What is the one line that defines all life?
nce
upon a time, according to a writer in The Arabian Nights, there lived a very wise
old manand wise he must have beenwho made it the work of his life
to collect all the wisdom in the world.
"He wrote an enormous and learned volume, setting forth everything he
had found and, at last, sat back contented with a task well done.
"Presently,
his contentment was dissipated by the thought that he had written too much.
"So he sat himself down for ten years more and reduced the original volume
to one tenth its size.
"When he had finished, he again thought himself content, but again discovered
he was wrong. With painstaking exactitude, he reduced this second work to a single
page. Another ten years passed and the ancient philosopher grew even wiser. He
took that single page and reduced it to just a single line which contained everything
there was to be known.
"A decade more found the old scribe close to death.
"He had placed that remarkable line in a niche in the wall for safekeeping,
intending to tell his son about it.
"But now he changed his mind once more.
"He tore up even that line.
"Suppose all the wisdom of the world were reduced to just one linesuppose
that one line were to be written today and given to you. With it you could understand
the basis of all life and endeavor: love, politics, religion, war, friendship,
criminality, insanity, history, business, religion, kings, cats, society, art,
mythology, your children, communism, bankers, sailors, tigers, and other matters
without end.
"Moresuppose this one line could tell you all about yourself, could
solve all your problems, quiet your restlessness.
"If all the wisdom of the world could be compressed into a single line,
certainly it would do all these things and more. There is one line, conjured up
out of a morass of facts and made available as an integrated unit to explain such
things. This line is the philosophy of philosophy, thereby carrying the entire
subject back into the simple and humble truth.
"All life is directed by one command and one command onlySURVIVE!"
L. Ron Hubbard
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The Philosopher: The Rediscovery of the Human Soul. |