Rules for living in 2020

Rule 1: Remind yourself of the following.
Rule 2: Don’t resent them or their consequences.

All that exists lives.
All that lives is worthy of respect.
You don’t have to like what you respect.
Not liking someone is no reason for not respecting them.
Respecting someone is no reason for not eating them.
All life is relational and we should not collapse our intimate alterities into identities.
Others and otherness keep us open to change, open to becoming, never finally fixed in being.
You don’t have to hug every tree to show them respect but you might have to let trees grow where they will.
Hugging trees that you don’t know may be rude – try introducing yourself first.
Although evolution has no aim, life is not pointless.
The purpose of life is to be good people — and good humans or good rocks or good badgers.
What we have to find out is what ‘good’ means where we are, when we are, with whom we are, and so on.
The way we speak is part of the way we treat others.
There is no ‘away’ to throw things to.
There are substances, but they aren’t ours until they are given, gifted to us. And then we’d better find out why we’ve been given whatever gifts we get.
Gifts, like swords and words, have more than one side.


A reworking of An Animist Manifesto by Graham Harvey