|
bfb739f
|
There is no one right way to live.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
6e07263
|
I have amazing news for you. Man is not alone on this planet. He is part of a community, upon which he depends absolutely.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
a3664b2
|
It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee. Living close to nature is wonderful for your mental health.
|
|
nature
humanity
humor
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
7e3b266
|
But why? Why do you need prophets to tell you how you ought to live? Why do you need anyone to tell you how you ought to live
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
cdc9be1
|
Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidty, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
f65a0ca
|
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, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the 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 conq..
|
|
philosophy
exploitation
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
35b9764
|
Thinkers aren't limited by what they know, because they can always increase what they know. Rather they're limited by what puzzles them, because there's no way to become curious about something that doesn't puzzle you.
|
|
puzzles
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
e331cfa
|
If the world is saved, it will not be saved by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
bbc10c4
|
The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. ... The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.
|
|
philosophy
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
a075cee
|
Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you'll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you'll be tempted to say to the people around you, "how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?"
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
039b9ae
|
In fact, of course, there is no secret knowledge; no one knows anything that can't be found on a shelf in the public library.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
fa00b54
|
We're not destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
975bebf
|
Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been straining from the beginning? ...Very far from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish.
|
|
philosophy
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
b0ac4ea
|
The ship was sinking---and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, "We've got to get the lifeboats in the water right away." But the crew said, "First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we'll take care of the lifeboats." Then the women said, "First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait." The racial minorities said, "First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in..
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
4c77a47
|
You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. ... You are captives--and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?--your captivity and the captivity of the world.
|
|
philosophy
civilization
exploitation
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
88364db
|
A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.
|
|
philosophy
exploitation
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
2d32374
|
The journey itself is going to change you, so you don't have to worry about memorizing the route we took to accomplish that change.
|
|
learning
growth
journey
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
a03aa36
|
If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right--it would make no great difference. But if you ALL found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed.
|
|
philosophy
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
ac9442d
|
And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
927fbd9
|
But charisma only wins people's attention. Once you have their attention, you have to have something to tell them.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
3fe1d8a
|
Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself. A community of a hundred million species can survive anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature drop of twenty degrees--which would be a lot more devastating than it sounds. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature rise of twenty degrees. But a community ..
|
|
philosophy
ecology
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
ebcfa0b
|
The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was BORN to do.
|
|
philosophy
exploitation
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
83ac885
|
Guess what? The Nazis didn't lose the war after all. They won it and flourished. They took over the world and wiped out every last Jew, every last Gypsy, black, East Indian, and American Indian. Then, when they were finished with that, they wiped out the Russians and the Poles and the Bohemians and the Moravians and the Bulgarians and the Serbians and the Croatians--all the Slavs. Then they started in on the Polynesians and the Koreans and ..
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
904b627
|
I]n Africa I was a member of a family--of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo there were other gorillas--but there was no family. Five severed fingers do not..
|
|
family
philosophy
community
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
cd4615b
|
You shouldn't have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
e138625
|
The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
9a427c5
|
No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' ... That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.
|
|
philosophy
ecology
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
a7ef047
|
E]ducation is a thing you get past and forget about as quickly as possible. This is particularly true of elementary and secondary education, of course.... I began to remember what it had been like: the tremendous excitement of the first couple of years, when kids imagine that great secrets are going to be unfolding before them, then the disappointment that gradually sets in when you begin to realize the truth: There's plenty of learning to ..
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
e2296f1
|
There is a difference between the inmates of your criminal prisons and the inmates of your cultural prison: The former understand that the distribution of wealth and power inside the prison had nothing to do with justice.
|
|
evolutionary-process
culture
prison
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
a6e35a1
|
This story takes place a half a billion years ago-an inconceivably long time ago, when this planet would be all but recognizable to you. Nothing at all stirred on the land except the wind and the dust. Not a single blade of grass waved in the wind, not a single cricket chirped, not a single bird soared in the sky. All these things were tens of millions of years away in the future. But of course there was an anthropologist on hand. What sort..
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
1089517
|
The greatest discovery any alien anthropologist could make about our culture is our overriding response to failure:
|
|
progress
culture
failure
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
c382297
|
A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, "Get a boat!"
|
|
poverty
objectivism
jobs
homelessness
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
73fe4f4
|
You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live... I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity... This is what prevents them: They're unable to find the bars of the cage.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
724055e
|
If you can't discover what's keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual - "Ishmael"
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
cd499c8
|
T]he price you've paid is not the price of becoming human. It's not even the price of having the things you just mentioned. It's the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world.
|
|
philosophy
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
66efe0c
|
The obvious can sometimes be illuminating when perceived in an unhabitual way.
|
|
knowledge
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
6706291
|
Children don't need learning. They need access to what they want to learn outside the home.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
9875758
|
Exactly. That's what's been happening here for the past ten thousand years: You've been doing what you damn well please with the world. And of course you mean to go right on doing what you damn well please with it, because the whole damn thing belongs to you.
|
|
humanity
life
ownership
humans
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
3728dff
|
This law ... defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war.
|
|
philosophy
ecology
exploitation
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
dbd7b92
|
he began to speak to me, not in the jocular way of visitors to the menagerie but rather as one speaks to the wind or to the waves crashing on a beach, uttering that which must be said but which must not be heard by anyone.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
a0f407e
|
The sign stopped me-- or rather, this text stopped me. Words are my profession; I seized these and demanded that they explain themselves, that they cease to be ambiguous.
|
|
words
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
feb7586
|
You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
29f73d5
|
What is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself.
|
|
|
Daniel Quinn |
|
29ccb0f
|
This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can't eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn't feed what you eat." "It IS holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the wor..
|
|
philosophy
ecology
exploitation
|
Daniel Quinn |