by Daniel Quinn
“That’s right, but then what, Julie? Let’s suppose the Jays have annihilated the Emms. What are the Kays, the Ells, the Enns, and the Ohhs going to think about this?”
The light dawned at last. “I see where you’re going now,” I told him. “They’re going to say, ‘If the Jays are going to start annihilating opponents, then we’ve got to adopt a new strategy toward them. We can’t afford to treat them as though they’re still playing Erratic Retaliator, because they’re not. We have to treat them as though they’re playing Annihilator, otherwise they may just annihilate us.’ ”
“And how do they have to treat them if they’re playing Annihilator?”
“I’d say it would depend. If the Jays go back to playing Erratic Retaliator, then they could probably just let it be. But if the Jays continue to play Annihilator, then the survivors are going to have to join forces against the Jays and annihilate them.”
Ishmael nodded. “This is what the Native Americans did when the European settlers finally made it completely clear that they were never going to play anything but Annihilator with them. The Native Americans tried to put aside old intertribal grudges and join forces against the settlers—but they waited too long.”
Intermission
Between sessions at Room 105 I feel like I should present a musical interlude or share some Deep Thoughts or something so folks can get up and stretch, visit the bathroom, and get a snack. I have to admit that Alan handled this sort of thing really well in his book, but he’s a professional, right? He should handle it well. The best I can do is tap-dance around for ten or twenty seconds.
No, the truth is, I’m a little bit lazy. I don’t want to think about what was happening to me in the forty-eight hours that passed between the session I’ve just described and the next.
No, that’s not right. The real truth is, I don’t want anyone to know what was happening to me. It was too important. Ishmael was turning me inside out and upside down, and I couldn’t share that with anyone. Still can’t. Sorry.
I also admire the way Alan made every new visit into an event. As best as I can remember, however, the next time I went to Room 105, I just walked in and sat down, and Ishmael glanced up and shot me a questioning look
I looked back and said politely, “Is that celery?
He frowned down at the stalk in his hand. “It is celery,” he replied solemnly.
“I think of celery as something served at bridge parties, spread with tuna salad.”
Ishmael pondered this for a moment, then said, “I think of celery as something eaten by gorillas when they come across it growing in the wild, as they do from time to time. You didn’t invent it, you know.”
And that was the way we started that session.
When the hilarity died down, I said, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to make out of your story about the Awks, the Bawks, and the Cawks. Shall I tell you what I think I’m supposed to make out of it?”
“Please do.”
“The Cawks are a model of humans as they were living here ten thousand years ago.”
Ishmael nodded. “And as they’re living still, where the people of your culture haven’t gotten around to destroying them.”
“Okay. But why go through the business of Awks, Bawks, and Cawks?”
“I’ll explain my reasoning and perhaps it’ll make sense. The competitive strategy followed among tribal peoples as we know them today is roughly the one of erratic retaliation I attributed to the Cawks: ‘Give as good as you get, but don’t be too predictable.’ What is observed among them is exactly what I described as observed among the Cawks: Every tribe lives in a state of perpetual readiness—and in a state of more or less constant but very low-level warfare with their neighbors. When Taker peoples—people of your culture—encounter them, they naturally aren’t curious to know why they live this way or whether it makes sense in any frame of reference or whether it works for them. They simply say, ‘This is not a nice way to live and we won’t tolerate it.’ It would never occur to them to try to stop white-footed mice from living the way they live or to stop mountain goats from living the way they live or to stop elephant seals from living the way they live, but they naturally consider themselves experts on the way humans ought to live.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“The next question to be considered is, how long have tribal peoples been living this way? Here is the answer. There’s no reason to suppose that this way of living is a novelty for tribal peoples—any more than there is to suppose that hibernation is a novelty for bears or that migration is a novelty for birds or that dam building is a novelty for beavers. On the contrary, what we see in the competitive strategy of tribal peoples is an evolutionarily stable strategy that developed over hundreds of thousands of years and perhaps even millions of years. I don’t know how this strategy developed in fact. I offer instead a theoretical narrative about how it might have developed. The final state of the strategy is not in doubt, but how it became the final state may never be more than a conjecture. Does that help?”
“Yes, it does. But tell me again where we are on the main road.”
“Here’s where we are. When you go among tribal peoples, you’ll find that they don’t look into the heavens to find out how to live. They don’t need an angel or a spaceman to enlighten them. They know how to live. Their laws and their customs give them a completely detailed and satisfactory guide. When I say this, I don’t mean that the Akoa Pygmies of Africa think they know how all human beings should live or that the Ninivak Islanders of Alaska think they know how all human beings should live or that the Bindibu of Australia think they know how all human beings should live. Nothing of the kind. All they know is that they have a way that suits them completely. The idea that there might be some universally right way for everyone in the world to live would strike them as ludicrous.”
“Okay,” I said, “but where does that leave us?”
“It leaves us still on the main road, Julie. We’re trying to find out why the people of your culture are different from these tribal peoples, who look to themselves to find out how to live. We’re trying to find out how this knowledge came to be so difficult to obtain among the people of your culture, why they have to look to gods and angels and prophets and spacemen and spirits of the dead to find out how to live.”
“Right. Okay.”
“I should warn you that people will tell you that the impression I’ve given you of tribal peoples is a romanticized one. These people believe that Mother Culture speaks the undoubted truth when she teaches that humans are innately flawed and utterly doomed to misery. They’re sure that there must be all sorts of things wrong with every tribal way of life, and of course they’re correct—if you mean by ‘wrong’ something you don’t like. There are things in every one of the cultures I’ve mentioned that you would find distasteful or immoral or repugnant. But the fact remains that whenever anthropologists encounter tribal peoples, they encounter people who show no signs of discontent, who do not complain of being miserable or ill-treated, who are not seething with rage, who are not perpetually struggling with depression, anxiety, and alienation.
“The people who imagine that I’m idealizing this life fail to understand that every single extant tribal culture is extant because it has survived for thousands of years, and it has survived for thousands of years because its members are content with it. It may well be that tribal societies occasionally developed in ways that were intolerable to their members, but if so, these societies disappeared, for the very simple reason that people had no compelling reason to support them. There’s only one way you can force people to accept an intolerable lifestyle.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You have to lock up the food.”
The Fertile Crescent
We’re ready now for the third and last telling of the story, Julie, which is set this time in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago. This was by no means an empty area of the world—I mean, empty of human habitation. In those da
ys the Fertile Crescent was a garden spot, not the desert it is today, and humans had lived there for a hundred thousand years at least. Like modern hunter-gatherers, these people were all practicing agriculture to some extent, in the sense that they made a practice of encouraging the regrowth of their favorite foods. As on Terpsichore, each people had its own approach to agriculture. Some spent only minutes a week at it. Others liked having more of their favorite foods around, so they spent a couple of hours a week at it. Still others saw no reason why they shouldn’t live mostly on their favorite foods, so they spent an hour or two a day at it. You’ll recall that, in the story of Terpsichore, I called all these people Leavers. We may as well retain this name for their earthly counterparts, because they too thought of themselves as living in the hands of the gods and leaving everything to them.
“Eventually, just as on Terpsichore, one group of Leavers said to themselves, ‘Why should we just live partially on the foods we favor? Why don’t we live entirely on the foods we favor? All we have to do is devote a lot more time to planting, weeding, animal husbandry, and so on.’ So this one particular group took to working in their fields several hours a day. Their decision to become full-time farmers needn’t have been made in a single generation. It may have developed slowly over dozens of generations or it may have developed quickly over just three or four generations. Both scenarios can be written in a way that seems plausible. But, slowly or quickly, there was a tribal people of the Fertile Crescent who assuredly became full-time farmers. Now I want you to tell me how it stands with these various peoples.”
“How do you mean?”
“When you were here last, we spent a lot of time examining intraspecies competition—various strategies that allow competitors to resolve conflicts without engaging in mortal combat over every little thing. For example, the territorial strategy says, ‘Attack if you’re the resident, run away if you’re the intruder.’ ”
“Yes, I see that.”
“So: Tell me how it stands with these peoples in the Fertile Crescent.”
“I assume they’ve been playing Erratic Retaliator. ‘Give as good as you get, but don’t be too predictable.’ ”
“That’s right. As I’ve pointed out, there’s no reason at all to think that tribal people were living differently ten thousand years ago from the way they live today. They kept themselves combat-ready at all times, gave as good as they got, and occasionally instigated a little mischief of their own, just so no one would be tempted to take them for granted. Now the fact you live entirely by farming doesn’t in itself render this strategy unworkable. There were full-time agriculturalists in the New World who got along just fine following this strategy—neither overrunning their neighbors nor being overrun by them. But at some point in the Near East ten thousand years ago, one group of full-time farmers did begin to overrun their neighbors.
“When I say they overran their neighbors, I mean they did to their neighbors what their European descendants eventually did to the native peoples of the New World. When European settlers began to arrive here, the natives were of course still following the Erratic Retaliator strategy. This had worked for them from the beginning of time, and they were careful to follow it with the newcomers, who were baffled by it, to say the least. Just when they got things nicely sorted out—as they thought!—the natives would suddenly lash out in brutal and unprovoked attacks (just as they were used to doing among themselves). This made perfect sense to the natives, and it actually worked very well for them for quite a long time. The white settlers learned to be very, very respectful of the natives’ unpredictability. But eventually, of course, the settlers’ numbers grew to the extent that they were able to override the native strategy. In some cases they moved in and absorbed the natives. In other cases they moved in and drove the natives out to live or die elsewhere. And in still other cases they just moved in and exterminated them. But in every case, they annihilated them as tribal entities. The Takers were not at all interested in being surrounded by tribal peoples playing Erratic Retaliator—in the New World or in the Fertile Crescent. You can see why.”
I agreed that I could.
“Last time you were here, you worked out what would happen if one tribe of Erratic Retaliators suddenly started playing Annihilator. Do you remember?”
“Yes. Their neighbors would eventually join forces to stop them.”
“That’s right, and ordinarily this would work perfectly well. Why didn’t it work against the Takers in the Fertile Crescent?”
“I assume it didn’t work there for the same reason it didn’t work here in the New World. The Takers were able to generate unlimited supplies of the stuff that wins wars. This made them unbeatable by tribal peoples, even working together.”
“Yes, that’s right. New circumstances can undermine any strategy, even if it’s worked flawlessly for a million years, and a tribe with virtually unlimited agricultural resources playing Annihilator was certainly something new. The Takers were irresistible, and this led them to imagine themselves to be the agents of human destiny itself. It still does, of course.”
“It sure does.”
“What I want to look at now is the revolution in its fiftieth year. The Takers have overrun four tribes to the north of them, called, let’s say, the Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas. The Puala made most of their living by agriculture even before they were overrun by the Takers, so the change has been least stressful for them. The Hullas, by contrast, were hunter-gatherers who did only a minimum of what we would call agriculture. The Albas had been herder-collectors for some time. And the Cario had maintained a few staple crops that they supplemented by hunting and gathering. Before being overrun by the Takers, these tribes had coexisted in the usual way, giving as good as they got and occasionally initiating raids on one another. Just to be sure you haven’t forgotten, what is this Erratic Retaliator strategy in aid of?”
“In aid of?”
“Why do they have it? Why do they need any strategy at all?”
“They’re competitors. This strategy keeps them on an even footing with each other.”
“But the Takers put an end to the Erratic Retaliator game among them, because the program here is that the Hullas, the Puala, the Cario, and the Albas are now going to be Takers. That’s the way people are meant to live, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So the Erratic Retaliator strategy is out the window for these peoples.”
“Right.”
“But what keeps them on an even footing with each other now?”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a good question.… Maybe they don’t have anything to compete over?”
Ishmael nodded enthusiastically. “That’s a terribly interesting idea, Julie. How would that come about, do you suppose?”
“Well, they’re sort of all on the same side now.”
“In other words, perhaps tribalism was actually the cause of competition, rather than an evolved way of handling competition. With the disappearance of discrete tribes, competition just melts away, and peace on earth ensues.”
I told him I didn’t know about the peace-on-earth part.
“Let’s say you’re the Cario. It’s been a dry summer, Julie, and your neighbors to the north, the Hullas, have dammed a stream you use to irrigate your crops. Since you’re all on the same side now, do you just shrug and let your crops wither?”
“No.”
“So evidently being all on the same side doesn’t put an end to intraspecies competition after all. What do you do?”
“I guess I’d ask the Hullas to dismantle their dam.”
“Certainly. And they say no thanks. They’ve dammed the stream in order to irrigate their own crops.”
“Maybe they could sort of share the water.”
“They say they don’t care to. They need all the water they can get.”
“I could appeal to their sense of fair play.”
A heavy wheezing sound reached me through the glass and I looked up
to see Ishmael enjoying a good laugh. When he was finished, he said, “I trust you’re making a joke.”
“That’s right.”
“Good. So what are you going to do about the dammed stream, Julie?”
“I guess we’re going to go to war.”
“That is, of course, a possibility.”
“Something occurs to me, though. It seems to me that the Cario and the Hullas could have had this conflict before they became Takers.”
“Absolutely possible,” Ishmael said. “What was it I said the Hullas were before becoming full-time farmers? With your excellent memory, I’m sure you remember.”
“They were hunter-gatherers.”
“Why would hunter-gatherers dam a stream, Julie? They have no crops to irrigate.”
“True, but, just for the sake of argument, let’s say they were farmers.”
“All right. But, as I recall, the Cario were only partly dependent on farming. Losing a stream wouldn’t threaten their way of life.”
“True also,” I said, “but again, just for the sake of the argument, let’s say they were full-time farmers.”
“Very well. Then the Cario are going to engage in some very brutal and very erratic retaliation. In the face of this, the Hullas will have to decide if damming the stream is worthwhile to them.”
“So it’s war in either case,” I told him. “Becoming Takers didn’t make any difference.”
Ishmael shook his head. “A moment ago you said that, speaking for the Cario, you were going to have to ‘go to war’ over the dammed stream. Is ‘going to war’ the same as retaliation?”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.”
“What’s the difference, as you see it?”
“Retaliation is giving as good as you get, going to war is conquering people to make them do what you want.”
“So, even though it’s possible to say that it’s ‘war in either case,’ it’s different kinds of war, with different objectives. The object of retaliation is to show people that you can be nice or nasty, depending on whether they’re nice or nasty. The object of going to war is to conquer them and bend them to your will. Very different things, and erratic retaliation was about the former, not the latter.”
