The Ten Consumements

A little while ago I thought it might be fun to play with the Ten Commandments, from the point of view of consumerism, and the ‘supremacy of the market’ kind of thing, you know, as an exercise in form and writing to a particular brief.  Plus being what my boss would call a ‘dangerous lefty’ 🙂 this sort of satirical subversion of the market tickled me, and given I’m currently making my way (slowly, I know!) through I, Corporation, it feels like a nice fit with the project I’m engaged with.

First thing was to list the original Ten Commandments.  Being an atheist since well into my late teens, I had to Google them – not before I’d managed to jot down five from memory (the biggies like not killing, stealing, coveting asses etc.) which I felt pretty good about TBH.

What *did* surprise me was not so much the full list, but (a) the order of the ten, and (b) quite how many there are around bowing and scraping to God, rather than being a set of rules for mankind which should more or less amount to “don’t be sh*tty to each other”.  I mean, really, the first four(!) are all about God this, God that…  That’s a full 40% of the rules handed down that are basically about putting God at the top, and by Golly (see what I did there? 🙂 ) making sure he/she/it stays there…  Who would have thought that the omnipotent being who created the ENTIRE UNIVERSE had such low self-esteem?

Anyhoo, after a bit of creative jiggery-pokery with wording (though oddly number 8 stayed the same!) I had my Ten Consumements.  But they felt a bit thin on their own, so I worked up some ‘theology’ to go along with them – Number One is up right now and I’ll post the whole thing over the next couple of weeks 🙂

rd.