by Daniel Quinn
“For hundreds of thousands of years, people as smart as you had had a way of life that worked well for them. The descendants of these people can today still be found here and there, and wherever they’re found in an untouched state, they give every evidence of being perfectly content with their way of life. They’re not at war with each other, generation against generation or class against class. They’re not plagued by anguish, anxiety, depression, self-hatred, crime, madness, alcoholism, and drug addiction. They don’t complain of oppression and injustice. They don’t describe their lives as meaningless and empty. They’re not seething with hatred and rage. They don’t look into the sky, yearning for contact with gods and angels and prophets and alien spacemen and spirits of the dead. And they don’t wish someone would come along and tell them how to live. This is because they already know how to live, as ten thousand years ago humans everywhere knew how to live. But knowing how to live was something the people of your culture had to destroy in order to make themselves the rulers of the world.
“They were sure they’d be able to replace what they destroyed with something just as good, and they’ve been at it ever since, trying one thing after another, giving the people anything they can think of that might fill the void. Archaeology and history tell a tale five thousand years long of one Taker society after another groping for something to placate and inspire, something to amuse and distract, something to make people forget a misery that for some strange reason simply will not go away. Festivals, revels, pageants, temple solemnities, pomp and circumstance, bread and circuses, the ever-present hope of attaining power, riches, and luxury, games, dramas, contests, sports, wars, crusades, political intrigue, knightly quests, world exploration, honors, titles, alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitution, opera, theater, the arts, government, politics, careers, political advantage, mountain climbing, radio, television, movies, show business, video games, computers, the information superhighway, money, pornography, the conquest of space—something here for everyone, surely, something to make life seem worth living, something to fill the vacancy, something to inspire and console. And of course it did fill the vacancy for many of you. But only a fraction of you could hope to attain the good things that were available at any one time, as today only a small percentage of you can hope to live like people who must (surely must!) have a life worth living—billionaires and movie stars and sports heroes and supermodels. Always the vast majority of you have been relative have-nots. Is this expression familiar to you?”
“Have-nots? Yes.”
“The tribal life wasn’t an arrangement of haves and have-nots. Why would people put up with such an arrangement unless they were forced to? And until you put food under lock and key, there was no way to force people to put up with it. But the Taker life has always been an arrangement of haves and have-nots. The have-nots have always been the majority, and how were they supposed to discover the source of their misery? Who were they going to ask to explain why the world is ordered as it is, in a way that favors a handful, leaving the vast majority toiling just in order to be hungry, naked, and homeless? Were they going to ask their rulers? Their slave masters? Their bosses? Certainly not.
“About twenty-five hundred years ago, four distinct explanatory theories began to evolve. Probably the oldest theory was this, that the world is the work of two eternally warring gods, one a god of goodness and light, the other a god of evil and darkness. Certainly this made sense of a world that seemed to be forever divided between those who live in the light and those who live in the darkness; this theory was embodied in Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and other religions. Another theory had it that the world was the work of a community of gods who, absorbed in their own affairs, ran it to suit themselves, and when humans came into it, they might be befriended, used, destroyed, ravished, or ignored, entirely at the gods’ whim; this, of course, was the theory embraced by classical Greece and Rome. Another theory had it that suffering is intrinsic to life, that it’s the inevitable fate of those who live, and that peace can only be attained by those who relinquish desire of every kind. This was the theory given to the world by Gautama Buddha. Another theory had it that the very first man, Adam, living back there in Mesopotamia a few thousand years ago, had disobeyed God, fallen from grace, and been driven from paradise to live forevermore by the sweat of his brow, miserable, alienated from God, and prone to sin. Christianity built on this Hebraic base, providing a messiah who taught that in the Kingdom of God the first will be last and the last first—meaning that the haves and the have-nots will change places. During Christ’s lifetime and in the decades following, most thought the Kingdom of God would be an earthly kingdom ruled by God directly. When this failed to materialize, however, it came to be understood that the Kingdom of God was heaven, accessible only after death. Islam too built on the Hebraic base, rejecting Jesus as a messiah but affirming that good works will be rewarded in the afterlife.
“But, as you well know, these theories have never entirely satisfied you, especially in recent centuries, and perhaps even more especially in recent decades, when the vast emptiness at the center of your lives swallows down an endless outpouring of religions, spiritual fads, gurus, prophets, cults, therapies, and mystical healings—without ever being satisfied.”
“That’s for sure,” I told him.
Ishmael gave me a long, somber look. “Perhaps you now understand why so many people of your culture look into the sky, yearning for contact with gods and angels and prophets and alien spacemen and spirits of the dead. Perhaps you now understand why so many people in your culture have daydreams like the one you described to me during your first visit.”
“I do understand it.”
“Now you know where the main road leads. Though of course it doesn’t end here.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that at least,” I said.
A Goddamned Pride Thing
I hope you know I have a million questions,” I told him when I arrived on Saturday, two days later.
“I expected a few, yes,” Ishmael said.
“A lot of people, hearing what you’ve taught me so far, would say, ‘Oh my God, then there’s no hope at all for us!’ ”
“Why is that?”
“Well, we can’t go back to living in caves, can we?”
“Very few tribal peoples lived in caves, Julie.”
“You know what I mean. We can’t go back to living tribally.”
Ishmael frowned. “Actually, I’m not sure that is what you mean.”
“Okay. What I mean is, we can’t go back and start over. We can’t go back to living the way we lived before we became Takers.”
“But what do you mean by that, Julie? Do you mean that you can’t go back to living in a way that works for people?”
“No. I guess I mean we can’t go back to being hunter-gatherers.”
“Of course you can’t. Have you ever heard me make such a proposal? Have you heard me make even the slightest beginning of the slightest hint of such a proposal?”
“No.”
“And you never will. A dozen planets this size couldn’t accommodate the six billion of you as hunter-gatherers. The idea is completely absurd.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“You’ve forgotten what you came to me for, Julie. You came to me to learn how people elsewhere in the universe manage to live without devouring their worlds.”
“That’s right.”
“Now you know how that’s done, don’t you? You just didn’t have to board a spaceship to learn it. The aliens you were seeking were merely your own ancestors, who managed very nicely to live here for hundreds of thousands of years without devouring the world—your ancestors and their cultural descendants, tribal peoples who are still extant here today. What’s confusing you is that you imagine I’ve shown you what the answers are, when in fact I’ve shown you only where to look for answers. You think I’m saying, ‘Adopt the Hulla lifestyle,’ when in fact I’m saying, ‘Understand why the Hulla lifestyle work
ed—and continues to work as well as ever wherever it still exists.’ As Takers, you’ve been struggling for ten thousand years to invent a lifestyle that works, and have failed utterly so far. You’ve invented millions of things that have worked—airplanes and toasters and computers and pipe organs and steamships and videocassette recorders and clocks and atom bombs and carousels and water pumps and electric lights and toenail clippers and ballpoint pens—but a lifestyle that works has always eluded you. And the more people you have, the more manifest, widespread, and painful this failure becomes. You’re having a hard time building enough prisons to hold all your criminals. The nuclear family is staggering into oblivion. The incidence of drug addiction, suicide, mental illness, divorce, child abuse, rape, and serial murder continues to climb.
“The fact that you’ve never been able to invent a lifestyle that works isn’t surprising. From the first, you underestimated the difficulty of such a task. Why did the tribal lifestyle work, Julie? I don’t mean the mechanism, I mean how did it come about that such a lifestyle worked?”
“I guess it worked because it was tested from the time when people began. What worked survived, and what didn’t work didn’t survive.”
“Of course. It worked because it was subject to the same evolutionary process that produced workable lifestyles for chimpanzees and lions and deer and bees and beavers. You can’t just slap something together and expect it to work as well as a system that has been tested and refined for three million years.”
“Yes, I can see that now.”
“But, oddly enough, almost any of your improvisations would have worked if…”
“If what?”
“That’s what I want you to answer, Julie. I think you can do this. The Mesopotamian empire would have worked under the code of Hammurabi if … what? The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt would have worked under the inspired religious leadership of Akhenaton if … what? Judah and Israel would have worked under the rule of the kings if … what? The vast Persian empire would have worked when Alexander swept across it if … what? The even more extensive Roman empire would have worked under the Pax Romana of Augustus Caesar if … what? I won’t go through it all era by era, improvisation by improvisation. The world you know best, the United States of America, under what is presumably the most enlightened constitution in human history would work if … what?”
“If people were better.”
“Of course. All of this would work beautifully, Julie, if people would just be better than people have ever been. You’d be just one big happy family, if only you would be better than people have ever been. The warring factions in the Balkans would hug and make up. Saddam Hussein would dismantle his war machine and enter a monastery. Crime would disappear overnight. No one would break any law. You could dispense with courts, police, prisons. Everyone would abandon self-interest and work together to improve the lot of the poor and to rid the world of hunger, racism, hatred, and injustice. I could spend hours listing all the wonderful things that would happen … if only people would just be better than people have ever been.”
“Yeah, I’m sure of that.”
“This was the tremendous strength of the tribal way, that its success didn’t depend on people being better. It worked for people the way they are—unimproved, unenlightened, troublesome, disruptive, selfish, mean, cruel, greedy, and violent. And that triumph the Takers have never come close to matching. In fact, they never even made the attempt. Instead, they counted on being able to improve people, as if they were badly designed products. They counted on being able to punish them into being better, on being able to inspire them into being better, on being able to educate them into being better. And after ten thousand years of trying to improve people—without a trace of success—they wouldn’t dream of turning their attention elsewhere.”
“No, that’s true. I’m pretty sure that most people, hearing what I’ve heard here, would still say, ‘Yes, well, that’s all well and good, but we really do have an obligation to go on trying to make people better. They can be made better. We just haven’t quite figured out how to do it yet.’ Or they’d say, ‘It’s still something to work for. Just think how much worse people would be if we weren’t constantly trying to make them better.’ ”
“I’m afraid you’re right, Julie.”
“Even so,” I said, “I still feel stuck. What are we supposed to do with this? You’re not expecting us to reinstate the Erratic Retaliator strategy, are you?”
Ishmael glared at me for a solid two minutes, but I wasn’t intimidated. I knew he wasn’t displeased with me, he was just working on something. When he finally had it worked out to his satisfaction, he went on to tell another of his stories.
“From time out of mind, a wooden bridge connected two peoples who had been allies from ancient times. It was built over a river that at every other point was too wide to be bridged. The spot seemed to have been designed for just this use, for a massive rock shelf presented itself as an abutment on each side of the river. After many centuries, however, it was felt that something more advanced than a wooden bridge was needed to join the two countries, and a team of engineers drew up plans for a metal bridge to replace it. This bridge was duly built, but after a few decades quite suddenly collapsed. Studying the wreckage, another panel of engineers decided that the evident metal fatigue they saw was a sign that an inferior grade of steel had been used by the builders. The bridge was rebuilt, using the best materials available, but it collapsed again after just forty years. Another panel of engineers convened to study the problem, and this time they focused on the original building plans, which they considered to be flawed in several fundamental ways. They drew up another set of plans, and the new bridge went up—and collapsed again, this time after only thirty years.
“Up till now, they’d been working with a continuous beam bridge supported by two pier foundations in the river. They decided to replace this with a multiple-span beam bridge, which they felt sure would fix the problem. When it too failed after just thirty years, they decided to try building a half-through arch bridge. This seemed like an improvement, so when it failed after forty years, they tried building a full-through arch bridge. This lasted only twenty-five years, so they next tried a deck arch bridge, then a portal bridge, each of which collapsed after only twenty-five years.
“The builders of the original wooden bridge had been gone for centuries, of course, but there was in that land a student of their works who now came forward to explain why the engineers’ metal bridges were proving to be so short-lived. ‘The traffic on the bridge naturally causes the metal to vibrate,’ he said. ‘That’s only to be expected. This vibration is transmitted to the rocks you’re using as abutments, a thing which, again, is only to be expected. What is not to be expected is the powerful resonance that this vibration wakens in these particular rocks. This resonance, carried back to the bridge by the metal, is what’s causing them to disintegrate so quickly. The original bridge, being made of wood, transmitted almost no vibration to the rocks, so no answering resonance was created in them. This is why the original bridge lasted so long, and why it would actually still be here and working as well as ever if you hadn’t torn it down.’
“Needless to say, the engineers were less than delighted to have this explanation. Far from expressing gratitude to their informant, they said: ‘Well, what are you proposing we do about this? Are you suggesting that we should go back to building this bridge out of wood?’ ”
Ishmael gave me a long, inquiring look, which I returned for a couple of minutes as I thought about this. Finally I said, “Well, wasn’t he suggesting that they go back to building the bridge out of wood?”
“Certainly not, Julie. He was trying to supply the missing piece of the puzzle that was baffling these engineers, so that they could begin to think productively. I should add, by the way, that real-life engineers would be very unlikely to go on building bridge after bridge in this feebleminded way. Nor would they react to this new information the way these e
ngineers did. On the contrary, I’d expect real-life engineers to be positively inspired by this information, the lack of which had blocked all possibility of success. This information opens up to exploration all sorts of avenues that never would have been explored otherwise.”
“I can see that. I guess I don’t see what avenues of exploration you’ve opened up for me—or as you keep saying, for the people of my culture.”
Ishmael pondered this for a while, then said, “Suppose, Julie, that we’d been able to take the galactic journey you daydreamed about. And suppose we found a planet where people very similar to you had a very satisfying and sustainable lifestyle that had worked for them for hundreds of thousands of years. And suppose we were able to throw a lasso around this planet and drag it back here to earth, where any and all of you would be free to study it to your heart’s content and at your leisure. Would you look at this and still see nothing to explore?”
“No.”
“Please explain the difference to me.”
“I guess I just don’t want to live the way people lived ten thousand years ago.”
His right eyebrow shot up. “Forgive me if I stare, Julie. You’ve been so rational up to now.”
“I’m not being irrational, I’m just being honest.”
He shook his head. “You’re turning down a suggestion that has never been made to you, Julie—and that’s hardly rational. I’ve never asked you to live the way people lived ten thousand years ago. I’ve never even hinted at such a thing. If I told you that biochemists at a Jesuit university had discovered a cure for cancer, would you reject it on the grounds that you don’t want to become a Roman Catholic?”
“No.”
“Then again, please explain the difference to me.”
