This blog is dedicated to the discussion and spreading of the ideas discussed by Daniel Quinn in his several novels.
If you're here for the first time, you can read the preamble to the site, as well as a summary of Ishmael that I've written up. Eventually, I'd like to have summaries up of more of Quinn's related works.
My goal is to discuss in greater detail each of the points made by Quinn, help to expound on them, and make them more relevant to everyday life. So feel free to comment (please!) or email me with questions.
Thursday, December 31, 2099
Friday, March 28, 2008
The Prison
Themes:
We live in a prison.
- We are prisoners of a civilizational system that compels us to destroy the world to survive.
- We have made a prison of the planet, where humans and the planet have been made captive.
The prison is a cultural one. It works a little something like this: Live the way you're told to, or else, you don't get fed. What this means is that we must participate in the prison, or else we don't survive.
To call it a prison strikes some people as odd, even dangerous, perhaps. The reason is simple: they don't know they're in the prison. Some people do well in the prison, some people are comfortable in the prison, but they are in it, nontheless.
The reason they don't see it as a prison is that they assume the prison is the only choice, it's the only way to live. If all you knew, from birth to death, was the inside of the prison, and never had a chance to see the outside, to see the walls and bars keeping you in, you'd have no idea what you were in was even a prison at all. I have seen the bars. I have seen the outside. It is most certainly a prison.
Once you realize you're inside, of course, you feel trapped. Look at the tiger in a cage. He's either pacing, pacing, always pacing, or he's lethargic, and has lost the vigor of life. He knows he's in a cage, it would be hard not to know. The bars and walls are ever present, they can easily be seen. Once you know where to look, once you understand what the bars and the walls are made of, you cannot help but to pace, just like the tiger.
The prison is well designed, and very well maintained. The prison has grown over time, and now covers the majority of the planet. There are still patches where the world is still free, but the goal is, of course, to put all of those in the prison as well. Those who still live outside of the prison are truly the most endangered species on the planet.
The bars of the prison are all ideas, they are all cultural traditions passed down over the generations. They are few, and they are simple. The food in the prison is under lock and key, and living in the prison is the only truly human way to live. There are other things keeping us in, but they all fundamentally rely on these two ideas. If either of these notions were to fall, the prison would open up wide.
We live in a prison.
- We are prisoners of a civilizational system that compels us to destroy the world to survive.
- We have made a prison of the planet, where humans and the planet have been made captive.
The prison is a cultural one. It works a little something like this: Live the way you're told to, or else, you don't get fed. What this means is that we must participate in the prison, or else we don't survive.
To call it a prison strikes some people as odd, even dangerous, perhaps. The reason is simple: they don't know they're in the prison. Some people do well in the prison, some people are comfortable in the prison, but they are in it, nontheless.
The reason they don't see it as a prison is that they assume the prison is the only choice, it's the only way to live. If all you knew, from birth to death, was the inside of the prison, and never had a chance to see the outside, to see the walls and bars keeping you in, you'd have no idea what you were in was even a prison at all. I have seen the bars. I have seen the outside. It is most certainly a prison.
Once you realize you're inside, of course, you feel trapped. Look at the tiger in a cage. He's either pacing, pacing, always pacing, or he's lethargic, and has lost the vigor of life. He knows he's in a cage, it would be hard not to know. The bars and walls are ever present, they can easily be seen. Once you know where to look, once you understand what the bars and the walls are made of, you cannot help but to pace, just like the tiger.
The prison is well designed, and very well maintained. The prison has grown over time, and now covers the majority of the planet. There are still patches where the world is still free, but the goal is, of course, to put all of those in the prison as well. Those who still live outside of the prison are truly the most endangered species on the planet.
The bars of the prison are all ideas, they are all cultural traditions passed down over the generations. They are few, and they are simple. The food in the prison is under lock and key, and living in the prison is the only truly human way to live. There are other things keeping us in, but they all fundamentally rely on these two ideas. If either of these notions were to fall, the prison would open up wide.
Monday, March 10, 2008
A Preamble
The modern world, with all of its technology and its population, believes it is the current state of the natural evolution of man. First came the animals, then came Prehistoric Man, and with the advent of the Agricultural Revolution, a technological event, civilization began and spread, and as they say, the rest is history.
I contest this story is wrong, wrong on an unfathomable level. I call it a story, and mean it in every sense of the word. It is pure and rank mythology. The relevant event the story, the Agricultural Revolution, did not happen. There was a revolution, to be sure, but it was not technological, but cultural and spiritual. Also, this revolution was not something that happened to humanity in whole, as the story tells it. This was the revolution of a single culture, a very small portion of humanity, that spread worldwide, and due to its central beliefs and the actions guided by these beliefs, has, in essence, become humanity in whole. This is the basis of the myth, that our single, worldwide culture, is humanity itself.
This story, this mythology, is a tale that everyone knows, that everyone is familiar with. This is because it is embedded in every story told to us, every piece of news we hear, every lesson we learn in school. The revolution, though, was so successful, that this story, so ingrained into our worldwide culture, is unknown to almost everyone. It has become background noise. It is the low hum of the civilizational machine that we can no longer hear. It is the whisper of our nurturing cultural story, our Mother Culture, that is constantly telling us this mythology, and constantly reassuring us of its veracity.
To reiterate, the basis of the myth is that our worldwide culture is the current state of the natural evolution of man. When I say worldwide, I mean both the East and West, as they are commonly known. I do not view these two cultures as distinct, judging them by their differences, but I see them as a single culture, with a single ancestor, by judging them for their similarities. The myth continues by telling us that the first chapter of human evolution consisted of "primitive" cultures, while our "civilized" culture is the natural second chapter, explaining the remaining "primitive" cultures as nothing more than anachronisms.
Both of these concepts are blatantly wrong. They are simply elements of the mythology that is embedded into our worldview. Like I said, the "civilized" world evolved from one ancient culture that experienced a revolution. To have a revolution, one must revolt against something. What was revolted against was a worldview that every "primitive" human culture held, and still holds today: that man was made to live at the whim of nature, like every other creature ever to live on the planet. The rest of the revolution rests entirely on the belief that this is not true. Our worldwide culture holds as its most fundamental truth that man is above and better than nature, better than the animals, and should not live as they do, at nature's whim.
Upon hearing this, the majority of our culture will vigorously agree. This consensus is not an accident, this is not a coincidence. The reason you, and the vast majority of the human beings on the planet, believe this is because this is the story you've been told your entire life. From birth, to this day, you have been bombarded with this message. This is the mythology your parents were told, the story your grandparents were told, and this is the cultural revolution that the past 500 or so generations of our entire culture were told, and believed. It is the story you will tell your children, your children will tell your grandchildren, and so on, unless, of course, you discover and learn otherwise, which is my goal.
The reason this is my stated goal is because the story being told is destroying the planet. Not only does this mythology account for the ecological destruction we have been causing to the world, it can and will be shown that this cultural story that is told worldwide is designed to systematically destroy all life on this planet. I understand that this is an audacious statement, and requires great and deep justification, therefore it should be simple to understand that I would not make it if I didn't have such information.
All this being said, I will give you the same invitation that was given to me:
Teacher Seeks Pupil.
Must have eager desire to save the world.
Apply in person.
I contest this story is wrong, wrong on an unfathomable level. I call it a story, and mean it in every sense of the word. It is pure and rank mythology. The relevant event the story, the Agricultural Revolution, did not happen. There was a revolution, to be sure, but it was not technological, but cultural and spiritual. Also, this revolution was not something that happened to humanity in whole, as the story tells it. This was the revolution of a single culture, a very small portion of humanity, that spread worldwide, and due to its central beliefs and the actions guided by these beliefs, has, in essence, become humanity in whole. This is the basis of the myth, that our single, worldwide culture, is humanity itself.
This story, this mythology, is a tale that everyone knows, that everyone is familiar with. This is because it is embedded in every story told to us, every piece of news we hear, every lesson we learn in school. The revolution, though, was so successful, that this story, so ingrained into our worldwide culture, is unknown to almost everyone. It has become background noise. It is the low hum of the civilizational machine that we can no longer hear. It is the whisper of our nurturing cultural story, our Mother Culture, that is constantly telling us this mythology, and constantly reassuring us of its veracity.
To reiterate, the basis of the myth is that our worldwide culture is the current state of the natural evolution of man. When I say worldwide, I mean both the East and West, as they are commonly known. I do not view these two cultures as distinct, judging them by their differences, but I see them as a single culture, with a single ancestor, by judging them for their similarities. The myth continues by telling us that the first chapter of human evolution consisted of "primitive" cultures, while our "civilized" culture is the natural second chapter, explaining the remaining "primitive" cultures as nothing more than anachronisms.
Both of these concepts are blatantly wrong. They are simply elements of the mythology that is embedded into our worldview. Like I said, the "civilized" world evolved from one ancient culture that experienced a revolution. To have a revolution, one must revolt against something. What was revolted against was a worldview that every "primitive" human culture held, and still holds today: that man was made to live at the whim of nature, like every other creature ever to live on the planet. The rest of the revolution rests entirely on the belief that this is not true. Our worldwide culture holds as its most fundamental truth that man is above and better than nature, better than the animals, and should not live as they do, at nature's whim.
Upon hearing this, the majority of our culture will vigorously agree. This consensus is not an accident, this is not a coincidence. The reason you, and the vast majority of the human beings on the planet, believe this is because this is the story you've been told your entire life. From birth, to this day, you have been bombarded with this message. This is the mythology your parents were told, the story your grandparents were told, and this is the cultural revolution that the past 500 or so generations of our entire culture were told, and believed. It is the story you will tell your children, your children will tell your grandchildren, and so on, unless, of course, you discover and learn otherwise, which is my goal.
The reason this is my stated goal is because the story being told is destroying the planet. Not only does this mythology account for the ecological destruction we have been causing to the world, it can and will be shown that this cultural story that is told worldwide is designed to systematically destroy all life on this planet. I understand that this is an audacious statement, and requires great and deep justification, therefore it should be simple to understand that I would not make it if I didn't have such information.
All this being said, I will give you the same invitation that was given to me:
Teacher Seeks Pupil.
Must have eager desire to save the world.
Apply in person.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Ishmael, The Book Report
Consider this the 6th grade book report version of Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I spent a couple of days summarising the contents of the book, leaving out the dialogue and the story in the book, trying to leave just Quinn's message.
This is still a work under construction. I'm in the process of adding the following:
1. References to page numbers that each item is discussed in Ishmael.
2. Links to posts discussing each topic in further detail, which would need to await the actual posts themselves.
3. Formatting. The faux bullet style was developed on my cell phone, which is what I used to type the whole thing up (easier than you'd think).
Enjoy! And leave comments.
We live in a prison. (p. 25-26)
- We are prisoners of a civilizational system that compels us to destroy the world to survive.
- We have made a prison of the planet, where humans and the planet have been made captive.
We are being lied to (p. 26-27)
- These lies are our prison
- The lies compose a story
- We believe the lies, and therefore enact the story
- Believing the lies is what keeps us in the prison
We don't "know of" or "hear" this story
- The story is not told explicitly, and when it is told, it is never considered a "story".
- The story is told to us constantly
- We learn it it parts, in pieces, from everyone
The story, and therefore, the prison, can simply be walked away from.
-Like any actor, we must be in a story, though, so to walk out of one story, we must walk into a new story.
- In our story, to not participate means to not get fed.
- It is difficult, if not nearly impossible, to walk away, as the whole world is now enacting this story. Outside of this story, as we are told, is the end of the world, and death.
The story tells of "how things came to be this way"
- Thus, the story pacifies. It allows the atrocities of life to exist, because the story explains them away.
The story, while usually a background hum, will become a foreground siren, constantly blaring, once you see it for what it is.
- The story is our mythology.
As an aside, everyone is familiar with a people working to enact a story to make it true
- The Germans of post WWI were defeated and demoralized
- They were ready to hear a story telling them that things should be otherwise
- Hitler provided this story
- That the Aryan race had been persecuted and was not holding their proper place in the world, and that the Jewish people, amongst others were to blame
- They simply had to take back what was justifiably theirs.
- The German people were very ready to hear this story, and work hard to make that story a reality.
Definitions
- Takers: Those of "our" culture, "civilized"
- Leavers: Those not of "our" culture, "primitive"
- story: scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods.
- to enact: to live as to make a story a reality, to strive to make the story come true.
- culture: a people enacting a story
Takers see Leavers as Chapter 1 of Humanity.
The lies, the mythology, begins with creation
- Big Bang, Universe, Galaxies, Solar System, Planet.
- Life in the sea, life on land
- Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Mammals, Primates
- Three Million years ago, man finally appeared.
The key word is "finally"
- Saying "finally" implies man was the end product, that the world was waiting for man, as if "now that man has arrived, creation is complete, it has come to an end"
- As if asking jellyfish 250 million years ago about creation, and they were to say "Finally, Jellyfish appeared!", as if Jellyfish were the whole point from the beginning.
- The Taker myth says: The world wasn't created for jellyfish or gorillas, it was made for man.
- The birth of man was the central event in the history of the Universe. Man was the end design from the beginning.
A statement like this would need some evidence
- Did the cosmos come to an end 3,000,000 years ago?
- Did the evolutionary provess come to an end?
- None of this is true, none of this happened, so the "finally" is a myth.
Takers regard the Earth as nothing more than a human life support system. It's purpose is to produce and sustain human life.
Mythologically, if the Gods went through all this trouble to make the Universe and the Earth just for Man, then Man must be of utmost signifigance to the Gods.
The premise of the story is "The world was made for man."
- The consequence is, if the Earth was made for Man, then it belongs to Man and he can do what he wants with it.
- It's not just the negatives, such a poisoning the Earth, and destroying species en masse
- The world, and the cosmos, are "ours", therefore, it's Our Planet, Our Oceans, Our Environment.
The story continues
- The world was made for man, but it took a long time to figure that out. For 3,000,000 years, he lived as the animals did. He lived at the mercy of the world.
- Under this condition, though, man was not TRULY man. So for this time, he got nowhere and did nothing.
- In order to "accomplish" anything, man had to settle down, he needed a base to master his environment.
- What was stopping him from doing this, from settling down, was staying in one place, as a hunter-gatherer, he would exhaust his food supply, and starve.
- The problem to solve was to overcome this food exhaustion. He had to make more human food.
- Man HAD to become an agriculturalist.
- Man solved this problem 10,000 years ago, in the fertile crescent.
- With this problem cracked, man could finally ascend to his rightful place. Man could finally get down to work.
This moment, this discovery, was the birth of Taker Culture.
The middle of the story
- If the world was made for man, the world thusly needed man.
- The world, according to Taker mythology, was disorder and chaos.
- The world needed someone to put order into the system, to straighten things up.
- The someone is man. Man is the king, the ruler of the world.
- The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.
So man set out to rule the world, but the world defied man, it did not meekly submit to human rule.
- What man built up, the wind blew down.
- The fields man cleared for crops, the forest and the jungle tried to reclaim
- The seeds he sowed, the birds ate
- The plants he grew, the insects ate
- The harvest he stored, the mice ate
- The animals he bred, the wolves and foxes stole away
- The mountains, rivers, and oceans stood in man's way, and would not move.
- And the natural disasters did not cease at his command.
Since the world did not submit, to be ruler of the world, man had one option: man had to conquer the world.
- The Takers believe this is the price humanity had to pay to become truly human.
- This is not true. It's the price to be paid for enacting a story that puts the mankind as the enemy of the world.
The end of the story
- Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and that's what he's done - almost.
- Almost, because we keep screwing it up.
- Pollution, war, disease, mental illness
- We just have to keep increasing our mastery of the world, until our rule is absolute.
- Recently, we've realized our domination of the planet is destroying the planet, but the only answer is the same answer: more domination.
- Eventually we will reach enough mastery to turn the world into the paradise it was destined to be, or we will destroy it.
The story so far
- The world was made for man to conquer and rule, and under human rule, it was meant to become a paradise.
- There is a "but", though, there always has been. The but is not new, as if it were due to our recent awareness of our ecological damage
- The "but" is "but, man screwed it up, and was bound to screw it up, because there's something fundamentally wrong with man."
The Taker evidence that man is flawed came not from human history, but came from only Taker culture, not from human beings or all human culture. The shortsightedness of taking evidence from just this culture and not damning the culture is endemic to Taker mythology.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe.
Takers rely on prophets to tell them how to live, where Leavers do not.
- Takers would say that God only became interested when they arrived, therefore God wouldn't send prophets to the Leavers, only the Takers.
- Without prophets, Takers wouldn't know how to live.
Takers hold that there is no knowledge, definite knowledge, on how to live.
- They hold that there is definite knowledge about tides, the atom, gentics, etc. "Out there"
- The existence of definite knowledge of how to live our lives is not "out there", conject Takers, and thusly don't even look for it.
- Even if such knowledge was "out there", Takers would deny it even applies to them, since the "out there" would be the community of life, and Takers hold themselves above that community.
Two things have now been shown in Taker mythology:
- Man is a flawed being
- There is no certain knowledge about how he ought to live
- These two things are actually linked: The flaw in man is that he doesn't know how he ought to live.
The story of the taker is a sad story of hopelessness and futility
- Man is flawed, so he keeps screwing up paradise
- He can't fix paradise, because he's flawed
- There is therefore nothing to be done, and nothing that can be done, so man heads towards catastrophe, and all he can do it watch
When one does actually look "out there" laws can be formulated.
- The laws, or set of laws, act as physical laws, like the law of aerodynamics and gravity.
- The laws themselves can be found in the community of life, by observing what Takers do that nothing else in the community does.
The Law of Life (or the Law of Limited Competition)
- You may not exterminate your competitors
- You may kill to eat
- You may kill in self defense
- You can't destroy your competitors food
- Take what you need, leave the rest alone
- Don't deny competitors access to their food
- You can deny them access to what you're eating, but not food in general.
- You can defend your herd, but you can't say "all herds are mine"
Taker policy is that every square foot of the planet is theirs, so if they put it all under cultivation, then competitors will have to starve and go extinct.
It is posited that storing food is something Takers do that no one else does, but Ishmael shows this to be wrong.
- Bees for example save food in the form of honey
- In general, though, animals save energy in their own bodies, as fat and bulk
- The whole community is storage, though, as plants save the energy for herbivores, they save energy for their predators, so forth and so on. Storing energy is inherent to the system.
The laws boil down to, "You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors, destroy their food, or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war."
The law promotes diversity.
- Diversity is a survival factor for the community, as a diverse community can protect itself against anything save a total global catastrophe
- Since takers flout this law, destroying all life on the planet isn't just a blunder, it's intentional, since Takers are nearly literally at war with the world.
Any one species, with similar cunning and determination, who would decide to ignore the law would cause nearly the same result.
This work is the holy work of the Takers. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world.
"Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population."
The Taker definiton of agriculture is not the only definition.
- Leavers have used different level of agriculure, to some extent, from pure hunter-gatherer, to partial agriculturists, to near agriculturists.
- Humans are the only species with settlement. Every animal has a territory, a feeding ground, a hive, a nest, a burrow.
- Human settlement isn't against the laws of competition, it's subject to them.
The Taker Mother Culture says that Humans are not subject to the laws of nature, including increasing food supply causing an increased population.
- Even if it were so, Takers think they could resort to birth control to solve the problem.
Increasing population is what leads to famine, which is the main reason given for increasing food production
- When a people are in famine, feeding them only will keep them in famine.
- If there are more people in an area than can be supported, then feeding them will only keep there numbers higher than can be supported, continuing the famine.
- All species are subject to famine, but Mother Culture says Takers are exempt from this.
- It's not a matter of letting people starve, this is how the gods and rulers speak: We will not LET them starve, we will not LET the river flood.
- Food production increases must be stopped if humanity is to stop destroying the planet.
Tribal population control is not done for population control explicitly.
- Tribes had a territory, from which they could gather their resources.
- Territories have a finite amount of resources, so tribes could only grow to the limit that the territory had.
Unlike us, where our borders are imaginary, to the point where if a New York wants to become an Arizonan, he can, tribal boundaries were real.
- First, tribes protected their territories. If you came in, they would show you hostility, and perhaps kill you.
- Second, tribes had cultural boundaries. A Hopi would find it unimaginable to become a Navajo, where the concept of an American becoming a Canadian is just a form to fill out.
- Therefore, tribes generally stayed where they were, and limited their population.
The Laws of Life don't tell you how to solve moral issues, like abortion, drug use, premarital sex. They tell you how to live as a culture, as a species, without going extinct. You either abide by the law, or eliminate yourself.
- Takers, with a very limited view of ecological time, point to the fact that they've been doing this for THOUSANDS of years, with little or no reprocussions, when in fact, they've been doing it for only 500 generations, where humans have been around for 150,000 generations. The timeline of the takers has been a blink of the eye in the timeline of the natural community. The speed at which they are destroying themselves is truly fast.
- This limited timeline has given the Takers a sense that they can simply not accept the conclusions that the Law of Life holds, when acceptance has nothing to do with it. Live in accord with the Law, or perish.
The Law of life can be restated
- No one species may mke the life of the world its own
- The world was not made for any one species
Even if the Takers didn't think the world was made for them, they would still think the world was mad a mess, that the Jungle was chaos and anarachy, and they had a duty to "straighten things up"
- The world was not in chaos before the Takers arrived. The Jungle was not anarchy. It followed the very orderly Law of Life, and the world was flourishing beautifully.
The specialness of man is something the Takers cling to desperately.
- This specialness though put man in a very lonely place. It makes the world enemy territory, and they must live like an army of occupation, alienated from their home.
- This loneliness accounts for much of the crume, mental illness, suicide, drug addiction, and other horrors of "civilized" life.
- These will not be found in Leaver cultures at the extraordinary levels that they are in Taker society.
- Takers account for this by saying they are the price of advancement, and that Leavers are too primitive to have these things.
- In reality, since the Taker story is what causes these ills, it is the Leaver story that pevents these ills. The Leaver story is greatly satisfying for those who live it.
"Mother" Culture is not a cultural villian, and not meant to be a negative against females.
- Cultures is a mother everywhere, because culture is inherently a nurturer.
- Among Leavers, Mother Culture is healthy and self sustaining
- Among the Takers, she is unhealthy and self-destructive.
The Agricultural Revolution began 10,000 years ago, but it never ended.
- It continues today, in Papua New Guinea, in Africa, in South America.
- The fact that it never ended help expose the fact that the agricultural revolution is still so important to us today, because it is the foundation of our whole culture.
- If it were to end, it would be like our culture ending. This shows why it must be carried forward at any cost.
The stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel are not stories originating with the Takers, but are actually Leaver stories adopted by the Takers.
Adam and Eve
- This story describe the Fall of Man, showing that the knowledge of good and evil is the knowledge of who should live and who should die.
- This explains why this knowledge is bad, because the Leavers knew that only the Gods could have this knowledge, and therefore for humans to believe they had it was false knowledge.
- This also explains the Tree of Life, it becomes the choice to live at the hands of the gods, and to live forever, meaning to live sustainably and never go extinct.
- Adam means Man, and Eve means life. Man chose Life over the Gods, life being unrestrained growth.
- The prime evidence that this is a Leaver story is that the choice to at the fruit was considered The Fall, where if the story was originally a Taker story, it would be described as The Ascent, or The Liberation.
Cain and Abel
- The story tells of Cain, the tillers, and Abel, the herdsmen.
- Cain represents the original Mesopotamian Takers, Abel represent the Semites of the Arab peninsula, who were pastoralists.
- Cain killing Abel represents the Takers overrunning the Leaver Semites, slaughtering them for their land.
The two stories are linked
- Cain believes he knows who shall live and who shall die, and therefore feels justified in slaughtering Abel.
- Abel sees this, and tries to put the story together, that Cain thinks he has the knowledge of the Gods, and nis therefore doomed to die.
Culture, by it's usual definition is the accumulated knowledge of a people.
- The culture of Homo Habilis was passed onto Erectus, and that was passed onto Sapiens
- The cultures of the Sapiens were passed onto the Leavers, not the Takers
- The Takers have cut off their ties with the past, they got rid of the culture they inherited from their ancestors, because they felt they did not know the way people should live.
- Mother Culture tells the Takers that the past is bad, is wrong, is something to be escaped from.
- Taker cultures do value ancientness as a validator, wanting customs and institutions to be as old as possible.
- They esteem their wiser, nobler ancestors, but have no desire to live like they did.
Takers have assumed that the birth of Man and the birth of Taker culture were the same event.
- Even after Darwin and athropology debunked this idea, Takers still believed man did become man until they came around.
- When witnessing Leaver cultures, Takers assumed these people had degraded from their natural, agricultural, civilizational state.
Takers haven't discarded all knowledge from the past
- They save information on how to build and produce things.
- Takers teach their children how to make more and better things, but not what works well for people, because Takers deny that they KNOW what works well for people.
Leavers retain information about technology, but that's just a subset of what they keep, they root of it is they save the knowledge of what works well for them.
- Leaver knowledge stretches back to the beginning of human life. This is what they know what works well for them, because it's been tested by time, a lot of time.
Takers believe certain knowledge of how to live would be the knowledge of the "one right way" to live, not just a way that works well for people, especially just some people.
The cultural amnesia that occured wiped out all knowledge of how to live, to the point where the early takers wondered how to live.
- This is why they invented laws.
- They needed laws, they needed prophets.
- These ways to live are contrivances, inventions.
- Our laws and religions are supposed to be the "one right way" to live.
Leavers cultures are not inventions, they are tested ways for people to live that work well for that people.
- This is the essence of wisdom
- Everytime a leaver culture is destroyed or assimilated by the Takers, a wisdom tested from the birth of mankind disappears, in the same way an animal going extinct is a life form now missing that was tested from the birth of life.
Knowing the story of the Leavers is important.
- The Taker story, if it is to stop being told, needs a replacement, as people cannot live without a story.
- Just giving up a story doesn't work, as shown by the hippies. They revolted against the Taker story, but didn't offer an alternative.
The agricultural revolution, as seen by Takers, is just a technological event.
- It is not seen as one of spiritual or cultural relevance.
Adam is still eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, and Cain is still killing Abel where he is found.
Mother culture teaches that before the revolution, human life was devoid of meaning, was stupid and worthless, and unspeakably miserable.
- Leaver cultures disagree, as can be seen by the fact that to be pried away form their cultures usually takes brute force, wholesale slaughter, or just extermination.
- Mother Culture says they just didn't understand what they were missing. Even if they were agriculturalist, they still just didn't REALLY understand.
The Agricultural Revolution, as any revolution, must be a revolution against something.
- The revolution was just so many could "get somewhere", meaning advance technologically.
Mother Culture tells us that "prehistoric man" was always worrying about his next meal.
- This is because of the Taker definition of food.
- The world of life is food. Humans are omnivores, top of the food chain. Man has more food choices than every other animal in nature.
- Human intelligence and dexterity are the greatest assets and advantages any animal has.
- Leavers are the best fed people on Earth, in terms of both quantity and quality of food.
- Leavers also only "work" 2-3 hours a day.
Another myth Takers hold is that Man is being hunted by other animals.
- Man is the top of the food chain, which makes this simply false.
- Predation of man is non existant. If there was an animal that fed on man, it wouldn't being eating much, and therefore would not be doing so well.
Even though Leavers lived in the "original affluent society", even the worst off of the Takers wouldn't choose to abandon this lifestyle and adopt a Leaver lifestyle.
- This has to do with the ongoing Revolution the Takers are enacting.
Taker refuse to live at the hands of the gods
- The gods provide enough food to live as animals, but to truly live as humans, humans have to provide their own food.
- The gods made the world incompetently. They made the world a chaotic jungle, without enough for man to live like man.
- Takers plant more food than they need, so that the gods have no power over them. (But more food always means more people)
- When they have more food than they need, they can save it for when the gods decide it's their turn to go hungry.
- Takers want to take the whole world into their hands, so that the god have no power over anything.
No one can say to Leaver peoples "Work, or you get no money. Show me your money, or you don't get fed, don't get clothed, don't get sheltered."
- Mother Culture says that living a Leaver lifestyle is nightmarish and the Agriculture Revolution puts us beyond it
The Takers are those who know good and evil, and the Leavers are those that live in the hands of the gods.
Evolution only happens to creatures who live in the hands of the gods
- This stopped happening to Takers because they took themselves out of he competition. They no longer live in a way that is subject to evolution. Without natural selection, there can be no evolution.
- To enact a story is to live so as to make it come true, so since the Takers tell themselves a story that they are the end result of evolution, they are intent on stopping it.
The premise of the Taker culture is "The world belongs to man. The premise of the Leaver culture is "Man belongs to the world."
- All creatures came into the world living this way.
- Living the Taker way ends is disaster, living the Leaver way, and creation goes on forever.
Humans role on the planet is not to be the only sentient creature, it's to be the first.
- Since all life seems to tend toward complexity, it is probable that more creatures will eventually become what we describe as "intelligent"
- All creatures that attain this intelligence will have the same choice that man did, to either take the world into their hands and destroy it, or to live in the hands of the gods and let others follow.
- Man's destiny can then be seen as the first, the teacher. We were the first to experience this, and have learned that taking the world into our own hands was a disasterous mistake. Therefore, we can become the teachers of the world, guiding all new intelligent lifeforms towards making the right decision, and steering them away from making the wrong one.
You can see by looking at the Native Americans, that they were trying to achieve settlement, but only in a way that is in accord with the Laws of Life.
- They also knew that there is no rush for this, that it isn't a goal to be achieved at any cost.
- They also did not try to achieve the one right way of civilization. There might have eventually been multiple, dozens of civilizations, in North America.
- Being civilized should mean we are the leaders of the club, not it's only criminal and destroyer.
The only way to save the world is to end the one destructive culture. To do that, you need to change the people who live in it. Changing their behavior won't do it, you need to change their minds and the way they think about the world and man's destiny in it.
This is still a work under construction. I'm in the process of adding the following:
1. References to page numbers that each item is discussed in Ishmael.
2. Links to posts discussing each topic in further detail, which would need to await the actual posts themselves.
3. Formatting. The faux bullet style was developed on my cell phone, which is what I used to type the whole thing up (easier than you'd think).
Enjoy! And leave comments.
We live in a prison. (p. 25-26)
- We are prisoners of a civilizational system that compels us to destroy the world to survive.
- We have made a prison of the planet, where humans and the planet have been made captive.
We are being lied to (p. 26-27)
- These lies are our prison
- The lies compose a story
- We believe the lies, and therefore enact the story
- Believing the lies is what keeps us in the prison
We don't "know of" or "hear" this story
- The story is not told explicitly, and when it is told, it is never considered a "story".
- The story is told to us constantly
- We learn it it parts, in pieces, from everyone
The story, and therefore, the prison, can simply be walked away from.
-Like any actor, we must be in a story, though, so to walk out of one story, we must walk into a new story.
- In our story, to not participate means to not get fed.
- It is difficult, if not nearly impossible, to walk away, as the whole world is now enacting this story. Outside of this story, as we are told, is the end of the world, and death.
The story tells of "how things came to be this way"
- Thus, the story pacifies. It allows the atrocities of life to exist, because the story explains them away.
The story, while usually a background hum, will become a foreground siren, constantly blaring, once you see it for what it is.
- The story is our mythology.
As an aside, everyone is familiar with a people working to enact a story to make it true
- The Germans of post WWI were defeated and demoralized
- They were ready to hear a story telling them that things should be otherwise
- Hitler provided this story
- That the Aryan race had been persecuted and was not holding their proper place in the world, and that the Jewish people, amongst others were to blame
- They simply had to take back what was justifiably theirs.
- The German people were very ready to hear this story, and work hard to make that story a reality.
Definitions
- Takers: Those of "our" culture, "civilized"
- Leavers: Those not of "our" culture, "primitive"
- story: scenario interrelating man, the world, and the gods.
- to enact: to live as to make a story a reality, to strive to make the story come true.
- culture: a people enacting a story
Takers see Leavers as Chapter 1 of Humanity.
The lies, the mythology, begins with creation
- Big Bang, Universe, Galaxies, Solar System, Planet.
- Life in the sea, life on land
- Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Mammals, Primates
- Three Million years ago, man finally appeared.
The key word is "finally"
- Saying "finally" implies man was the end product, that the world was waiting for man, as if "now that man has arrived, creation is complete, it has come to an end"
- As if asking jellyfish 250 million years ago about creation, and they were to say "Finally, Jellyfish appeared!", as if Jellyfish were the whole point from the beginning.
- The Taker myth says: The world wasn't created for jellyfish or gorillas, it was made for man.
- The birth of man was the central event in the history of the Universe. Man was the end design from the beginning.
A statement like this would need some evidence
- Did the cosmos come to an end 3,000,000 years ago?
- Did the evolutionary provess come to an end?
- None of this is true, none of this happened, so the "finally" is a myth.
Takers regard the Earth as nothing more than a human life support system. It's purpose is to produce and sustain human life.
Mythologically, if the Gods went through all this trouble to make the Universe and the Earth just for Man, then Man must be of utmost signifigance to the Gods.
The premise of the story is "The world was made for man."
- The consequence is, if the Earth was made for Man, then it belongs to Man and he can do what he wants with it.
- It's not just the negatives, such a poisoning the Earth, and destroying species en masse
- The world, and the cosmos, are "ours", therefore, it's Our Planet, Our Oceans, Our Environment.
The story continues
- The world was made for man, but it took a long time to figure that out. For 3,000,000 years, he lived as the animals did. He lived at the mercy of the world.
- Under this condition, though, man was not TRULY man. So for this time, he got nowhere and did nothing.
- In order to "accomplish" anything, man had to settle down, he needed a base to master his environment.
- What was stopping him from doing this, from settling down, was staying in one place, as a hunter-gatherer, he would exhaust his food supply, and starve.
- The problem to solve was to overcome this food exhaustion. He had to make more human food.
- Man HAD to become an agriculturalist.
- Man solved this problem 10,000 years ago, in the fertile crescent.
- With this problem cracked, man could finally ascend to his rightful place. Man could finally get down to work.
This moment, this discovery, was the birth of Taker Culture.
The middle of the story
- If the world was made for man, the world thusly needed man.
- The world, according to Taker mythology, was disorder and chaos.
- The world needed someone to put order into the system, to straighten things up.
- The someone is man. Man is the king, the ruler of the world.
- The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.
So man set out to rule the world, but the world defied man, it did not meekly submit to human rule.
- What man built up, the wind blew down.
- The fields man cleared for crops, the forest and the jungle tried to reclaim
- The seeds he sowed, the birds ate
- The plants he grew, the insects ate
- The harvest he stored, the mice ate
- The animals he bred, the wolves and foxes stole away
- The mountains, rivers, and oceans stood in man's way, and would not move.
- And the natural disasters did not cease at his command.
Since the world did not submit, to be ruler of the world, man had one option: man had to conquer the world.
- The Takers believe this is the price humanity had to pay to become truly human.
- This is not true. It's the price to be paid for enacting a story that puts the mankind as the enemy of the world.
The end of the story
- Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and that's what he's done - almost.
- Almost, because we keep screwing it up.
- Pollution, war, disease, mental illness
- We just have to keep increasing our mastery of the world, until our rule is absolute.
- Recently, we've realized our domination of the planet is destroying the planet, but the only answer is the same answer: more domination.
- Eventually we will reach enough mastery to turn the world into the paradise it was destined to be, or we will destroy it.
The story so far
- The world was made for man to conquer and rule, and under human rule, it was meant to become a paradise.
- There is a "but", though, there always has been. The but is not new, as if it were due to our recent awareness of our ecological damage
- The "but" is "but, man screwed it up, and was bound to screw it up, because there's something fundamentally wrong with man."
The Taker evidence that man is flawed came not from human history, but came from only Taker culture, not from human beings or all human culture. The shortsightedness of taking evidence from just this culture and not damning the culture is endemic to Taker mythology.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe.
Takers rely on prophets to tell them how to live, where Leavers do not.
- Takers would say that God only became interested when they arrived, therefore God wouldn't send prophets to the Leavers, only the Takers.
- Without prophets, Takers wouldn't know how to live.
Takers hold that there is no knowledge, definite knowledge, on how to live.
- They hold that there is definite knowledge about tides, the atom, gentics, etc. "Out there"
- The existence of definite knowledge of how to live our lives is not "out there", conject Takers, and thusly don't even look for it.
- Even if such knowledge was "out there", Takers would deny it even applies to them, since the "out there" would be the community of life, and Takers hold themselves above that community.
Two things have now been shown in Taker mythology:
- Man is a flawed being
- There is no certain knowledge about how he ought to live
- These two things are actually linked: The flaw in man is that he doesn't know how he ought to live.
The story of the taker is a sad story of hopelessness and futility
- Man is flawed, so he keeps screwing up paradise
- He can't fix paradise, because he's flawed
- There is therefore nothing to be done, and nothing that can be done, so man heads towards catastrophe, and all he can do it watch
When one does actually look "out there" laws can be formulated.
- The laws, or set of laws, act as physical laws, like the law of aerodynamics and gravity.
- The laws themselves can be found in the community of life, by observing what Takers do that nothing else in the community does.
The Law of Life (or the Law of Limited Competition)
- You may not exterminate your competitors
- You may kill to eat
- You may kill in self defense
- You can't destroy your competitors food
- Take what you need, leave the rest alone
- Don't deny competitors access to their food
- You can deny them access to what you're eating, but not food in general.
- You can defend your herd, but you can't say "all herds are mine"
Taker policy is that every square foot of the planet is theirs, so if they put it all under cultivation, then competitors will have to starve and go extinct.
It is posited that storing food is something Takers do that no one else does, but Ishmael shows this to be wrong.
- Bees for example save food in the form of honey
- In general, though, animals save energy in their own bodies, as fat and bulk
- The whole community is storage, though, as plants save the energy for herbivores, they save energy for their predators, so forth and so on. Storing energy is inherent to the system.
The laws boil down to, "You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors, destroy their food, or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war."
The law promotes diversity.
- Diversity is a survival factor for the community, as a diverse community can protect itself against anything save a total global catastrophe
- Since takers flout this law, destroying all life on the planet isn't just a blunder, it's intentional, since Takers are nearly literally at war with the world.
Any one species, with similar cunning and determination, who would decide to ignore the law would cause nearly the same result.
This work is the holy work of the Takers. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world.
"Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population."
The Taker definiton of agriculture is not the only definition.
- Leavers have used different level of agriculure, to some extent, from pure hunter-gatherer, to partial agriculturists, to near agriculturists.
- Humans are the only species with settlement. Every animal has a territory, a feeding ground, a hive, a nest, a burrow.
- Human settlement isn't against the laws of competition, it's subject to them.
The Taker Mother Culture says that Humans are not subject to the laws of nature, including increasing food supply causing an increased population.
- Even if it were so, Takers think they could resort to birth control to solve the problem.
Increasing population is what leads to famine, which is the main reason given for increasing food production
- When a people are in famine, feeding them only will keep them in famine.
- If there are more people in an area than can be supported, then feeding them will only keep there numbers higher than can be supported, continuing the famine.
- All species are subject to famine, but Mother Culture says Takers are exempt from this.
- It's not a matter of letting people starve, this is how the gods and rulers speak: We will not LET them starve, we will not LET the river flood.
- Food production increases must be stopped if humanity is to stop destroying the planet.
Tribal population control is not done for population control explicitly.
- Tribes had a territory, from which they could gather their resources.
- Territories have a finite amount of resources, so tribes could only grow to the limit that the territory had.
Unlike us, where our borders are imaginary, to the point where if a New York wants to become an Arizonan, he can, tribal boundaries were real.
- First, tribes protected their territories. If you came in, they would show you hostility, and perhaps kill you.
- Second, tribes had cultural boundaries. A Hopi would find it unimaginable to become a Navajo, where the concept of an American becoming a Canadian is just a form to fill out.
- Therefore, tribes generally stayed where they were, and limited their population.
The Laws of Life don't tell you how to solve moral issues, like abortion, drug use, premarital sex. They tell you how to live as a culture, as a species, without going extinct. You either abide by the law, or eliminate yourself.
- Takers, with a very limited view of ecological time, point to the fact that they've been doing this for THOUSANDS of years, with little or no reprocussions, when in fact, they've been doing it for only 500 generations, where humans have been around for 150,000 generations. The timeline of the takers has been a blink of the eye in the timeline of the natural community. The speed at which they are destroying themselves is truly fast.
- This limited timeline has given the Takers a sense that they can simply not accept the conclusions that the Law of Life holds, when acceptance has nothing to do with it. Live in accord with the Law, or perish.
The Law of life can be restated
- No one species may mke the life of the world its own
- The world was not made for any one species
Even if the Takers didn't think the world was made for them, they would still think the world was mad a mess, that the Jungle was chaos and anarachy, and they had a duty to "straighten things up"
- The world was not in chaos before the Takers arrived. The Jungle was not anarchy. It followed the very orderly Law of Life, and the world was flourishing beautifully.
The specialness of man is something the Takers cling to desperately.
- This specialness though put man in a very lonely place. It makes the world enemy territory, and they must live like an army of occupation, alienated from their home.
- This loneliness accounts for much of the crume, mental illness, suicide, drug addiction, and other horrors of "civilized" life.
- These will not be found in Leaver cultures at the extraordinary levels that they are in Taker society.
- Takers account for this by saying they are the price of advancement, and that Leavers are too primitive to have these things.
- In reality, since the Taker story is what causes these ills, it is the Leaver story that pevents these ills. The Leaver story is greatly satisfying for those who live it.
"Mother" Culture is not a cultural villian, and not meant to be a negative against females.
- Cultures is a mother everywhere, because culture is inherently a nurturer.
- Among Leavers, Mother Culture is healthy and self sustaining
- Among the Takers, she is unhealthy and self-destructive.
The Agricultural Revolution began 10,000 years ago, but it never ended.
- It continues today, in Papua New Guinea, in Africa, in South America.
- The fact that it never ended help expose the fact that the agricultural revolution is still so important to us today, because it is the foundation of our whole culture.
- If it were to end, it would be like our culture ending. This shows why it must be carried forward at any cost.
The stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel are not stories originating with the Takers, but are actually Leaver stories adopted by the Takers.
Adam and Eve
- This story describe the Fall of Man, showing that the knowledge of good and evil is the knowledge of who should live and who should die.
- This explains why this knowledge is bad, because the Leavers knew that only the Gods could have this knowledge, and therefore for humans to believe they had it was false knowledge.
- This also explains the Tree of Life, it becomes the choice to live at the hands of the gods, and to live forever, meaning to live sustainably and never go extinct.
- Adam means Man, and Eve means life. Man chose Life over the Gods, life being unrestrained growth.
- The prime evidence that this is a Leaver story is that the choice to at the fruit was considered The Fall, where if the story was originally a Taker story, it would be described as The Ascent, or The Liberation.
Cain and Abel
- The story tells of Cain, the tillers, and Abel, the herdsmen.
- Cain represents the original Mesopotamian Takers, Abel represent the Semites of the Arab peninsula, who were pastoralists.
- Cain killing Abel represents the Takers overrunning the Leaver Semites, slaughtering them for their land.
The two stories are linked
- Cain believes he knows who shall live and who shall die, and therefore feels justified in slaughtering Abel.
- Abel sees this, and tries to put the story together, that Cain thinks he has the knowledge of the Gods, and nis therefore doomed to die.
Culture, by it's usual definition is the accumulated knowledge of a people.
- The culture of Homo Habilis was passed onto Erectus, and that was passed onto Sapiens
- The cultures of the Sapiens were passed onto the Leavers, not the Takers
- The Takers have cut off their ties with the past, they got rid of the culture they inherited from their ancestors, because they felt they did not know the way people should live.
- Mother Culture tells the Takers that the past is bad, is wrong, is something to be escaped from.
- Taker cultures do value ancientness as a validator, wanting customs and institutions to be as old as possible.
- They esteem their wiser, nobler ancestors, but have no desire to live like they did.
Takers have assumed that the birth of Man and the birth of Taker culture were the same event.
- Even after Darwin and athropology debunked this idea, Takers still believed man did become man until they came around.
- When witnessing Leaver cultures, Takers assumed these people had degraded from their natural, agricultural, civilizational state.
Takers haven't discarded all knowledge from the past
- They save information on how to build and produce things.
- Takers teach their children how to make more and better things, but not what works well for people, because Takers deny that they KNOW what works well for people.
Leavers retain information about technology, but that's just a subset of what they keep, they root of it is they save the knowledge of what works well for them.
- Leaver knowledge stretches back to the beginning of human life. This is what they know what works well for them, because it's been tested by time, a lot of time.
Takers believe certain knowledge of how to live would be the knowledge of the "one right way" to live, not just a way that works well for people, especially just some people.
The cultural amnesia that occured wiped out all knowledge of how to live, to the point where the early takers wondered how to live.
- This is why they invented laws.
- They needed laws, they needed prophets.
- These ways to live are contrivances, inventions.
- Our laws and religions are supposed to be the "one right way" to live.
Leavers cultures are not inventions, they are tested ways for people to live that work well for that people.
- This is the essence of wisdom
- Everytime a leaver culture is destroyed or assimilated by the Takers, a wisdom tested from the birth of mankind disappears, in the same way an animal going extinct is a life form now missing that was tested from the birth of life.
Knowing the story of the Leavers is important.
- The Taker story, if it is to stop being told, needs a replacement, as people cannot live without a story.
- Just giving up a story doesn't work, as shown by the hippies. They revolted against the Taker story, but didn't offer an alternative.
The agricultural revolution, as seen by Takers, is just a technological event.
- It is not seen as one of spiritual or cultural relevance.
Adam is still eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, and Cain is still killing Abel where he is found.
Mother culture teaches that before the revolution, human life was devoid of meaning, was stupid and worthless, and unspeakably miserable.
- Leaver cultures disagree, as can be seen by the fact that to be pried away form their cultures usually takes brute force, wholesale slaughter, or just extermination.
- Mother Culture says they just didn't understand what they were missing. Even if they were agriculturalist, they still just didn't REALLY understand.
The Agricultural Revolution, as any revolution, must be a revolution against something.
- The revolution was just so many could "get somewhere", meaning advance technologically.
Mother Culture tells us that "prehistoric man" was always worrying about his next meal.
- This is because of the Taker definition of food.
- The world of life is food. Humans are omnivores, top of the food chain. Man has more food choices than every other animal in nature.
- Human intelligence and dexterity are the greatest assets and advantages any animal has.
- Leavers are the best fed people on Earth, in terms of both quantity and quality of food.
- Leavers also only "work" 2-3 hours a day.
Another myth Takers hold is that Man is being hunted by other animals.
- Man is the top of the food chain, which makes this simply false.
- Predation of man is non existant. If there was an animal that fed on man, it wouldn't being eating much, and therefore would not be doing so well.
Even though Leavers lived in the "original affluent society", even the worst off of the Takers wouldn't choose to abandon this lifestyle and adopt a Leaver lifestyle.
- This has to do with the ongoing Revolution the Takers are enacting.
Taker refuse to live at the hands of the gods
- The gods provide enough food to live as animals, but to truly live as humans, humans have to provide their own food.
- The gods made the world incompetently. They made the world a chaotic jungle, without enough for man to live like man.
- Takers plant more food than they need, so that the gods have no power over them. (But more food always means more people)
- When they have more food than they need, they can save it for when the gods decide it's their turn to go hungry.
- Takers want to take the whole world into their hands, so that the god have no power over anything.
No one can say to Leaver peoples "Work, or you get no money. Show me your money, or you don't get fed, don't get clothed, don't get sheltered."
- Mother Culture says that living a Leaver lifestyle is nightmarish and the Agriculture Revolution puts us beyond it
The Takers are those who know good and evil, and the Leavers are those that live in the hands of the gods.
Evolution only happens to creatures who live in the hands of the gods
- This stopped happening to Takers because they took themselves out of he competition. They no longer live in a way that is subject to evolution. Without natural selection, there can be no evolution.
- To enact a story is to live so as to make it come true, so since the Takers tell themselves a story that they are the end result of evolution, they are intent on stopping it.
The premise of the Taker culture is "The world belongs to man. The premise of the Leaver culture is "Man belongs to the world."
- All creatures came into the world living this way.
- Living the Taker way ends is disaster, living the Leaver way, and creation goes on forever.
Humans role on the planet is not to be the only sentient creature, it's to be the first.
- Since all life seems to tend toward complexity, it is probable that more creatures will eventually become what we describe as "intelligent"
- All creatures that attain this intelligence will have the same choice that man did, to either take the world into their hands and destroy it, or to live in the hands of the gods and let others follow.
- Man's destiny can then be seen as the first, the teacher. We were the first to experience this, and have learned that taking the world into our own hands was a disasterous mistake. Therefore, we can become the teachers of the world, guiding all new intelligent lifeforms towards making the right decision, and steering them away from making the wrong one.
You can see by looking at the Native Americans, that they were trying to achieve settlement, but only in a way that is in accord with the Laws of Life.
- They also knew that there is no rush for this, that it isn't a goal to be achieved at any cost.
- They also did not try to achieve the one right way of civilization. There might have eventually been multiple, dozens of civilizations, in North America.
- Being civilized should mean we are the leaders of the club, not it's only criminal and destroyer.
The only way to save the world is to end the one destructive culture. To do that, you need to change the people who live in it. Changing their behavior won't do it, you need to change their minds and the way they think about the world and man's destiny in it.
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