang, has a temperature which

is highly uniform over the entire sky. This fact strongly supports the notion that the gas which

emitted this radiation long ago was very uniformly distributed.









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These two ideas form the entire theoretical basis for Big Bang cosmology and lead to very

specific predictions for observable properties of the universe.



The Big Bang model is not complete. For example, it does not explain why the universe is so

uniform on the very largest scales or, indeed, why it is so non-uniform on smaller scales, i.e.,

how stars and galaxies came to be.





Evolution:



The theory of evolution, formalized by Charles Darwin, is as much theory as is the theory

of gravity, or the theory of relativity. Unlike theories of physics, biological theories, and

especially evolution, have been argued long and hard in socio-political arenas. Even today,

evolution is not often taught in primary schools. However, evolution is the binding force of all

biological research. It is the unifying theme. In paleontology, evolution gives workers a powerful

way to organize the remains of past life and better understand the one history of life. The history

of thought about evolution in general and paleontological contributions specifically is often

useful to the workers of today. Science, like any iterative process, draws heavily from its history.





The Origin of Species: by Charles Darwin is a very complex book that could not be fit all into

this book. I chose to use only the introduction because it gives the background to who Darwin

was and his train of thought of how he came up with his theory about the origin of species. I

advise if the reader is interested in this topic that you do read this whole book to get a better

understanding of this theory.



Introduction

WHEN on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the

distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to

the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin

of species — that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.

On my return home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on

this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly

have any bearing on it. After five years' work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and

drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions, which then

seemed to me probable: from that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same

object. I hope that I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give them to show

that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision.

My work is now nearly finished; but as it will take me two or three more years to

complete it, and as my health is far from strong, I have been urged to publish this Abstract. I

have more especially been induced to do this, as Mr Wallace, who is now studying the natural

history of the Malay archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions that

I have on the origin of species. Last year he sent to me a memoir on this subject, with a request

that I would forward it to Sir Charles Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is

published in the third volume of the journal of that Society. Sir C. Lyell and Dr Hooker, who

both knew of my work — the latter having read my sketch of 1844 — honoured me by thinking





10

it advisable to publish, with Mr Wallace's excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my

manuscripts.

This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give

references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some

confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors will have crept in, though I hope I have always been

cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only the general conclusions at

which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will

suffice. No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail

all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a

future work to do this. For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this

volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly

opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and

balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be

here done.

I much regret that want of space prevents my having the satisfaction of acknowledging the

generous assistance which I have received from very many naturalists, some of them personally

unknown to me. I cannot, however, let this opportunity pass without expressing my deep

obligations to Dr Hooker, who for the last fifteen years has aided me in every possible way by

his large stores of knowledge and his excellent judgement.

In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on

the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical

distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each

species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species.

Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be

shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified so as to acquire

that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which most justly excites our admiration.

Naturalists continually refer to external conditions, such as climate, food, &c., as the only

possible cause of variation. In one very limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true;

but it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the

woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the

bark of trees. In the case of the misseltoe, which draws its nourishment from certain trees, which

has seeds that must be transported by certain birds, and which has flowers with separate sexes

absolutely requiring the agency of certain insects to bring pollen from one flower to the other, it

is equally preposterous to account for the structure of this parasite, with its relations to several

distinct organic beings, by the effects of external conditions, or of habit, or of the volition of the

plant itself.

The author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' would, I presume, say that, after a certain

unknown number of generations, some bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to

the misseltoe, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption

seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptations of organic beings to

each other and to their physical conditions of life, untouched and unexplained.

It is, therefore, of the highest importance to gain a clear insight into the means of

modification and coadaptation. At the commencement of my observations it seemed to me

probable that a careful study of domesticated animals and of cultivated plants would offer the

best chance of making out this obscure problem. Nor have I been disappointed; in this and in all

other perplexing cases I have invariably found that our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of







11

variation under domestication, afforded the best and safest clue. I may venture to express my

conviction of the high value of such studies, although they have been very commonly neglected

by naturalists.

From these considerations, I shall devote the first chapter of this Abstract to Variation

under Domestication. We shall thus see that a large amount of hereditary modification is at least

possible, and, what is equally or more important, we shall see how great is the power of man in

accumulating by his Selection successive slight variations. I will then pass on to the variability of

species in a state of nature; but I shall, unfortunately, be compelled to treat this subject far too

briefly, as it can be treated properly only by giving long catalogues of facts. We shall, however,

be enabled to discuss what circumstances are most favourable to variation. In the next chapter

the Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably

follows from their high geometrical powers of increase, will be treated of. This is the doctrine of

Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of

each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently

recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any

manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will

have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of

inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth

chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction

of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character. In the

next chapter I shall discuss the complex and little known laws of variation and of correlation of

growth. In the four succeeding chapters, the most apparent and gravest difficulties on the theory

will be given: namely, first, the difficulties of transitions, or understanding how a simple being or

a simple organ can be changed and perfected into a highly developed being or elaborately

constructed organ; secondly the subject of Instinct, or the mental powers of animals, thirdly,

Hybridism, or the infertility of species and the fertility of varieties when intercrossed; and

fourthly, the imperfection of the Geological Record. In the next chapter I shall consider the

geological succession of organic beings throughout time; in the eleventh and twelfth, their

geographical distribution throughout space; in the thirteenth, their classification or mutual

affinities, both when mature and in an embryonic condition. In the last chapter I shall give a brief

recapitulation of the whole work, and a few concluding remarks.)

No one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in regard to the

origin of species and varieties, if he makes due allowance for our profound ignorance in regard

to the mutual relations of all the beings which live around us. Who can explain why one species

ranges widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow range and is

rare? Yet these relations are of the highest importance, for they determine the present welfare,

and, as I believe, the future success and modification of every inhabitant of this world. Still less

do we know of the mutual relations of the innumerable inhabitants of the world during the many

past geological epochs in its history. Although much remains obscure, and will long remain

obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgement of

which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly

entertained — namely, that each species has been independently created — is erroneous. I am

fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the

same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same

manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species.







12

Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means

of modification.









Chapter 4



Theistic Theory:



Is ‗Theistic Evolution‘ consistent with scripture? Theistic evolution and the Gap Theory are two

philosophies that end with the same conclusion. I address them both as one theory; however, I do

realize that they are not identical world-views. Theistic evolution is the philosophy that God used

evolution to create the world. Those who teach this claim that God started creation and then

allowed natural processes to evolve life into what it is today. The Gap Theory claims that

between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 there is an unwritten history where God destroyed a

previously created world which then allows Christianity to welcome evolution into the fold.



Finding Darwin’s God: The New Battle Over Evolution by Kenneth R. Miller explains the

theistic theory. It is hard to come by good books that cover this topic, but this one comes highly

recommended because the author knows what he is talking about. This chapter consists of

excerpts from the book that gives insight into Kenneth Miller‘s train of thought and how he came

to believe in the theistic theory.







13

The great hall of the Hynes Convention Center in Boston looks nothing like a church.

And yet I sat there, smiling amid an audience of scientists, shaking my head and laughing to

myself as I remembered another talk, given long ago, inside a church to an audience of children.

Without warning, I had experienced one of those moments in the present that connects

with the scattered recollections of our past. Psychologists tell us that things happen all the time.

Five thousand days of childhood are filed, not in chronological order, but as bits and pieces

linked by words, or sounds, or even smells that cause us to retrieve them for no apparent reason

when something "refreshes" our memory. And just like that, a few words in a symposium on

developmental biology had brought me back to the day before my first communion. I was eight

years old, sitting with the boys on the right side of our little church (the girls sat on the left), and

our pastor was speaking.

Putting the finishing touches on a year of preparation for the sacrament, Father Murphy

sought to impress us with the reality of God's power in the world. He pointed to the altar railing,

its polished marble gleaming in sunlight, and firmly assured us that God himself had fashioned

it. "Yeah, right," whispered the kid next to me. Worried that there might be the son or daughter

of a stonecutter in the crowd, the good Father retreated a bit. "Now, he didn't carve the railing or

bring it here or cement it in place. . . but God himself made the marble, long ago, and left it for

someone to find and make into part of our church."

I don't know if our pastor sensed that his description of God as craftsman was meeting a

certain tide of skepticism, but no matter. He had another trick up his sleeve, a can't-miss, sure-

thing argument that, no doubt, had never failed him. He walked over to the altar and picked a

flower from the vase.

"Look at the beauty of a flower," he began. "The Bible tells us that even Solomon in all his glory

was never arrayed as one of these. And do you know what? Not a single person in the world can

tell us what makes a flower bloom. All those scientists in their laboratories, the ones who can

split the atom and build jet planes and televisions, well, not one of them can tell you how a plant

makes flowers." And why should they be able to? "Flowers, just like you, are the work of God."

I was impressed. No one argued, no one wisecracked. We filed out of the church like

good little boys and girls, ready for our first communion the next day. And I never thought of it

again, until this symposium on developmental biology. Sandwiched between two speakers

working on more fashionable topics in animal development was Elliot M. Meyerowitz, a plant

scientist at Caltech. A few of my colleagues, uninterested in research dealing with plants, got up

to stretch their legs before the final talk, but I sat there with an ear-to-ear grin on my face. I jotted

notes furiously; I sketched the diagrams he projected on the screen and wrote additional

speculations of my own in the margins. Meyerowitz, you see, had explained how plants make

flowers.

Several years of patient genetic study had isolated a set of mutants that could only form

two or three of the four parts. By crossing the various mutants, his team was able to identify four

genes that had to be turned on or off in a specific pattern to produce a normal flower. Each of

these genes, in turn, sets off a series of signals that "tell" the cells of a brand new bud to develop

as sepals or petals rather than ordinary leaves. The details are remarkable, and the interactions

between the genes are fascinating. To me, sitting in the crowd thirty-seven years after my first

communion, the scientific details were just the icing on the cake. The real message was "Father

Murphy, you were wrong." God doesn't make a flower. The floral induction genes do.









14

Our pastor's error, common and widely repeated, was to seek God in what science has not

yet explained. His assumption was that God is best found in territory unknown, in the corners of

darkness that have not yet seen the light of understanding. These, as it turns out, are exactly the

wrong places to look.



Searching the Shadows

By pointing to the process of making a flower as proof of the reality of God, Father

Murphy was embracing the idea that God finds it necessary to cripple nature. In his view, the

blooming of a daffodil requires not a self-sufficient material universe, but direct intervention by

God. We can find God, therefore, in the things around us that lack material, scientific

explanations. In nature, elusive and unexplored, we will find the Creator at work.

The creationist opponents of evolution make similar arguments. They claim that the

existence of life, the appearance of new species, and, most especially, the origins of mankind

have not and cannot be explained by evolution or any other natural process. By denying the self-

sufficiency of nature, they look for God (or at least a "designer") in the deficiencies of science.

The trouble is that science, given enough time, generally explains even the most baffling things.

As a matter of strategy, creationists would be well-advised to avoid telling scientists what they

will never be able to figure out. History is against them. In a general way, we really do

understand how nature works.

And evolution forms a critical part of that understanding. Evolution really does explain

the very things that its critics say it does not. Claims disputing the antiquity of the earth, the

validity of the fossil record, and the sufficiency of evolutionary mechanisms vanish upon close

inspection. Even to the most fervent anti-evolutionists, the pattern should be clear - their favorite

"gaps" are filling up: the molecular mechanisms of evolution are now well-understood, and the

historical record of evolution becomes more compelling with each passing season. This means

that science can answer their challenges to evolution in an obvious way. Show the historical

record, provide the data, reveal the mechanism, and highlight the convergence of theory and fact.

There is, however, a deeper problem caused by the opponents of evolution, a problem for

religion. Like our priest, they have based their search for God on the premise that nature is not

self-sufficient. By such logic, only God can make a species, just as Father Murphy believed only

God could make a flower. Both assertions support the existence of God only so long as these

assertions are true, but serious problems for religion emerge when they are shown to be false.

If we accept a lack of scientific explanation as proof for God's existence, simple logic

would dictate that we would have to regard a successful scientific explanation as an argument

against God. That's why creationist reasoning, ultimately, is much more dangerous to religion

than to science. Elliot Meyerowitz's fine work on floral induction suddenly becomes a threat to

the divine, even though common sense tells us it should be nothing of the sort. By arguing, as

creationists do, that nature cannot be self-sufficient in the formation of new species, the

creationists forge a logical link between the limits of natural processes to accomplish biological

change and the existence of a designer (God). In other words, they show the proponents of

atheism exactly how to disprove the existence of God - show that evolution works, and it's time

to tear down the temple. This is an offer that the enemies of religion are all too happy to accept.

Putting it bluntly, the creationists have sought God in darkness. What we have not found

and do not yet understand becomes their best - indeed their only - evidence for the divine. As a

Christian, I find the flow of this logic particularly depressing. Not only does it teach us to fear





15

the acquisition of knowledge (which might at any time disprove belief), but it suggests that God

dwells only in the shadows of our understanding. I suggest that, if God is real, we should be able

to find him somewhere else - in the bright light of human knowledge, spiritual and scientific.







Faith and Reason

Each of the great Western monotheistic traditions sees God as truth, love, and

knowledge. This should mean that each and every increase in our understanding of the natural

world is a step toward God and not, as many people assume, a step away. If faith and reason are

both gifts from God, then they should play complementary, not conflicting, roles in our struggle

to understand the world around us. As a scientist and as a Christian, that is exactly what I

believe. True knowledge comes only from a combination of faith and reason.

A nonbeliever, of course, puts his or her trust in science and finds no value in faith. And I

certainly agree that science allows believer and nonbeliever alike to investigate the natural world

through a common lens of observation, experiment, and theory. The ability of science to

transcend cultural, political, and even religious differences is part of its genius, part of its value

as a way of knowing. What science cannot do is assign either meaning or purpose to the world it

explores. This leads some to conclude that the world as seen by science is devoid of meaning and

absent of purpose. It is not. What it does mean, I would suggest, is that our human tendency to

assign meaning and value must transcend science and, ultimately, must come from outside it.

The science that results can thus be enriched and informed from its contact with the values and

principles of faith. The God of Abraham does not tell us which proteins control the cell cycle.

But he does give us a reason to care, a reason to cherish that understanding, and above all, a

reason to prefer the light of knowledge to the darkness of ignorance.

As more than one scientist has said, the truly remarkable thing about the world is that it

actually does make sense. The parts fit, the molecules interact, the darn thing works. To people

of faith, what evolution says is that nature is complete. Their God fashioned a material world in

which truly free and independent beings could evolve. He got it right the very first time.

To some, the murderous reality of human nature is proof that God is absent or dead. The

same reasoning would find God missing from the unpredictable branchings of an evolutionary

tree. But the truth is deeper. In each case, a deity determined to establish a world that was truly

independent of his whims, a world in which intelligent creatures would face authentic choices

between good and evil, would have to fashion a distinct, material reality and then let his creation

run. Neither the self-sufficiency of nature nor the reality of evil in the world mean God is absent.

To a religious person, both signify something quite different - the strength of God's love and the

reality of our freedom as his creatures.



Certainty and Faith

One would like to think that all scientific ideas, including evolution, would rise or fall

purely on the basis of the evidence. If that were true, evolution would long since have passed, in

the public mind, from controversy into common sense, which is exactly what has happened

within the scientific community. This is, unfortunately, not the case - evolution remains, in the







16

minds of much of the American public, a dangerous idea, and for biology educators, a source of

never-ending strife.

I believe much of the problem is the fault of those in the scientific community who

routinely enlist the findings of evolutionary biology in support their own philosophical

pronouncements. Sometimes these take the form of stern, dispassionate pronouncements about

the meaninglessness of life. Other times we are lectured that the contingency of our presence on

this planet invalidates any sense of human purpose. And very often we are told that the raw

reality of nature strips the authority from any human system of morality.

As creatures fashioned by evolution, we are filled, as the biologist E. O. Wilson has said,

with instinctive behaviors important to the survival of our genes. Some of these behaviors,

though favored by natural selection, can get us into trouble. Our desires for food, water,

reproduction, and status, our willingness to fight, and our tendencies to band together into social

groups, can all be seen as behaviors that help ensure evolutionary success. Sociobiology, which

studies the biological basis of social behaviors, tells us that in some circumstances natural

selection will favor cooperative and nurturing instincts - "nice" genes that help us get along

together. Some circumstances, on the other had, will favor aggressive self-centered behaviors,

ranging all the way from friendly competition to outright homicide. Could such Darwinian

ruthlessness be part of the plan of a loving God?

Yes, it could. To survive on this planet, the genes of our ancestors, like those of any other

organism, had to produce behaviors that protected, nurtured, defended, and ensured the

reproductive successes of the individuals that bore them. It should be no surprise that we carry

such passions within us, and Darwinian biology cannot be faulted for giving their presence a

biological explanation. Indeed, the Bible itself gives ample documentation of such human

tendencies, including pride, selfishness, lust, anger, aggression, and murder.

Darwin can hardly be criticized for pinpointing the biological origins of these drives. All

too often, in finding the sources of our "original sins," in fixing the reasons why our species

displays the tendencies it does, evolution is misconstrued as providing a kind of justification for

the worst aspects of human nature. At best, this is a misreading of the scientific lessons of

sociobiology. At worst, it is an attempt to misuse biology to abolish any meaningful system of

morality. Evolution may explain the existence of our most basic biological drives and desires,

but that does not tell us that it is always proper to act on them. Evolution has provided me with a

sense of hunger when my nutritional resources are running low, but evolution does not justify my

clubbing you over the head to swipe your lunch. Evolution explains our biology, but it does not

tell us what is good, or right, or moral. For those answers, however informed we may be by

biology, we must look somewhere else.



What Kind of World?

Like it or not, the values that any of us apply to our daily lives have been affected by

the work of Charles Darwin. Religious people, however, have a special question to put to the

reclusive naturalist of Down House. Did his work ultimately contribute to the greater glory of

God, or did he deliver human nature and destiny into the hands of a professional scientific class,

one profoundly hostile to religion? Does Darwin's work strengthen or weaken the idea of God?

The conventional wisdom is that whatever one may think of his science, having Mr.

Darwin around certainly hasn't helped religion very much. The general thinking is that religion

has been weakened by Darwinism and has been constrained to modify its view of the Creator in





17

order to twist doctrine into conformity with the demands of evolution. As Stephen Jay Gould

puts it, with obvious delight, ―Now the conclusions of science must be accepted a priori, and

religious interpretations must be finessed and adjusted to match unimpeachable results from the

magisterium of natural knowledge!" Science calls the tune, and religion dances to its music.

This sad specter of a weakened and marginalized God drives the continuing opposition to

evolution. This is why the God of the creationists requires, above all, that evolution be shown not

to have functioned in the past and not to be working now. To free religion from the tyranny of

Darwinism, creationists need a science that shows nature to be incomplete; they need a history of

life whose events can only be explained as the result of supernatural processes. Put bluntly, the

creationists are committed to finding permanent, intractable mystery in nature. To such minds,

even the most perfect being we can imagine would not have been perfect enough to fashion a

creation in which life would originate and evolve on its own. Nature must be flawed, static, and

forever inadequate.

Science in general, and evolutionary science in particular, gives us something quite

different. It reveals a universe that is dynamic, flexible, and logically complete. It presents a

vision of life that spreads across the planet with endless variety and intricate beauty. It suggests a

world in which our material existence is not an impossible illusion propped up by magic, but the

genuine article, a world in which things are exactly what they seem. A world in which we were

formed, as the Creator once told us, from the dust of the earth itself.

It is often said that a Darwinian universe is one whose randomness cannot be reconciled

with meaning. I disagree. A world truly without meaning would be one in which a deity pulled

the string of every human puppet, indeed of every material particle. In such a world, physical and

biological events would be carefully controlled, evil and suffering could be minimized, and the

outcome of historical processes strictly regulated. All things would move toward the Creator's

clear, distinct, established goals. Such control and predictability, however, comes at the price of

independence. Always in control, such a Creator would deny his creatures any real opportunity

to know and worship him - authentic love requires freedom, not manipulation. Such freedom is

best supplied by the open contingency of evolution.

One hundred and fifty years ago it might have been impossible not to couple Darwin to a

grim and pointless determinism, but things look different today. Darwin's vision has expanded to

encompass a new world of biology in which the links from molecule to cell and from cell to

organism are becoming clear. Evolution prevails, but it does so with a richness and subtlety its

original theorist may have found surprising and could not have anticipated.

We know from astronomy, for example, that the universe had a beginning, from physics

that the future is both open and unpredictable, from geology and paleontology that the whole of

life has been a process of change and transformation. From biology we know that our tissues are

not impenetrable reservoirs of vital magic, but a stunning matrix of complex wonders, ultimately

explicable in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology. With such knowledge we can see,

perhaps for the first time, why a Creator would have allowed our species to be fashioned by the

process of evolution.

If he so chose, the God whose presence is taught by most Western religions could have

fashioned anything, ourselves included, ex nihilo, from his wish alone. In our childhood as a

species, that might have been the only way in which we could imagine the fulfillment of a divine

will. But we've grown up, and something remarkable has happened: we have begun to

understand the physical basis of life itself. If a string of constant miracles were needed for each

turn of the cell cycle or each flicker of a cilium, the hand of God would be written directly into







18

every living thing - his presence at the edge of the human sandbox would be unmistakable. Such

findings might confirm our faith, but they would also undermine our independence. How could

we fairly choose between God and man when the presence and the power of the divine so

obviously and so literally controlled our every breath? Our freedom as his creatures requires a

little space and integrity. In the material world, it requires self-sufficiency and consistency with

the laws of nature.

Evolution is neither more nor less than the result of respecting the reality and consistency

of the physical world over time. To fashion material beings with an independent physical

existence, any Creator would have had to produce an independent material universe in which our

evolution over time was a contingent possibility. A believer in the divine accepts that God's love

and gift of freedom are genuine - so genuine that they include the power to choose evil and, if we

wish, to freely send ourselves to Hell. Not all believers will accept the stark conditions of that

bargain, but our freedom to act has to have a physical and biological basis. Evolution and its

sister sciences of genetics and molecular biology provide that basis. In biological terms,

evolution is the only way a Creator could have made us the creatures we are - free beings in a

world of authentic and meaningful moral and spiritual choices.

Those who ask from science a final argument, an ultimate proof, an unassailable position

from which the issue of God may be decided will always be disappointed. As a scientist I claim

no new proofs, no revolutionary data, no stunning insight into nature that can tip the balance in

one direction or another. But I do claim that to a believer, even in the most traditional sense,

evolutionary biology is not at all the obstacle we often believe it to be. In many respects,

evolution is the key to understanding our relationship with God.

There are always a few students who find me after class and want to pin me down. They

ask me point-blank: "Do you believe in God?"

And I tell each of them, "Yes."

Puzzled, they ask: "What kind of God?"

Over the years I have struggled to come up with a simple but precise answer to that question.

And, eventually I found it. I believe in Darwin's God.









19

The Book of

Social Laws





Introduction

by Shari Deemter



The laws of our society are not consistent for each individual. All members are expected

to abide according to the Social Laws. These laws maintain an orderly society and almost all of

the individuals in the society believe them to be necessary. The first section of the Book of

Social Laws outlines the basic principles on which this orderly society attempts to function. The

second section, the Religious Laws, allow for an individual to accept or reject all or part of each.

An individual may adhere to some or all of the Ten Commandments and the same with the other

religious laws listed. It often seems that one of the only moral absolutes that many adhere to is

the lack of an absolute morality.









20

United States Bill of Rights:

The Conventions of a number of the States having, at the time of adopting the Constitution,

expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further

declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added, and as extending the ground of public

confidence in the Government will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution;



Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in

Congress assembled, two-thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following articles be

proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the

United States; all or any of which articles, when ratified by three-fourths of the said Legislatures,

to be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the said Constitution, namely:



Amendment I



Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free

exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people

peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.



Amendment II



A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to

keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.



Amendment III



No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner,

nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.



Amendment IV



The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against

unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon

probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be

searched, and the persons or things to be seized.



Amendment V



No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a

presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or

in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be

subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in

any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property,

without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just

compensation.





21

Amendment VI



In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an

impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which

district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause

of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process

for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.



Amendment VII



In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of

trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any

court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.



Amendment VIII



Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual

punishments inflicted.



Amendment IX



The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage

others retained by the people.



Amendment X



The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the

states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.









22

Religious Laws:



The laws of the Christians and Jews are as follows:





Ten Commandments as given in The Bible, King James Version



Exodus 20

1

And God spake all these words, saying,

2

I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of

bondage.

3

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

4

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven

above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a

jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth

generation of them that hate me;

6

And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7

Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him

guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

8

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9

Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work,

thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy

stranger that is within thy gates:

11

For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested

the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

12

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD

thy God giveth thee.

13

Thou shalt not kill.

14

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

15

Thou shalt not steal.

16

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

17

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his

manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.









The laws of the Buddhists are as follows:







23

1. Right View

2. Right Intention

3. Right Speech

4. Right Action

5. Right Livelihood

6. Right Effort

7. Right Mindfulness

8. Right Concentration



The Laws of the Hindu are as follows:



Follow the dharma of your social position:

Brahmans (priests) — teaching (head)

Kshatriya (warriors) — protection (arms)

Vaisyas (merchants & peasants) — economy (thighs)

Sudra (caretakers/servants) — other jobs (feet)



Practice yoga in the following ways to attain moksha:

Jnãna Yoga (from jna ―to know‖)

Karma Yoga (from kri ―to do‖)

Bhakti Yoga (from bhakti ―devotion‖)









24

The Book of

Suffering





Introduction

By Dale Slotman



Aptly titled, the Book of Suffering is the most distressing book in The Gazelle. The Book of

Suffering looks at the human condition of pain and struggling. Because of this, many believers

tend not to focus on this particular book when looking for spiritual insight. When one digs

beneath the surface of the text, however, there is a common theme of hope and expectation under

the stories of despair.



The first chapter of the Book of Suffering, ―Dreams‖, seems to be taken directly from a speech

given by a man named Martin Luther King Jr. King was the leader of an oppressed minority

fighting for their rights close to 40 years before The Gazelle was revealed. This speech speaks of

dreaming of a better tomorrow even when today seems dark. Making this section of the Book of

Suffering even more tragic is the historical knowledge that shortly after giving this speech, King

was assassinated.



The second chapter of the Book of Suffering is a historical tale that takes place during a time of

great suffering. The Holocaust was an attempt by the rulers of the German people to commit

genocide on the Jewish people. Millions of Jewish people lost theirs lives. Many also lost their

faith, as is witnessed in this account.



The Book of Suffering then goes onto a different type of struggle. The class struggle reached its

peak during the time of the revealing. While this struggle was eliminated by the Equalizing Act

of 2034, during the revealing, there were still different social classes. The middle class had

recently gained political and economic power that previously was exclusively held by the upper

class. The lower class, in some regions a majority, continued to be oppressed. This selection

details the need for social change.



―Reasons Why‖ seems to be a departure from the style seen in the previous sections of the Book

of Suffering, leading some scholars to believe that it was either added later in hindsight or was

included accidentally in an original transcript. It addresses the theme of hope in the midst of

suffering.



While the Book of Suffering is steeped in dismal rhetoric, each section offers a glimpse of hope.

It seems that the message of this book is that while suffering is inevitable, it is also temporary.









25

Chapter 1: Dreams



I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of

you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for

freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police

brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that

unearned suffering is redemptive.



Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back

to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will

be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in

spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply

rooted in the American dream.



I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one

day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will

be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state

of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be

transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one

day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of

their character. I have a dream today.



I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping

with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little

black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and

walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every

valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made

plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,

and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the

South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful

symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to

struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be

free one day.



This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My

country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the

pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great

nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New

Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from

the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of

Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let

freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of







26

Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every

mountainside, let freedom ring.



When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every

state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men

and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing

in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are

free at last!"





Chapter 2: Faith



A group of rabbis met during the Holocaust. While the Germans had rules against such

organized meetings, these rabbis were allowed to meet because they had fallen into the guards‘

favor by teaching that the persecution would come to an end in God‘s time, not men‘s. This had

quelled at least one known uprising. Because of this, the guards allowed the rabbis one meeting

every week.



On most weeks, they discussed the Torah and the Talmud, applying its teachings to their current

position of suffering. They discussed how the prophets had warned Israel that she would be

made captive if they did not follow God. This week was to be different, however. While the

rabbis usually awaited their weekly meetings as a child awaits the celebration of Hanukkah, this

week they arrived with somber faces.



One by one they filed into the bunker. After they had all entered, the eldest rabbi called the

meeting to order. He led them in reciting the Shema in Hebrew.



“Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad

Barukh Shem k'vod malkhuto l'olam va-ed

V-ahavta et Adonai Elohecha b-chol l'vavcha u-v-chol naf'sh'cha u-v-chol m'odecha…”



All but the eldest rabbi sat on the floor, as they knew this would be a long night. Still standing,

the eldest rabbi began to speak:



―Brothers, you all know of what we will speak tonight. It is a topic of debate which has weighed

heavy on my heart for quite a while now. I know some of you have passionate feelings about

this, but I pray that God will bless us with open hearts and open ears tonight. Now then, allow

me to pose the question which we intend to answer tonight.‖



He paused for a moment as if considering whether to continue. Then, with a quiver in heart that

was reflected in his voice, he asked,



―Does God exist?‖



At first no one dared speak. Once the silence was broken, however, the debate became heated.

One after another, the rabbis spoke. There were those fiercely defending the existence of God.





27

There were also those who said that after seeing the suffering of their people, God‘s people, that

God must not exist. The debate ran long into the night. It was early morning when the eldest

rabbi once again stood up.



―Because we must show solidarity among the people,‖ he said, ―we must come to a consensus.‖



They voiced opinion using by placing small pieces of paper in a box. By writing ―yes‖ on the

paper, their statement was ―God does exist‖. By writing ―no‖ they meant ―God does not exist‖.



The eldest rabbi took the box and pulled a piece of paper out.



―No.‖



He pulled another.



―No‖



And another.



―No.‖



―No. No. No. No.‖



After all votes had been tallied, the ―No‖ votes had gone unchallenged.



―It looks as if we have a consensus,‖ said the eldest rabbi. ―After many hours of discussion and

debate, after looking at all the evidence put before us, we have reached a consensus. God does

not exist.‖



―Now let us pray.‖



And they did.









28

Chapter 3: Class Struggles



The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.



Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word,

oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an

uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary

reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.



In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society

into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians,

knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen,

apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.



The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done

away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,

new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.



Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has

simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great

hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat.



From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From

these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.



The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising

bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the

colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to

commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the

revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.



The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds,

now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system

took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle class; division

of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each

single workshop.



Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers no longer

sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of

manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by

industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.



Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the

way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to

communication by land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and





29

in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the

bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed

down from the Middle Ages.



We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of

development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.



Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political

advance in that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and

self-governing association of medieval commune: here independent urban republic (as in Italy

and Germany); there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France); afterward, in the

period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a

counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general --

the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market,

conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive

of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole

bourgeoisie.





Chapter 4: Reasons Why



―It‘s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and

danger they were. And sometimes you didn‘t want to know the end. Because how could the end

be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?



But in the end, it‘s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will

come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.



Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small

to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories

had lots of chances of turning back only they didn‘t. Because they were holding on to

something.‖



"What are we holding on to, Sam?"



―That there‘s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it‘s worth fighting for.‖









30

The Book of

Drama





Introduction

By Deborah Haney



Drama can be found in many different situations in life. Drama is a literary composition to be



performed and is the art of writing, acting, or producing plays. Drama can be used effectively to



help show us lessons in life. Drama is a way of helping the reader experience emotional



consequences to actions.



The passage ―Hamlet on life and death‖ was chosen because there‘s drama in the life and



death of people. The passage shows people that love will have drama in their lives, because love



has some good times and some bad times. Drama goes along with love, life and death, because



when all of those happen to someone in their life it changes how a person feels and acts. People



can choose to live life by loving someone else or without loving. Life is full of love and some



people can handle falling in love and others can‘t handle falling in love so they feel the need to



kill themselves. Hamlet shows people that love can be so strong that without love there is no



need to live. This passage shows the drama that people can go through life and face.









Hamlet on life and death

To be, or not to be: that is the question;



Whether „tis nobler in the mind to suffer



The sling and arrows of outrageous fortune,



Or to take arms against a sea of troubles; And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;



No more; and, by a sleep to say we end



The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks





31

That flesh is heir to, „tis a consummation



Devoutly to be wish‟d. To die, to sleep;



To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there‟s the rub;



For in that sleep of death what dreams may come



When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,



Must give us pause. There‟s the respect



That makes calamity of so long life;









In the passage ―Hamlet‘s instructions to the players‖ the drama of how words affect how

people act and what words can tell us about people. I picked this passage because it shows how

people react to the words people use. Words along with action are a big part of drama, just like

in this part of Hamlet. The drama is finding out who is the murderer and by using words Hamlet

figures out who killed his father. Hamlet has drama in his life by him having to overcome his

father death and who killed him. In life people drama is shown to try to figure out who has

killed or hurt a loved one.





Hamlet’ instructions to the players

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this



Special observance, that you o‟erstep not the modesty of



Nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of



Playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to



Hold, as „twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her



Own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body



Of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or



Come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but







32

Make the judicious grieve…O! there be players that I have s



Seen play, and heard others praise… that I have thought



Some of nature‟s journeymen had made men and not made



Them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.









The passage ―Romeo‘s and Juliet farewell‖ shows the drama of love and life. Romeo and

Juliet love one another, but are told that they can‘t love one another or be with one another. I

picked this passage because it shows the drama of love that people have to go through. Romeo

and Juliet choose love over family. Is love worth the hurt that it will cause their families and the

drama that they have to go through? People experience this drama many times in life. People

fall in love and their family does not approve of the person so it comes down to choosing

between a lover and family.







Romeo’s and Juliet’s farewell



Rom. Farewell, farewell! One kiss, and I‟ll descend.



Jul Art thou gone so? My lord, my love, my friend!



I must hear from thee every day in the hour,



For in a minute there are many days;



O! by this count I shall be much in years



Eve I again behold my Romeo.









Romeo swears his love



Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,





33

That tips with sliver all these fruit-tree tops,









Romeo on seeing Juliet on the balcony



But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?



It is the east, and Juliet in the sun!



…her eyes in heaven



would through the airy region stream so bright



That birds would sing and think it were not night.









Juliet on Romeo’s name





O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?



…O, be some other name!



What‟s in a name? That which we call a rose



By any other name would smell as sweet;









In the poem ―The road not Taken‖ we see the drama of life. Do people take the road that

everyone takes or do people try to be different? Do people look at life and what life has to give

people? I chose this poem because life is drama. People have to choose if they want to be like





34

everyone or to be themselves. People have drama in living life like others or living life without

knowing what is to come.







The Road Not Taken



Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,



And sorry I could not travle both



And be one traveler, long I stood



And looked down one as far as I could



To where it bent in the undergrowth:







Then took the other, as just as fair,



And having perhaps the better claim,



Because it was grassy and wanted wear;



Though as for that the passing there



Had worn them really about the same,







And both that morning equally lay



In leaves no step had trodden black.



Oh, I kept the first for another day!



Yet, knowing how way leads on to way,



I doubted if I should ever come back.







I shall be telling this with a sigh



Somewhere ages and ages hence:





35

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—



I took the one less traveled by,



And that has made all the difference.









36

The Book of

Parables





Introduction

by Robin Redoutey



The literary genre of this section is a compilation of short stories known as parables; stories that

teach a moral lesson. The main theme of this section is that people need to live morally and have

moral standards in order to live harmoniously. A secondary theme is that we can learn a life

lesson from the actions of others. The importance of having these themes in the form of parables

is because short stories are quick and easy to read. A person that picked up a book and just read

the parables would gather enough information on the main points of the book, allowing them to

make a decision to read more of the book and or start practicing the way the book says to live.

Parables are usually very enticing and not only educate the reader but also entertain the reader.

The parables of this section are there to help guide people on life, teaching them lessons and

showing them the way to make the most out of life in today‘s society.





Explanation of the Parables



The Curse of the Bambino-This story teaches people the lesson that they should not give up

what they have, when what they have is providing success, in hopes of finding something even

better.

The Gift- This story kind of ties in with the Curse of the Bambino because it teaches people that

they should be thankful and not greedy. The story also provides a life lesson that money can‘t

buy happiness.

The Falconer and the Partridge-This is the first of Aesop‘s fables included and the last

included is the Trumpeter Taken Prisoner. All of the Aesop‘s fables included in this book are

there because they provide moral lessons that would help people live a better life in this society.

The fables are easy to understand for children and adults; these fables are also right to the point

and state at the end what a person should use as a guide for the way to live their life.

The Man and the Lion

The Lion and the Boar

The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf

The Monkey and the Dolphin

The Wolf, the Lion, and the Lamb

The Travelers and the Bear

The Ant and the Dove

The Wolf and the Crane

The Bundle of Sticks

The Milkmaid and Her Pail

The Trumpeter Taken Prisoner

It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny by Marilyn Sadler- I chose to include this short story because I

think everyone can benefit from reading it. In today‘s society many people are uncomfortable

with being themselves and many want to change who they are because they think that will make





37

them happy. In the short story the Bunny goes through this journey and then finds who he really

wants to be that helps him live happily. This is a great life lesson being taught.



Parables gathered by Robin Redoutey









38

The Book of

Parables

The Curse if the Bambino

The Major League Baseball team, Boston Red Sox, had a great player called Babe Ruth.

Babe Ruth helped the team become great, leading them to the baseball world series. The World

Series are the playoff games that determine who is the best team in baseball. Well with Babe

Ruth on the team, the Red Sox were either the best or runner up. One day the Red Sox traded

Babe Ruth, and since that day, many years back, the Boston Red Sox have yet to win or make it

to the World Series.



The Gift

There were three girls; one girl came from a very rich family, another came from a family

with a moderate income, and the other cam from a very poor family. The girl in the very rich

family was always receiving expensive gifts, she was very happy to get them, but soon lost

interest, became bored and yearned for more. The girl in the family with a moderate income

received nice gift on holidays and for special occasions; she was filled with joy and stayed happy

for a while, but lost interest when new and better gifts were available. Now the girl from the poor

family rarely received gifts and when she did receive a gift, it was homemade, not glamorous,

but that girl was very happy and thankful for that gift and never lost interest or yearned for more

and better things.





The following parables were gathered from Aesop‘s Fables retold by Ann McGovern



The Falconer and the Partridge

A Falconer one day discovered a Partridge in the nets he had set out to trap some birds.

As he approached his prey, the bird cried out, ―Pleases, sir, let me go. If you but free me, I

promise you I will lure many other Partridges into your nets‖

―No,‖ replied the Falconer. ―I might have to set you free, but you well deserve your fate.

For to betray ones friends to save oneself is a vile crime.”



The Man and the Lion

A Man and a Lion were traveling together through the forest. They began to argue as to

who was the stronger-man or lion. In the midst of their quarrel they passed a stone statue which

showed a man strangling a lion.

―There!‖ said the Man, pointing to the statue. ―See how strong man is! Does this not

prove that I am right?‖

The Lion chuckled. ―Ah,‖ he said, ―but this statue was made by a man. If we Lions knew

how to build statues, you would see that man under the paw of that lion. How a story ends often

depends on the storyteller.”



The Lion and the Boar

One hot summer‘s day a Lion and a Boar came to a small well at the same moment. They

were both very thirsty, and began at once to argue as to who should be the first to drink. Neither









39

would give in to the order. They were about to come to blows when the Lion looked up and saw

some vultures in the sky above them.

―Look!‖ said the Lion. ―Those vultures see us fighting and they are hungry. They are

waiting to feed upon the loser.‖

―Then let us settle our quarrel,‖ said the Boar. ―It is better for us to make friends than to

become the food of vultures.‖

―I agree,‖ the Lion said. “In the face of common danger, small differences are best

forgotten.”



The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf

Day after day, a Shepherd Boy tended a flock of sheep in the hills above his village. One

day, just to cause some excitement, the Shepherd Boy ran down from the hills shouting, ―Wolf!

Wolf!‖

The townsfolk came running with sticks to chase the Wolf away. All they found was the

Shepherd Boy, who laughed at them for their pains.

Seeing how well his trick worked, the Shepherd Boy tried it again the next day. Again he

ran down from the hills shouting, ―Wolf!‖ Again the townsfolk ran to his aid in vain.

But the day after, it happened that a Wolf really came. The Shepherd Boy, now truly

alarmed, shouted, ―Help! Come and help me! The Wolf is killing the sheep!‖

But this time the townsfolk said, ―He won‘t fool us again with that trick!‖ They paid no

attention to his cries, and the Wolf destroyed the entire flock.

When the people saw what happened to their sheep, they were very angry. “There is no

believing a liar,” they said, “even when he speaks the truth!”



The Monkey and the Dolphin

A Sailor, embarking on a voyage to Greece, took along a Monkey to amuse him on

shipboard. Off the coast of Greece, near Athens, a violent storm arose. Angry waves beat against

the ship and dashed it to pieces. The sailor, his Monkey, and all the crew jumped into the sea and

swam for their lives.

A Dolphin saw the Monkey struggling in the water, came to his assistance, and swam

with the monkey on his back toward the shore. Then the Dolphin, thinking the Monkey was a

man, asked, ―Are you, sir, an Athenian?‖

―Certainly I am,‖ the Monkey replied, ―and furthermore I am descended from one of the

noblest families of Athens.‖

―Then of course you know Piraeus,‖ the Dolphin said.

The Monkey did not know that Piraeus was the famous harbor of Athens. ―Oh yes,‖ he

said, ―I know Piraeus very well. He is one of my closest friends.‖

The Dolphin was so angered at these lies that he dove into the water and swam away,

leaving the Monkey to flounder helplessly in the sea. Then he called back to the Monkey, “Those

who tell falsehoods sooner or later find themselves in deep water.”



The Wolf, the Lion, and the Lamb

One day a Wolf stole a Lamb. He seized it from the flock and was carrying it off to his

den when a Lion stepped into his path. The Lion then seized the Lamb away from the Wolf. The

Wolf ran off and from a safe distance cried out to the Lion, ―You have unjustly taken from me

that which is mine!‖







40

―So,‖ peered the Lion, ―it was justly yours, eh? I suppose the Lamb was a gift from a

friend! You should know that you have no right to what is not rightfully yours.”



The Travelers and the Bear

Two men were traveling together when a Bear suddenly came out of the forest and stood

in their path, growling. One of the men quickly climbed the nearest tree and concealed himself in

the branches. The other man, seeing that there was no time to hide, fell flat on the ground. He

pretended to be dead, for he had heard it said that a Bear will not touch a dead man.

The Bear came near, sniffed the man‘s head and body, and then lumbered away, back

into the forest.

When the Bear was out of sight, the man in the tree slid down and said to his friend, ―I

saw the Bear whispering to you. What did he have to say?‖

The other man replied, ―The Bear told me never to travel with a friend who deserts me at

the first sign of danger.‖ He looked his companion straight in the eye. ―The Bear said that, in

time of trouble, one learns who his true friends are.”



The Ant and the Dove

A thirst Ant went to the river to drink. To reach the river he had to climb down the steep

bank on a blade of grass. Halfway down he slipped and fell into the swirling waters.

A Dove, perched in a nearby tree, saw the Ant‘s desperate plight. Quickly she plucked a

leaf from the tree and dropped it into the river, close to the Ant. The Ant was able to climb up on

the leaf and float safely to shore.

As soon as he was on dry land, the Ant saw a hunter of birds hiding behind a tree with a

net in his hand. Seeing that the Dove was in danger, he crawled up to the hunter and bit him on

his heel. The startled hunter dropped his net, and the Dove flew off.

The Dove, perched safely in the tree, called down to the Ant, ―Thank you, my little

friend.‖

―Not at all,‖ said the Ant. “One good turn deserves another.”



The Wolf and the Crane

Once when a Wolf was eating supper, a bone stuck in his throat. Almost chocking to

death, the Wolf begged a Crane to put her head into the throat and draw out the bone. ―I will

reward you generously,‖ the Wolf promised.

It took the Crane only a few minutes to pull out the bone. But when he asked for the

reward, the Wolf laughed at him.

―Were you not able to pull your head safely out of my jaw? Is that not payment enough!‖

―I should have known,‖ thought the Crane, as he flew off. “When one serves the wicked,

one should expect no reward.”



The Bundle of Sticks

A Father had a family of sons who were always quarreling among themselves. He tried in

every way to teach them to get along, but still they quarreled. Then one day he called his sons

together and showed them a bundle of sticks. He asked each of them in turn to break the bundle.

Each son tried with all his strength, but not one could even bend it. Then the father untied the

bundle and separated the sticks,









41

To each of his sons he gave a stick. ―Now try,‖ he said. And each son broke his stick

easily.

Then the father said, ―My sons, if you remain united you will be as strong as this bundle

of sticks. But if you are divided among yourselves, you will be broken as easily as you have

broken the sticks. Know that in union there is strength.”



The Milkmaid and Her Pail

A Milkmaid was on her way to market. On her head she carried a large pail of milk. As

she walked along she thought of all the money she would have as she sold the milk.

―I shall buy hens from Farmer Brown,‖ she thought, ―and they will lay eggs every day. I

will sell the eggs to the parson‘s wife. She will pay me well. With the money from the eggs, I

will buy myself a new frock and bonnet. What color shall they be? I think green-a lovely green,

for that color becomes me best. When I go to the market, I will wear my new clothes. All the

young men will want to speak to me, of course, but I shall pretend not to see them. When they

follow me, I shall walk proudly on. I‘ll toss my head-like this.‖ And with that, she tossed her

head. The pail slipped off from her head, and the milk spilled all over the ground.

The Milkmaid brought her empty pail and her sad tale home to her mother. ―Ah, my

daughter,‖ said her mother, “do not count your chickens before they are hatched.”



The Trumpeter Taken Prisoner

There was once a Trumpeter who liked to ride at the head of the troops, blowing his

trumpet proudly. One day in battle he was the first to be taken prisoner by the enemy.

He cried out to his captors, ―Pray spare me. I have not killed a single man in your army.

Indeed I have no weapons. See-the only thing I carry is this harmless brass trumpet.‖

―That is the very reason why you should die,‖ his captor replied. ―While you do not fight

yourself, your trumpet stirs up all the others to battle. He who incites others to

war is worse than he who fights.”





It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny by Marilyn Sadler

P.J. Funnybunny was very sad.

He did not like being a bunny.

His mother made him eat cooked carrots every day.

He had far too many brothers and sisters.

And his ears were very big.

One day P.J. decided to leave home.

―I don‘t want to be a bunny anymore,‖ said P.J.

―I want to be a…

…BEAR!‖

And P.J. went to live with the bears.

But when the bears went to sleep for the winter, P.J. could not sleep at all.

Living with the bears was not very exciting.

So P.J. said,

―I don‘t want to be a bear.

I want to be a…

…BIRD!‖







42

And P.J. went to live with the birds.

P.J. liked being a bird- until he tried to fly.

So P.J. said,

―I don‘t want to be a bear OR a bird.

I want to be a…

…BEAVER!‖

And P.J. went to live with the beavers.

The beavers liked to work very.

P.J. did not like to work at all.

So P.J. said,

―I don‘t want to be a bear or a bird OR a beaver.

I want to be a…

…PIG!‖

And P.J. went to live with the pigs.

But the only thing the pigs liked to do was sit in the mud.

So P.J. said,

―I don‘t want to be a bear or a bird or a beaver OR a pig.

I want to be a…

…MOOSE!‖

And P.J. went to live with the moose.

But P.J. could not make good moose calls.

So P.J. said,

―I don‘t want to be a bear or a bird or a beaver or a pig OR a moose.

I want to be a…

…POSSUM!‖

And P.J. went to live with the possums.

The possums liked to hang upside down.

But hanging upside down gave P.J. a headache.

So P.J. said,

―I don‘t want to be a bear or a bird or a beaver or a pig or a moose OR a possum.

I want to be a…

…SKUNK!‖

And P.J. went to live with the skunks.

It did not take P.J. very long to find out that he did not like living with the skunks.

So P.J. said,

―I don‘t want to be a bear or a bird or a beaver or a pig or a moose or a possum OR, most

of all, a skunk.

What I REALLY want to be is a…

…BUNNY!‖

So P.J. hurried home.

The Funnybunnies were very happy to see him.

P.J. was very happy to see them.

That night P.J. ate all of his cooked carrots…

…and played with every one of his brothers and sisters.

He was so happy to be a bunny again that he did not care that his ears were very big.

―At least everyone can see that I am a bunny,‖ P.J. said,







43

―and not a…

… bear or a bird or a beaver or a pig or a moose or a possum or a skunk.‖









44

The Book Generica





Comments on the Book of Generica

By Matt Fox



An introduction to the Book of Generica would seem a bit misplaced considering the



seemingly disarrayed nature of the text. However, a comment on the placement and some



overlying thematic elements could be of some use to people attempting to derive any meaning



without several years of education. Here, I shall endeavor to set forth such a thematic outline.



―The Gazelles‖ or Gezelicus Maximus Liberay was discovered in a sports backpack found



at the bottom of a Taco Bell dumpster by an anonymous worker (or possibly God, depending on



the school of thought) some three hundred years ago. This book of scriptures, stands as the



foundation of the one of the most influential and widely practiced religions in the world:



Gazellism. The most enigmatic and difficult to access sections of the scriptures is known



cumulatively as the ―Book of Generica.‖



This strange collection of ideas, lyrics, and poetry could be easily written off as self-



indulgent claptrap, were it not for the relevance of the work when placed contextually. Little can



be derived from the work if one does not take the effort to place it in the correct temporal



context. It is widely believed that the cannon text* stems from a profound dissatisfaction with



the culture of the time.



The early 21st century was a time of political strife, radical depolarization of traditional



gender roles, and the birth of a global society interconnected through the early forms of the



Internet – a period now referred to as the Second Renascence. It is this cultural framework we



must keep in mind when attempting to understand, or at least glean insight, to a work as cryptic



as the Book of Generica.









45

The Book of Generica is traditionally broken into three major categories, each with their



own subsection. These categories are further separated into one to two tiers of conceptual



compartmentalization. The three major categories are commonly known as the Triflobb**.



They all share a thematic unity in that they are all, in essence, deliriously visionary.



The first major category is known as, ―Stories.‖ This section carries within it a loose



theme of being humorous, exaggerated, and absurdist prose. The next section is titled,



―Zaphod‘s Lament.‖ This seems to be a long lyrical rant on the cultural, political, and religious



feelings of the times. The last section is called, ―Motion.‖ It concerns itself chiefly with the



angst and frustration of society failing to live up to its many promises. The end of this section is



regrettably difficult to understand, as the original source material was discolored by a wayward



packet of Taco Bell salsa***.



While the text is indeed cryptic and strange, it does show many signs of thematic



continuity. Lack of a central protagonist, plot, or cohesive meaning is consistent throughout.



The visionary style of writing lends itself to shocking the reader out of complacency, invoking a



kind beautiful, yet contradictory stream of consciousness. With this in mind, it is really no



mystery why this book stands as one of the least accessible, yet most influential books of ―The



Gazelles.‖









* This is according to the Mishivian school of Gazellism

** The term Triflobb is derived from the Latin ―Tri‖ meaning three, and the Gazellian term ―flobb‖ meaning flobb

*** Recent forensics studies have concluded that the salsa was, contrary to popular tradition, Hot Sauce







The Book of Generica





[STORiES]









46

Chapter 1



Those who had begun the experiment

so long ago had not been men.1

But when they looked out across

the deeps of space, they felt

awe and wonder - and loneliness.2



In their explorations, they

encountered life in many forms,

and watched on a thousand worlds

the workings of evolution.3



They saw how often the first faint

sparks of intelligence flickered

and died in the cosmic night.4



And because, in all the galaxy,

they had found nothing more

precious than Mind, they

encouraged its dawning everywhere.5



The great Dinosaurs had long

since perished when their ships

entered the solar system, after

a voyage that had already lasted

thousands of years.6



They swept past the frozen outer

planets, paused briefly above the

deserts of dying Mars and

presently looked down on Earth.7

For years they studied, collected

and catalogued.8



When they had learned all they

could, they began to modify.9



They tinkered with the destiny

of many species on land and in

the ocean, but which of their

experiments would succeed

they could not know for at least

a million years.10



They were patient, but they were

not yet immortal.11 There was

much to do in this Universe of a

hundred billion stars.12 So they

set forth once more across the

abyss, knowing that they would

never come this way again.13







47

Nor was there any need.14 Their

wonderful machines could be

trusted to do the rest.15



On Earth, the glaciers came and

went, while above them, the

changeless Moon still carried its secret.16



With a yet slower rhythm than

the Polar ice, the tide of

civilization ebbed and flowed

across the galaxy.17



Strange and beautiful and terrible

empires rose and fell, and passed

on their knowledge to their

successors.18



Earth was not forgotten, but it was

one of a million silent worlds, a

few of which would ever speak.19



Then the first explorers of Earth,

recognizing the limitations of

their minds and bodies, passed

on their knowledge to the great

machines they had created, and

who now transcended them in

every way.20



For a few thousand years, they

shared their Universe with their

machine children; then, realizing

that it was folly to linger when

their task was done, they passed

into history without regret.21

Not one of them ever looked through

his own eyes upon the planet Earth

again.22



But even the age of the Machine

Entities passed swiftly.23 In their

ceaseless experimenting, they

had learned to store knowledge

in the structure of space itself,

and to preserve their thoughts

for eternity in frozen lattices

of light.24 They could become

creatures of radiation, free

at last from the tyranny of matter.25



Now, they were Lords of the







48

galaxy, and beyond the reach

of time.26



They could rove at will among the

stars, and sink like a subtle mist

through the very interstices of

space.27



But despite their God-like powers,

they still watched over the

experiments their ancestors

had started so many generations ago.28



The companion of Saturn knew

nothing of this, as it orbited

in its no man's land between Mimas

and the outer edge of rings.29



It had only to remember and wait,

and to look forever Sunward with

its strange senses.30



For many weeks, it had watched

the approaching ship.31 Its long-dead

makers had prepared it for

many things and this was one of

them.32 And it recognized what

was climbing star ward from the

Sun.33



If it had been alive, it would have

felt excitement, but such an

emotion was irrelevant to its

great powers.34



Even if the ship had passed it by,

it would not have known the

slightest trace of disappointment.35



It had waited four million years;

it was prepared to wait forever.36









49

Chapter 2



His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a

frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains,

suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines. The

spines split, bisected, split again, exponential growth under the

dome of the Tessier-Ashpool ice.



Case found himself staring through a shop window. The

place sold small bright objects to the sailors. Watches, flicknives,

lighters, pocket VTRs, simstim decks, weighted manriki

chains, and shuriken. The shuriken had always fascinated

him, steel stars with knife-sharp points. Some were chromed,

others black, others treated with a rainbow surface like oil on

water. But the chrome stars held his gaze. They were mounted

against scarlet ultrasuede with nearly invisible loops of nylon

fishline, their centers stamped with dragons or yinyang symbols.

They caught the street's neon and twisted it, and it came

to Case that these were the stars under which he voyaged, his

destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap chrome.



The anger was expanding, relentless, exponential, riding

out behind the betaphenethylamine rush like a carrier wave, a

seismic fluid, rich and corrosive. The faces around them in Emergency

were painted doll things, the pink and white of mouth parts moving, moving,

words emerging like discrete balloons of sound. He looked at

Cath and saw each pore in the tanned skin, eyes flat as dumb

glass, a tint of dead metal, a faint bloating, the most minute

asymmetries of breast and collarbone, the -- something flared

white behind his eyes.



`The architects of Freeside went to great pains to conceal

the fact that the interior of the spindle is arranged with the

banal precision of furniture in a hotel room. In Straylight, the

hull's inner surface is overgrown with a desperate proliferation

of structures, forms flowing, interlocking, rising toward a solid

core of microcircuitry, our clan's corporate heart, a cylinder

of silicon wormholed with narrow maintenance tunnels, some

no wider than a man's hand. The bright crabs burrow there,

the drones, alert for micromechanical decay or sabotage.'



The roof of his mouth cleaved painlessly, admitting rootlets

that whipped around his tongue, hungry for the taste of blue,

to feed the crystal forests of his eyes, forests that pressed

against the green dome, pressed and were hindered, and spread.



And he was remembering an ancient story, a king placing

coins on a chessboard, doubling the amount at each square...



Exponential...



Darkness fell in from every side, a sphere of singing black,

pressure on the extended crystal nerves of the universe of data







50

he had nearly become...



And when he was nothing, compressed at the heart of all

that dark, there came a point where the dark could be no _more,_

and something tore.



The Kuang program spurted from tarnished cloud, Case's

consciousness divided like beads of mercury arcing above an

endless beach the color of the dark silver clouds. His vision

was spherical, as though a single retina lined the inner surface

of a globe that contained all things, if all things could be

counted.





Chapter 3



"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how

vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's

a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts

to space. Listen ..." and so on.



The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of

crossing vast interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a

second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace.



This, briefly, is the story of its discovery.



The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability

by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-

Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong

Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of

course well understood - and such generators were often used to

break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the

hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left,

in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.



Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand

for this - partly because it was a debasement of science, but

mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.



Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they

encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate

the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship

across the mind-paralyzing distances between the furthest stars,

and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was

virtually impossible.



Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab

after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning

this way:



If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual

impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability.







51

So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly

how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite

improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea

... and turn it on!



He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had

managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite

Improbability generator out of thin air.



It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the

Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched

by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally

realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a

smartass.



Chapter 4



The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the

future.



You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle

permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this

pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face the ultimate internal question: to

succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing

themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.









52

[Zaphod’s Lament]



Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon

than their song, namely their silence...

Someone might possibly have escaped from

their singing;

but from their silence, certainly never.1



You run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again.2

The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. 3



Mutilated lips give a kiss on the wrist

Of the worm like tips of tentacles expanding4

In my mind, I'm fine, accepting only fresh brine

You can get another drop of this, yeah you wish...’5



I want to run

I want to hide

I want to tear down the walls6

That hold me inside

I want to reach out

And touch the flame

Where the streets have no name7



Take a wrinkled raisin, and do with it what you will

Push it into third if you know you're gonna climb a hill 8

Eat plenty of lasagna 'til you know that you've had your fill

Resist all the urges that make you wanna go out and kill9



You're going to have to see through my perspective10

I need to make mistakes just to learn who I am

And I don't want to be so damn protected

There must be another way

Cause I believe in taking chances11



I strive to balance my aura by dancing with the light

And sometimes it's difficult to stay quiet

I fight it, each time I find myself walking across your eyelids 12

Wishin' the malnutrition, the imagination of yours

Could see the truth you breathe through each one of your pores

And now the days are drastic, the nights last forever

Wanna tear this motherfucker up and put it back together 13

I'd like to ask the cats that act like they my peers

If you spent the energy I've spit, tryin' to count the tears

One of these days you're gonna climb the tallest building of all

Give a warning to those below and let the tears fall14



Through the alleys of a quiet city street

You take the staircase to the first floor15

Turn the key and slowly unlock the door

As a man breathes into a saxophone

And through the walls you hear the city groan 16

Outside is America

Outside is America17









53

[MOTiON]



What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand. Only now the fingers were Nosferatu-long and

the thumb was too short, but he said how at exactly four-thirty the hand was perfect.

The giant shadow hand was perfect for one minute, and for one perfect minute Tyler had sat in

the palm of a perfection he'd created himself.



One minute is all you can ever expect from perfection.



HANZO: I'm done doing what I swore an oath to God 28 years ago to never do again. I've

created, "something that kills people." And in that purpose I was a success. I've done this,

because philosophically I'm sympathetic to your aim.

I can tell you with no ego, this is my finest sword. If on your journey, you should encounter God,

God will be cut.



Tyler only says this to make me feel better. The truth is I like my boss. Besides, I'm enlightened

now. You know, only Buddha-style-behavior. Spider chrysanthemums. The Diamon Sutra and the

Blue Cliff Record. Hari Rama, you know, Krishna, Krishna. You know, Enlightened.



"Sticking feathers up your butt," Tyler says, "does not make you a chicken." And, “The things

you used to own, now they own you.”



Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is, Neo? It's that feeling you have had all your life. That

feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a

splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me. But what is it? The Matrix is

everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on

your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the

world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.



SHREK: Why are you following me?



DONKEY: Cause I'm all alone. There's no one here beside me. My problems have all gone, there's

no one to deride me. But you gotta have friends -



SHREK: Stop singing! Why that's no wonder why you don't have friends.



DONKEY: Wow! Only a true friend would be that truly honest.



ZORG

Yes but... by that simple gesture of destruction.

I gave work to at least fifty people today. The

engineers, the technicians, the mechanics. Fifty

people who will be able to feed their children so

they can grow up big and strong. Children who

will have children of their own, adding to the great

cycle of life!



Father, by creating a little destruction,

I am, in fact, encouraging life! So, in

reality, you and I are in the same business!









54

CORNELIUS

Destroying a glass is one thing… killing people

with the weapons you produce is quite another.



ZORG

Let me reassure you Father… I will never kill

more people in my entire life than religion has

killed in the last 2000 years.









55

Destruction of Our Home, Planet Earth





Introduction

By Natale Sisk



‗Humans, once considered to be the only creatures wise enough to alter the environment for our

convenience, have turned out to be the only ones insane enough to demolish it.‘



Robert Oburta Wanndera, Uganda





The Earth is being constantly used and abused by people who do not realize what they are

doing because they are too wrapped up in their daily lives. They are to busy to be concerned with

what they are doing may be hurting the earth for the future generations. One of Newton‘s laws

states that for every cause there is an equal and opposite effect or plainly stated for every action

there is an equal and opposite reaction. Keep in mind that the generations of today are doing

things that are going to affect the future generation‘s life style and environment.

The final chapters of this section, Destruction of Our Home, Planet Earth, are used to

state the truth to what is occurring and to bring to light the facts and stats. This conglomeration

of facts is out there for people to read, but they just don‘t take the time to read them or interpret

them so these chapters are here for people to understand and grasp what is happening. Since the

facts and stats are constantly changing and new technology is on the rise, not only are there

important passages from book, but also information from websites that keep up to date with this

info. The information that was chosen from the books and websites to be put together in these

final chapters was chosen by how truthful and shocking it was in order to make people stop and

realize what is actually occurring on the earth. Also there is a section that focuses on what the

future generations see and what they want to be done about what they see. The book chosen for

that section that I thought to be very important was Pachamama which is a book that is the voice

of the children and their thoughts on the destruction of the earth.

The central theme that runs through these chapters is environmental destruction of the

earth. It begins with the laws that are there to protect the earth, then moves on to how these laws

have been broken and how people don‘t or refuse to realize it. Finally, there is a section that

shows and tells what happens if we don‘t fix it, and what can be done to fix it. The earth is the

only place humankind has to live and we have to share and care for it with many other species.









Chapter 1







56

Many people do not know that there exists an act that is suppose to protect

the environment and the species within it. In fact there are many acts out there

that are suppose to protect and preserve the environment and the species that live

within it. This chapter displays what I feel is the most important act that is out

there to remind people of their rights and how this earth should be treated and

taken care of.





The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended

(Pub. L. 91-190, 42 U.S.C. 4321-4347, January 1, 1970, as amended by Pub. L. 94-52,

July 3, 1975, Pub. L. 94-83, August 9, 1975, and Pub. L. 97-258, § 4(b), Sept. 13, 1982)



An Act to establish a national policy for the environment, to provide for the

establishment of a Council on Environmental Quality, and for other purposes.



Purpose

Sec. 2 [42 USC § 4321].

The purposes of this Act are: To declare a national policy which will encourage

productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; to promote

efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and

stimulate the health and welfare of man; to enrich the understanding of the ecological

systems and natural resources important to the Nation; and to establish a Council on

Environmental Quality.



TITLE I

CONGRESSIONAL DECLARATION OF NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL

POLICY

Sec. 101 [42 USC § 4331].



(a) The Congress, recognizing the profound impact of man's activity on the interrelations

of all components of the natural environment, particularly the profound influences of

population growth, high-density urbanization, industrial expansion, resource

exploitation, and new and expanding technological advances and recognizing further

the critical importance of restoring and maintaining environmental quality to the overall

welfare and development of man, declares that it is the continuing policy of the Federal

Government, in cooperation with State and local governments, and other concerned

public and private organizations, to use all practicable means and measures, including

financial and technical assistance, in a manner calculated to foster and promote the

general welfare, to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can

exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of

present and future generations of Americans.



(b) In order to carry out the policy set forth in this Act, it is the continuing responsibility of

the Federal Government to use all practicable means, consistent with other essential





57

considerations of national policy, to improve and coordinate Federal plans, functions,

programs, and resources to the end that the Nation may --

 fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for

succeeding generations;

 assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, and aesthetically and

culturally pleasing surroundings;

 attain the widest range of beneficial uses of the environment without

degradation, risk to health or safety, or other undesirable and unintended

consequences;

 preserve important historic, cultural, and natural aspects of our national

heritage, and maintain, wherever possible, an environment which supports

diversity, and variety of individual choice;

 achieve a balance between population and resource use which will permit

high standards of living and a wide sharing of life's amenities; and

 enhance the quality of renewable resources and approach the maximum

attainable recycling of depletable resources.



(c) The Congress recognizes that each person should enjoy a healthful environment

and that each person has a responsibility to contribute to the preservation and

enhancement of the environment.









Chapter 2



The rights of the people and the protection of the environment have been

violated many times since the National Act was passed. Many people may not

realize what is actually occurring to the environment and the people of today. This

chapter tells exactly what is happening and how this act is being violated by using

several poems written by people that have seen or been affected by the violations.





58

There are also various quotes that are used to capture people’s attention about

what is going on and what people think about it.





Consum'n' Being



Well I don't know, I usually take a latte,

No, no let's just drive, what d'ya say.

I traded the van for this SUV.

Lots'o' power & room, so you see

THAT thing! Just put it in the trash

I'll get another when I stop for cash.

Wait, did you see the show last night?

the Season Finale, nothing went right!

And then, oops hold on, it's my cell,

"Yes, Hello? What? …oh, do tell,

me more, as I really want to know

as my life is always on the go.

Never a minute for a thing

not even to hear birds sing".

So forgive me please for I am only Human

And as I continue on, I am consum'n'.

The Chamber

By Bunyan Bryant



Breathe shallow, breathe deeply,

Oh Lord, I feel like giving up completely.

Wheezing and sucking air-filled smells,

Rotten to the core with chemicals.

Wheezing and fighting for life,

Is causing mental strife.

As chemicals bellows and pass,

Throughout the neighborhood amass,

Each street like chambers of gas.

Engulfing us and choking us,

Making breathing a difficult task.

Life is without peace and harmony,

Is this what happened in Germany.





The Image

By Bunyan Bryant



Kids with itchy skin and watering eyes,

Beneath the weight of polluted skies.

Of lead, zinc, cadmium, PCBs, and arsenic too,





59

Makes clear skies hard to view.

Of xylene, ethylene, benzene, and chlorine,

While men in dark suits commute in limousine.

Landfills and incinerators abound,

As if we had the only land in town.





‗There is not a market where we can buy another planet!‘

Ana Gabriela de Luna, Mexico





The Argument

By Bunyan Bryant



Of a mentality of causality,

They warn of no sickness or mortality.

Pollution is ninety percent controlled,

We are told.

Fugitive emissions from smoke stacks are few,

Safe for living and breathing too.

But what happens with the dangerous few,

Get into our food chain ready for chew.

Dangerous chemicals amplifying themselves by millions to stay,

To the top of the food chain putting us in harms way.

Ninety percent reduction is not enough,

And believe you me --we will get tough.

Pollution prevention provokes much fear,

Of jobs and profits loss so clear,

But so is the loss of people I love so dear.

Although it will take lots of dollars to change,

From control to prevention we can arrange.

But what about the causality people who charge for fee,

They will have no argument or job you see.



Chapter 3



Since it has been said that a picture is more than a thousand words said then here are

some pictures showing the truth of environmental destruction and violations of the National

Environmental Act.

Air pollution pictures:









60

61

Isn‘t this one ironic? People are trying other ways to clean the environment by finding different

ways to provide energy besides burning fossil fuels. As you can see in the background there is a

layer of smog then the blue sky behind the wind towers that are suppose to help clean the

environment.









This picture shows that even though we may not see the pollution at some times of the day it is

there. It depends on where the sun is in order to see the pollution.







62

Rainforest Destruction:









Oil Spill:









The aftermath effects of an oil spill that occurred. Not only

does it effect the life in the water, but also the life on land.









63

Chapter 4

This final chapter focuses on the conditions of the earth and how it will affect the

future generations by introducing the book Pachamama. The future generations have a say

in what will be the conditions that they will have to live in. This is their voice to what they

see occurring to their earth and what should be done about it.







PACHAMAMA: Our Earth, Our Future

Foreword:

Young people from all over the world have produced an inspiring, sometimes

frightening, collection of case studies, poems and drawings to tell the story of our global

environment. Some things they have to say are disturbing – adults have acted

irresponsibly in caring for the environment. But young people are also enthusiastically

dedicated to their future – a future where Mother Earth is healthy and where people

work together to solve our current and future problems.



Over a year ago, when this book was still only an idea, Brem, a young Indian man said:



‘By creating this book, young people world-wide can work together and produce

something really amazing. Once we know what the problems look like in each part of

the world, we will have a much better idea of what we each have to do to solve them.’

How right he was.



As you read, Pachamama will tell you why the world’s environment is being degraded

and how our Mother Earth is doing today. The book also tells you about what is being

done around the world and maybe even on your doorstep, to protect the environment.



A lot of information in Pachamama has come out of a book called the Global

Environment Outlook, or GEO in short. GEO is a report written by the United Nations

Environment Programme (UNEP). The report is an overview of the health or state of our

environment and of the policies that are in place to manage the environment and tackle

environmental problems.



From all the contributions, an editorial group made up of some of the authors and

artists compiled the stories, poems, case studies and pictures into this amazing book.



It’s your world - accept nothing less.









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Until the Earth‟s protective atmosphere was formed, there was no life except

in the sea. Now big cities, cars and factories pollute the air so much, we may

soon be better off back there! GEO-2000 tells us there has been some

improvement, but it is not fast enough.







Our planet is becoming choked with poisonous gases mostly from our daily

activities like driving cars, warming our houses and running power stations.

The problem is worst in Latin America and Asia. In cities like Seoul and

Mexico City, the air is so bad, some people wear face masks to filter the air

they breathe. In cities like Beirut and Damascus, dust storms make it even

worse! And pollution doesn‟t need a passport. Pollution from factories and

power stations in Europe, North America and Russia ends up in the Arctic

region.









Air pollution is a major factor in causing humans to get ill. Tuberculosis,

bronchitis, heart and chest diseases, stomach disorders, asthma and cancers

can all be traced to chemicals in the air. Pesticides and fertilisers release

gases and particles into the air which poison people and kill animals.









For years, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were used as a cooling device in

freezers and air conditioners. Scientists discovered, however, that CFCs

destroy the ozone layer – the layer that filters ultraviolet radiation from the

sun. Ultraviolet radiation causes eye damage and skin cancer. An

international agreement commonly called the Montreal Protocol, signed in

1989 (see page 62), has helped stop the production of CFCs. If we keep to

this agreement, ozone-depleting substances will stop being produced and

the ozone layer will begin to repair itself over the next 100 years.









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The world is warming up because carbon dioxide (CO2) from smoke and car

exhausts collects in the atmosphere and traps some of the heat going back

to space, like a greenhouse. CO2 and other greenhouse gases are expected

to raise global temperature by an average of 2°C by the year 2100 causing

the polar icecaps to melt, sea levels to rise and freak weather conditions

which may cause millions of deaths.









Almost all living things on Earth need water to live, yet humans pollute and waste it recklessly.

More than a fifth of the world‘s population doesn‘t have enough: it is likely people will go to war

over water in your lifetime.









Some areas have far too much water and suffer from floods, like Bangladesh

and the flood plains of the Mississippi in the United States. Other areas, like

Africa and West Asia, suffer severe droughts. The problem of water

availability is most serious in Africa and West Asia. If water consumption

continues at its present rate, by 2025 two out of three people will not have

enough water for their basic needs.







Mining and industry pollute rivers with deadly chemicals. Farmers spray

crops with pesticides and fertilizers which are washed into rivers and lakes.

In many parts of the world, people use rivers as open sewers and garbage

dumps. Near coasts, when too much water is taken from aquifers (big

underground reservoirs of fresh water), sea water seeps in and makes the

water salty and undrinkable.



If you take more money out of a bank than you put in, you get an overdraft

and eventually go broke. We are doing this to our aquifers all over the world.

In West Asia, North Africa, China, India, Russia and the USA, we run huge

annual water overdrafts. This, combined with the discharge of untreated

industrial waste and sewage into water systems makes water shortage one





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of our most critical environmental issues.







Worldwide, polluted water affects the health of 1.2 billion people and

contributes to the death of 15 million children under five every year. For

example, in Asia, one in three people do not have access to safe drinking

water and one in two have no access to hygienic sanitation.







If you had a bottle of life-preserving fluid on which your life depended,

would you pour into it all your sewage and rubbish, along with any other

poisonous chemicals you could find? And yet, that is exactly what we are

doing to our water supply – all over the world.









Since February 1998, the residents of Adamawa State in Nigeria have been

experiencing brown water running out of their taps. This is a common

problem in many developing countries. It has led to the outbreak of cerebral

meningitis and hookworm. .

Daniel Onyi Eboh, Nigeria.









According to Hindu beliefs, the Goddess Ganga descended to Earth in the

form of a river in order to purify the souls of 60,000 dead princes. The River

Ganges symbolizes purification for millions of Hindus around the world, and

many make their way to it, believing that drinking the waters will give them

salvation. Today there are 400 million people living along the banks of the

river in 29 cities, 70 towns and hundreds of villages. These people deposit

nearly all their sewage – almost 1.3 billion litres per day – directly into the

river. Add to this the 260 million litres of industrial waste from the many

factories along the river. This – like the sewage – enters the river mostly

untreated. Also, there is the runoff from more than six million tons of

chemical fertilizers and pesticides sprayed on the fields along its length.

Thus, this holy symbol of purification has become an open sewer of shame

to its people.

Neha Smriti, India







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Forests, like oceans, recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen, and provide

habitats for most of the world‟s biodiversity. They are also a vital source of

building materials and firewood. But almost all of them are under threat.









We are losing forest at a rate of 375 km2 a day – an area the size of Greece

each year. Causes include urban development, clearance for agriculture, fuel

wood collection, timber exploitation, fires and submersion of forests in lakes

created by hydro-electric dams. Deforestation contributes to desertification,

global warming, poverty and loss of beauty. More than half the Central

American rainforest has gone. The Amazon will not last to the end of the

21st century if the current rate of cutting it down continues.





The world has lost 80% of the original forests that covered the earth. The

remaining old-growth forests are found mostly in the Amazon rainforest,

Central Africa, Southeast Asia, Canada and the Russian Federation. But they

are threatened with logging, mining and development.







In 1999, the United Nations announced that about 13.7 million hectares of

the world‟s rainforest are cleared or burned each year – about one football

pitch every second! Logging of trees for timber, clearing of land for meat

production, and mining are ways companies strip the land of trees. Poor

people are forced on to forest land because rich companies have squandered

the good agricultural land. In Lacandona rainforest in Chiapas, Mexico, one

hectare of the forest will have about 30 different species of trees, 50 of

orchids, 40 birds, 20 mammals, 300 butterflies and more than 5,000 insects.

Now, more than 50% of the rainforest has been destroyed by population

growth, industrial development, agriculture, farms and extraction of

petroleum. We must preserve the rest.

Ricardo Quintana Vellejo, Mexico and Peris Siamanta Memus, Kenya









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Oceans are the largest ecosystems on Earth. Seventy-five per cent of all sea

pollution is from land-based human activity. People abuse the coastal marine

environment by destroying habitats, by over-fishing and pollution.









Most countries use the sea as a sewer. For example, coastal cities in Africa

dump hundreds of millions of litres of sewage and industrial waste into the

sea a year. This will continue as they cannot afford sewage treatment plants.

As sewage, fertilizers and other nutrients are poured into the seas, sea

weeds and algae spread like a horror movie, using up all the oxygen that

fish need to stay alive. In the past, the Soviets dumped nuclear waste in the

shallow seas of the Arctic Circle. As these began to leak, the marine life

came under threat.









Good soils and growing conditions are not evenly distributed around the

world and in places the problem is made worse by a greedy few abusing the

land, resulting in poverty and hunger for millions.



“Soil destruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina comes from war. Aggression has

caused an immense wave of migration. The new settlements are built on

prime agricultural land. Where will we grow our food now?”

Nerina Zagora, Bosnia









Extreme land degradation results in desertification - when land becomes

desert and is unable to support any vegetation. Desertification affects over a

billion people. It is particularly bad in the savannas of Africa, the Great

Plains and pampas of the Americas and in the steppes of south-east Europe

and Asia, the outback of Australia and parts of the Mediterranean region.







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Towns and cities are often developed on former farmland and forests. As

urban areas grow, land that once grew food disappears under concrete. This

means the remaining land has to produce more food to support even more

people. Poverty increases stress, especially in Asia where 75% of the people

are poor. Available land per capita is already very low in Asia with 182

people per km2 compared to the world average of 44 per km2.









Soil degradation affects a third of the world‟s land and diminishes our ability

to produce food for the growing population. It is caused by deforestation,

poor land and water management, over-use of fertilisers and pesticides,

poor waste disposal, clearance of poor land for growing food, and air

pollution. Land degradation leads in a helter-skelter downward spiral to

worse poverty amongst the world‟s poorest peoples.









Though 60 to 70% of people in developing countries live in rural areas, half

the total world population now lives in urban areas, drawing their food and

natural resources from the surrounding rural areas.







In 1970, there were only three cities with more than 10 million people. Now

there are 32 and three of these have more than 20 million. Rural people

move to cities attracted by the promise of work, higher salaries and a better

social life. This growth places ever greater pressure on the environment. For

example, in Russia and Eastern Europe, tens of thousands of people have

migrated to cities since 1989, putting a huge strain on both the natural and

the built environment.



―Everything has its limits. Do you know where those limits are? No? Neither do I-so is there any

limit to the number of people our world can support?‖ Olga Yakovleva









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Most cities suffer from noise and air pollution. Experts say that 20% of

Europeans are subject to stress from noise. Air pollution also takes its toll on

human health. Millions of dollars are spent on health care due to air pollution

and many early deaths result from respiratory diseases such as bronchitis

and asthma.







Water is the single most valuable resource for cities. Many cities are facing a

serious shortage of safe drinking water as a result of leaking pipes and

pollution from POPs. Most city people in developing countries end up boiling

their water, or buying bottles. Where piped fresh water is available, it

usually only goes to elite residential areas. The poor still have to buy their

water through middle men and end up paying more for it than the rich.









Very few cities in developing countries have proper facilities for disposing of

solid and human waste. Because cities generate so much of both, this is a

huge problem to people‟s health and the pleasure of living in a city









We paid a visit to the municipal dump of the city of Guaiba, in Brazil, and

saw the people who make a living from sorting the waste. It might seem

impossible that people can survive on waste. But of the 40,000 kg of waste

thrown away each day in Guaiba alone, 70% could be recycled. Twenty per

cent could be used as compost. So, if it was properly sorted, only 10% of

the waste would end up in the dustbin. We are making a campaign, called

“Clean City”. In this way we will improve the life quality for all in Guaiba and

contribute to preventing the pollution of soil and underground water.

Rubbish concerns us all!

Niños Periodistas, F. Canez & C. Rodriguez, Guaiba, Brazil









Governments need to put their hearts into controlling environmental

degradation and encouraging sustainable lifestyles. Many of them are





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already doing a lot, but they could all do more. Leaders need to be

visionary!



Set up government institutions: A ministry of environment directly

responsible for the environment helps to keep environmental issues at the

centre of all government planning. Most nations now have them.



Make laws: The obvious way to protect the environment is to make laws

against destroying or damaging it. Those who break the laws should be

punished with fines or imprisonment.



Implement and enforce laws: If you have laws, you have to enforce them

with police and law courts.



Public participation: Local people are more likely to have an understanding

of their environmental problems and solutions than distant institutions. So

involving the public in decision-making and allowing them access to

information will generally result in quicker and more appropriate responses

to issues.



Regional cooperation: Regional groups can often work more quickly and

effectively to deal with regional problems.



Intelligent prices: It would make sense to tax things that pollute the

environment and give financial assistance, called subsidies, to things that do

not. But many governments do the reverse by subsidizing things that

pollute!



Promote new technology: Governments can do more to make industry pay

for pollution it creates and encourage new non-polluting technologies.



Deal with social issues: Poverty, population growth and social behavior get

to the root causes of environmental degradation. Investing in solutions to

social issues helps the environment.









Here are some ideas GEO-2000 suggests our leaders should focus

on:



Combine land and water management. One department integrating land and

water management together with social and economic issues would ensure





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more balance decision-making.

Change to cleaner technology that does not pollute air or water. Technology

exists to reduce pollution – let‟s use it!

Decrease energy use through energy and carbon taxes. Make those who use

more, pay more. Switch to pollution-free technology.

More action to protect forests through research, education, sustainable

forest management, more protected areas with benefits going to the local

community and eco-tourism.

Play fair. Public money is often provided as an incentive to individuals and

companies to produce goods and services. This money is called a subsidy.

The goal of governments should be to stop the subsidies which have a

negative effect on the environment and which encourage individuals and

companies to be wasteful.

Manage water resources for agriculture. Improve awareness and provide

loans and incentives to help farmers repair leaks and switch to more efficient

irrigation systems.









Inside every big issue lurk hundreds of little issues that may, in the end,

emerge and do more damage to the environment than the big one. In

climate change, it is small issues like El Niño that do the damage. Marie

Curie thought she had made a great discovery with radium but she could not

foresee that radiation sickness would kill her. No one knows what will



emerge.

Jukka Uosukainen, Deputy Director, International Affairs, Ministry of the

Environment, Finland



"We have to make a decision about the use of nuclear power. Can we run

the risk of more accidents, like Chernobyl, devastating the environment."

Would you like to see a world without nuclear weapons and nuclear power

plants at the end of your life?

Julia Ivanchenka, Ukraine



"Dumping rubbish anywhere, anyhow, has become a habit in African cities

today." We are running out of places to dump our garbage. How can we

force our generation to re-use, recycle and repair their possessions to

achieve the most important goal which is to reduce the amount of garbage

they generate?

Jennifer Chanda, Zambia





The most critical issue we shall be dealing with in the next century is





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precisely the same one that we failed to deal with in this one: human greed.

As long as we sanctify greed as a noble human motive, we cannot overcome

hunger, poverty and oppression or redress the consequences of our own

remorseless drive to exploit for our own good the environment and life-style



of other people's cultures.

John le Carré, Author, England, UK









Nobel laureate, Joshua Lederberg, believes the third world war has already

begun – between humans and microbes! Epidemics now spread fast around

the world, with one million people a day crossing borders. GEO calls this a

„low probability / high consequence‟ emerging issue. In other words, when

new epidemics break out, like AIDS, the consequences are devastating. Like

war itself, prevention is always the best course.



In preparing GEO-2000, more than 200 environmental experts from 50 countries were asked to

identify environmental issues that they expect to be on the national and inter- national agendas of

governments in the early decades of the 21st century. These are some of the issues with the

percent- age of scientists that mentioned them:



Climate change 51%

Freshwater scarcity 29%

Deforestation/ desertification 28%

Freshwater pollution 28%

Poor governance 27%

Loss of biodiversity 23%

Population growth and movements 22%

Changing social values 21%

Contamination from waste disposal 20%

Air pollution 20%

Soil deterioration 18%

Chemical pollution 16%

Urbanization 16%

Ozone depletion 15%

Energy consumption 15%

Emerging diseases 14%

Natural resource depletion 11%

Food insecurity 11%

Industrial emissions 10%





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Natural disasters 7%

War & conflict 7%

Invasive species 6%

Genetically modified organisms 6%

Ocean flip-flop 5%





You thought global warming would just warm up the planet, right? Wrong! If

the Arctic ice caps melt, it could very well produce another ice age in

northwest Europe. This would happen because cold water flowing south from

the Arctic would slow, and possibly halt, the warm Gulf Stream current

which now allows people in Scotland to grow palm trees along the coast. If

that current is cut off and only cold water reaches Britain‟s coasts, land

temperatures would plummet, there could be permafrost in Europe, and the

River Rhine would freeze over. Crop yields would suffer; the transport

network could close down for several months a year, and life in northern

Europe as we know it could all but disappear.







Children are often the driving force behind eco-friendly living. Trouble is, as

teenagers, they are the targets of massive advertising campaigns that urge

them to consume voraciously and drop their eco-friendly ideals.



Things you can do to protect the environment every day, wherever you are!

 Don‟t leave your rubbish lying around.

 Support conservation campaigns eg: Adbusters, No shopping days,

Trash free lunches, Greenpeace...

 Get your family and school thinking about environment issues daily!

 Start a Pachamama Club – or horticultural, bird, hiking or nature club.

 Get traffic out of residential areas!

 Do environmental assemblies at your school. Celebrate Earth Day

(22nd April) and World Environment Day (5th June)

 Plant trees – care for and nurture them

 Get your community to encourage recycling of all their waste

 Promote anti-pollution awareness: demand car-free days

 Create a garden! Grow fruits and vegetables. Reward yourself with

nature‟s riches every day!







Peace Child is a youth-led organization of some 500 youth eco-groups in 120

countries. Its goal is to enable young people to communicate vital global

issues to each other and to adults. Set up in 1981, it used the platform of a







75

musical play to allow young people to communicate powerfully their fears

about the threat of nuclear war.

Environment and sustainability issues are now the focus. Peace Child uses

the platform of books, educational materials, newsletters and conferences to

enable young people around the world to work together to communicate

their feelings on these issues to adults and government officials.

They created Rescue Mission – a children‟s Agenda 21. On its success and

royalties, young people designed and built a residential Sustainable

Development Training Centre where young people from all over the world

run the office and manage projects like this one. Similar centres are now

being set up in Ghana, Guyana and Senegal. Come and join us!

For information, contact: "http://www.oneworld.org/peacechild"





For up to date facts and stats about the environment take a look at

http://www.grida.no/geo2000/pacha/contents.htm









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