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1579e56
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Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself. A community of a hundred million species can survive almost anything short of a global catastrophe.
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Daniel Quinn |
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5ffe2f7
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Y]our agricultural revolution is not an event like the Trojan War, isolated in the distant past and without relevance to your lives today. The work begun by those neolithic farmers in the Near East has been carried forward from one generation to the next without a single break, right into the present moment. It's the foundation of your vast civilization today in exactly the same way that it was the foundation of the very first farming villa..
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philosophy
civilization
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Daniel Quinn |
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5adc3e1
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How easy it is first to leap to a false conclusion about someone and then to view everything he does in light of that conclusion.
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Daniel Quinn |
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13668b2
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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. [...] Naturally a well-run prison must have a prison industry. I'm sure you see why." "Well... it helps to keep the inmates busy, I suppose. Takes their minds off the boredom and futility of their lives." "Yes. Can you name yours?" "Our prison industry? Not offhand. I suppose it's obvi..
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life-lessons
plain-truth
world-changer
prison
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Daniel Quinn |
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32e282b
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If there are forty thousand people in an area that can only support thirty thousand, it's no kindness to bring in food from the outside to maintain them at forty thousand. That just guarantees that the famine will continue." "True. But all the same, it's hard just to sit by and let them starve." "This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: 'I will not *let* them starve. I will not *let*..
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Daniel Quinn |
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e214fe3
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Wherever you go..., you'll see Heaven and Hell on every side... in . Look for them and you'll soon know them. There on your left, Hell shuffles by, carrying a reluctant, gloomy chicken, his only comrade. There on your right, Heaven spring past, singing - a lunatic, a little too much for civilized contact. Just the way it always was.
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purgatory
hell
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Daniel Quinn |
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8195ee8
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Donald Trump can do a lot of things I can't, but he can no more get out of the prison than I can
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Daniel Quinn |
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354dbd4
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If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it.
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philosophy
exploitation
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Daniel Quinn |
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26db042
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They put their shoulders to the wheel during the day, stupefy themselves with drugs or television at night, and try not to think too searchingly about the world they're leaving their children to cope with.
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Daniel Quinn |
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0d9c040
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Many peoples practiced agriculture, but they were never obsessed by the delusion that what they were doing was *right*, that everyone in the entire world had to practice agriculture, that every last square yard of the planet had to be devoted to it... If they got tired of being agriculturalists, if they found they didn't like where it was leading them in their particular adaptation, they were *able* to give it up. They didn't say to themse..
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Daniel Quinn |
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b07207d
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The evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is something I seldom do.Inside my apartment I'd felt inexplicably anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or perhaps I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world. Or it was neither of these--I was afraid I was dreaming. Indeed, considering the events of the day, it was likely that I was dreaming. I sometimes fly in my..
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solitude
friendships
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daniel quinn |
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4e9079c
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The world is not going to survive very much longer as humanity's captive.
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Daniel Quinn |
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1e443af
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Hunter-gatherers no more live on the knife-edge of survival than wolves or lions or sparrows or rabbits. Man was as well adapted to life on this planet as any other species, and the idea that he lived on the knife-edge of survival is simply biological nonsense. As an omnivore, his dietary range is immense. Thousands of species will go hungry before he does. His intelligence and dexterity enable him to live comfortably in conditions that wou..
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Daniel Quinn |
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1396c19
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What he had to tell them was a story
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Daniel Quinn |
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bf42271
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Has it ever occurred to you to wonder if the history we teach our children is a lie?
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Daniel Quinn |
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6847f91
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Simple things are almost always the hardest to explain, Julie. Showing someone how to tie a shoelace is easy. Explaining it is almost impossible.
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Daniel Quinn |
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52af758
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Are you telling me my entire life has been a dream?" "Not your life, Greg, your past."
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Daniel Quinn |
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3bd4a61
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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. If a thing falls outside the range of people's curiosity, then they simply cannot make inquiries about it. It constitutes a blind spot -- a spot of blindness that you can't even know is there until someone draws your attentio..
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Daniel Quinn |
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fef1ae2
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I can't shake the crazy feeling that there is some small thing that we're being lied to about.
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Daniel Quinn |
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02209aa
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I went out and had a drink. I needed to talk to someone, and solitary drinkers are lucky in this regard-- they always have someone to talk to.
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Daniel Quinn |
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c3291a9
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Famine isn't unique to humans. All species are subject to it everywhere in the world. When the population of any species outstrips its food resources, that population declines until it's once again in balance with its resources. Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from that process, so when she finds a population that has outstripped its resources, she rushes in food from the outside, thus making it a certainty that there will ..
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Daniel Quinn |
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360ed03
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You need to take a step back from the problem in order to see it in global perspective. At present there are five and a half billion of you here, and, though millions of you are starving, you're producing enough food to feed six billion. And because you're producing enough food for six billion, it's a biological certainty that in three or four years there will be six billion of you. By that time, however (even though millions of you will st..
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Daniel Quinn |
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7e2ea53
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I'm not an anthropology buff, but I've read enough of it to know that the Zuni don't think that their way is the way for everyone, and that the Navajo don't think their way is the way for everyone. Each of them has a way that works well for .
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different-paths
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Daniel Quinn |
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8739e48
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N]ow we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.
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philosophy
exploitation
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Daniel Quinn |
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c25cde3
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If you can't discover what's keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual.
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Daniel Quinn |
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42c07f1
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A week ago," Ishmael said, "when we were talking about laws, you said that there's only one kind of law about how people should live--the kind that can be changed by a vote. What do you think now? Can the laws that govern competition in the community be changed by a vote?" "No. But they're not absolutes, like the laws of aerodynamics. They can be broken." "Can't the laws of aerodynamics be broken?" "No. If your plane isn't built according t..
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Daniel Quinn |
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45978bb
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Whenever a Taker couple talk about how wonderful it would be to have a big family, they're reenacting this scene behind the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They're saying to themselves, 'Of course it's our right to apportion life on this planet as we please. Why stop of four kids or six? We can have fifteen if we like. All we have to do is plow under another few hundres acres of rain forest -- and who cares if a dozen other species ..
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Daniel Quinn |
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065eb6e
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It is in fact an orderly community. The green plants are food for the plant eaters, which are food for the predators, and some of those predators are food for still other predators. And what's left over is food for the scavengers, who return to the earth nutrients needed by the green plants. It's a system that has worked magnificently for billions of years. Filmmakers understandably love footage of gore and battle, but any naturalist will t..
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natural-order
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Daniel Quinn |
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37ef6e5
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There is enormous pressure on you to take a place in the story your culture is enacting in the world-- any place at all.
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Daniel Quinn |
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e0b50c0
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Why is it that no one is excited? I hear people talking in the laundromat about the end of the world, and they're no more excited than if they were comparing detergents. People talk about the destruction of the ozone layer and the death of all life. They talk about the devastation of the rainforests, about deadly pollution that will be with us for thousands and millions of years, about the disappearance of dozens of species of life every da..
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Daniel Quinn |
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2545c22
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To each is given its moment in the blaze, its spark to be surrendered to another when it is sent, so that the blaze may go on. None may deny its spark to the general blaze and live forever. Each is sent to another someday. You are sent; you are on your way. I am sent. To the wolf or the lion or the vulture or the grasses, I am sent. My death is the life of another, and I will stand again in the windswept grasses and look through the eyes of..
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Daniel Quinn |
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3afc4c9
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The creatures who act as though they belong to the world follow the peace-keeping law, and because they follow that law, they give the creatures around them a chance to grow toward whatever it's possible for them to become. That's how man came into being. The creatures around Australopithecus didn't imagine that the world belonged to them, so they let him live and grow. How does being civilized come into it? Does being civilized mean that y..
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Daniel Quinn |
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c0822d2
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Arts and disciplines of that kind are fundamentally selfish; they're all designed to benefit the pupil--not the world - "Ishmael"
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Daniel Quinn |
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1a73dc9
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One thing I know people will say to me is 'Are you suggesting we go back to being hunter-gatherers?'" "That of course is an inane idea," Ishmael said. "The Leaver life-style isn't about hunting and gathering, it's about letting the rest of the community live--and agriculturalists can do that as well as hunter-gatherers."
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Daniel Quinn |
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8a35e4b
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We had been taken from The Wild and brought together in one place, because, for some strange reason, people found us interesting.
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Daniel Quinn |
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3238b94
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It has happened that a species has tried to live in violation of the Law of Limited Competition. Or rather it has happened one time, in one human culture--ours. That's what our agricultural revolution is all about. That's the whole point of totalitarian agriculture: We hunt our competitors down, we destroy their food, and we deny them access to food. That's what makes it totalitarian.
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Daniel Quinn |
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6524b10
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What's normal is for things to work. What's not normal is for things to fail.
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Daniel Quinn |
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1f32352
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The community of life that we see here at any given time isn't just a random collection. It's a collection of successes. It's the remainder that is left over when the failures have disappeared.
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Daniel Quinn |
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6e47793
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The rules that govern competition between species are (and must be) very different from the rules that govern competition within species.
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Daniel Quinn |
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782b77c
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I think what you're groping for is that people need more than to feel scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them.
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Daniel Quinn |
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9359cc0
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You wouldn't know from experience that small children are the most powerful learning engines in the known universe.
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Daniel Quinn |
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f9e9ef3
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Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, 'Have no care for tomorrow. Don't worry about whether you're going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect care of them. Don't you think he'll do the same for you?' In our culture the overwhelming answer to that question is, 'Hell no!' Even the most dedicated monastics saw to th..
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Daniel Quinn |
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18ac6d0
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You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet.
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Daniel Quinn |
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1d80198
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We made it back to the airport without getting mugged, stoned, shot at, pounced on, bombed, shelled, garroted, gassed, pitched into, caught in a cross fire, sniped at, blockaded, napalmed, or trip-wired. No one even hit us with a water balloon.
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funny
humor
ishmael
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Daniel Quinn |