








		   B     E     Y     O     N     D

		  C  I  V  I  L  I  Z  A  T  I  O  N


		    H U M A N I T Y ' S   N E X T
				   
		    G R E A T   A D V E N T U R E

             
			     DANIEL QUINN




               "What would happen if we
                intentionally forged our social solutions
                in the fires of creative chaos?"

                     -John Briggs and F. David Peat








			     _For Rennie
		and for Hap Veerkamp and C.J. Harper,
   with special thanks to the members of the 1998 Houston Seminar,
   who played such a crucial role in the development of this book,
	and to Scott Valentine and Sara Walsh in particular--
	       you kept us going and you kept me sane._

      _The homeless and the young are rapidly converging on the
      socioeconomic territory I identify in this book as "beyond
   civilization. " The homeless have for the most part been thrust
      into it involuntarily, while many of the young unknowingly
      yearn for it, as anyone does who wants more from life than
	just a chance to feed at the trough where the world is
	  being devoured. It is to them and their hopes that
		this book is particularly dedicated._








------------------------------------------------------------

P A R T   O N E 
Closing In on the Problem




I heard this, naturally, from my grandfather, he from his 
grandfather, he from his own grandfather, and so on, back 
many hundreds of years. That means this tale is very old. 
But it won't disappear, because I offer it to my children, 
and my children will tell it to their children, and so on.

_GYPSY STORYTELLER LAZAROS HARISIADIS, 
QUOTED BY DIANE TONG IN GYPSY FOLK TALES_



------------------------------------------------------------








		      __A fable to start with__


Once upon a time life evolved on a certain planet, bringing forth many
different social organizations--packs, pods, flocks, troops, herds,
and so on. One species whose members were unusually intelligent
developed a unique social organization called a tribe. Tribalism
worked well for them for millions of years, but there came a time when
they decided to experiment with a new social organization (called
civilization) that was hierarchal rather than tribal. Before long,
those at the top of the hierarchy were living in great luxury,
enjoying perfect leisure and having the best of everything. A larger
class of people below them lived very well and had nothing to complain
about. But the masses living at the bottom of the hierarchy didn't
like it at all. They worked and lived like pack animals, struggling
just to stay alive.

"This isn't working," the masses said. "The tribal way was better. We
should return to that way." But the ruler of the hierarchy told them,
"We've put that primitive life behind us forever. We can't go back to
it."

"If we can't go back," the masses said, "then let's go forward--on to
something different."

"That can't be done," the ruler said, "because nothing different is
possible. Nothing can be _beyond_ civilization. Civilization is a final,
unsurpassable invention."

"But no invention is ever unsurpassable. The steam engine was
surpassed by the gas engine. The radio was surpassed by television.
The calculator was surpassed by the computer. Why should civilization
be different?"

"I don't know _why_ it's different," the ruler said, "It just _is_."

But the masses didn't believe this--and neither do I.








			__A Manual of Change__


My first concept of this book was reflected in its original title:
_The Manual of Change_. I thought of this because there's nothing the
people of our culture want more than change. They desperately want to
change themselves and the world around them. The reason isn't hard to
find. They know something's wrong--wrong with themselves and wrong
with the world.


In _Ishmael_ and my other books, I gave people a new way of
understanding what's gone wrong here. I had the rather naive idea this
would be enough. Usually it _is_ enough. If you know what's wrong with
something--your car or your computer or your refrigerator or your
television set--then the rest is relatively easy. I assumed it would
be the same here, but of course it isn't. Over and over again,
literally thousands of times, people have said to me or written to me,
"I understand what you're saying--you've changed the way I see the
world and our place in it--but what are we supposed to DO about it?"

I might have said, "Isn't it obvious?" But obviously it _isn't_
obvious--or anything remotely like obvious.

In this book I hope to _make_ it obvious.

Humanity's future is what's at stake.








	       __Who are the people of "our culture"?__


It's easy to pick out the people who belong to "our" culture. If you
go somewhere--anywhere in the world--where the food is under lock and
key, you'll know you're among people of our culture. They may differ
wildly in relatively superficial matters--in the way they dress, in
their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, and so on. But
when it comes to the most fundamental thing of all, getting the food
they need to stay alive, they're all alike. In these places, the food
is all _owned_ by someone, and if you want some, you'll have to buy it.
This is expected in these places; the people of our culture know no
other way.

Making food a commodity to be owned was one of the great innovations
of our culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under
lock and key--and putting it there is the cornerstone of our economy,
for if the food wasn't under lock and key, who would work?








		__What does "saving the world" mean?__


When we talk about saving the world, what world are we talking about?
Not the globe itself, obviously. But also not the biological
world--the world of life. The world of life, strangely enough, is not
in danger (though thousands and perhaps even millions of species are).
Even at our worst and most destructive, we would be unable to render
this planet lifeless. At present it's estimated that as many as two
hundred species a day are becoming extinct, thanks to us. If we
continue to kill off our neighbors at this rate, there will inevitably
come a day when one of those two hundred species is our own.

Saving the world also can't mean preserving the world _as it is right
now_. That may sound like a nice idea, but it's also out of reach.
Even if the entire human race vanished tomorrow, the world wouldn't
stay the way it is today. We will never, under any circumstances, be
able to stop change on this planet.

But if saving the world doesn't mean saving the world of life or
preserving it unchanged, what are we talking about? Saving the world
can only mean one thing: saving the world _as a human habitat_.
Accomplishing this will mean (_must_ mean) saving the world as a
habitat for as many other species as possible. We can _only_ save the
world as a human habitat if we stop our catastrophic onslaught on the
community of life, for we depend on that community for our very lives.








		   __Old minds with new programs__

In my novel _The Story of B_, the middle volume of the trilogy that
begins with _Ishmael_ and ends with _My Ishmael_, I wrote, "If the
world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by
new minds with no programs at all." I'm afraid this is a case where
the words are all easy, but the thoughts are slippery. I'll rephrase
it. If we go on as we are, we're not going to be around for much
longer--a few decades, a century at most. If we're still around a
thousand years from now, it will be because we _stopped_ going on 
as we are.

How will that have come about? How are we going to stop going on this
way?

Here's how old minds think of stopping us. They think of stopping us
the way they stopped poverty, the way they stopped drug abuse, the way
they stopped crime. With programs. Programs are sticks planted in the
mud of a river to impede its flow. The sticks _do_ impede the flow. A
little. But they never stop the flow, and they never turn the river
aside.

This is why I can confidently predict that _if_ the world is saved, it
will not be because some old minds came up with some new programs.
Programs never stop the things they're launched to stop. No program
has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever
_will_ stop them.

And no program will ever stop us from devastating the world.








		    __New minds with no programs__


If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs
but by new minds with no programs at all.

Why not new minds with new _programs_? Because where you find people
working on programs, you don't find new minds, you find old ones.
Programs and old minds go together like buggy whips and buggies.

The river I mentioned earlier is the river of vision. Our culture's
river of vision is carrying us toward catastrophe. Sticks planted in
the mud may impede the flow of the river, but we don't need to impede
its flow, we need to divert it into an entirely new channel. If our
culture's river of vision ever begins to carry us away from
catastrophe and into a sustainable future, then programs will be
superfluous. When the river's flowing where you want it to flow, you
don't plant sticks to impede it.

Old minds think:                    
_How do we stop these bad things from happening?_             

New minds think: 		   
_How do we make things the way we want them to be?_       








		       __No programs at all?__


Programs make it possible to look busy and purposeful while _failing_.
If programs actually did the things people expect them to do, then
human society would be heaven: our governments would work, our schools
would work, our law enforcement systems would work, our justice
systems would work, our penal systems would work, and so on.

When programs fail (as they invariably do), this is blamed on things
like poor design, lack of funds and staff, bad management, and
inadequate training. When programs fail, look for them to be replaced
by new ones with improved design, increased funding and staff,
superior management, and better training. When these new programs fail
(as they invariably do), this is blamed on poor design, lack of funds
and staff, bad management, and inadequate training.

This is why we spend more and more on our failures every year. Most
people accept this willingly enough, because they know they're
_getting_ more every year: bigger budgets, more laws, more police,
more prisons--more of everything that didn't work last year or the
year before that or the year before that.

Old minds think: 
_If it didn't work last year, let's do MORE of it this year._

New minds think:
_If it didn't work last year, let's do something ELSE this year._








		   __If not programs, then what?__


A man was found sitting in the middle of the desert in a contraption
made of rocks, bits of lumber, and old, blown tires, which he was
busily "steering" as if it were actually a vehicle in motion.

Asked what he was doing, the man said, "Driving home."

"You're never going to get there in this," he was told.

He said, "If not in this, then in what?"


We're like this man, busily trying to steer into the future in a Rube
Goldberg assemblage of programs that has never taken us any farther
than this man's pile of junk took him. Even after we've acknowledged
that programs don't work and never have worked, however, it still
somehow seems natural to ask, "If not programs, then what?"

I'd like to recast the question this way: "If programs don't work,
then what _does_ work?" In fact, I have an even better way of asking
the question: "What works so well that programs are superfluous? What
works so well that it never occurs to anyone to create programs to
_make_ it work?"

The answer to all these questions is: _vision_.








		   __The invisibility of success__


When things work, the forces that _make_ them work are invisible. The
universe at large is a notorious example of this. It took a towering
genius to recognize the laws of motion and universal gravitation that
now seems almost boringly obvious to us. Newton's genius was precisely
the genius of seeing that which is so evident as to be unseeable.
Every advance in science makes manifest a working that is cloaked by
its very success.

The dancer's admonition is _Never let them see you sweat_. When it
comes to the laws of the universe, this admonition becomes _Never let
them see you at all: make them deduce your existence_. And indeed the
laws of the universe are never directly observable, so we have no
other way of discovering them except by deduction.

What works in the living community is similarly cloaked by its
success. The basic laws of ecology have the beauty and simplicity of a
fairy tale, but their existence only began to be suspected a century
ago.








		__The invisibility of tribal success__


People are fascinated to learn why a pride of lions works, why a troop
of baboons works, or why a flock of geese works, but they often resist
learning why a tribe of humans works. Tribal humans were successful on
this planet for three million years before our agricultural
revolution, and they're no less successful today wherever they manage
to survive untouched, but many people of our culture don't want to
hear about it. In fact, they'll vigorously deny it. If you explain to
them why a herd of elephants works or why a hive of bees works, they
have no problem. But if you try to explain why a tribe of humans
works, they accuse you of "idealizing" them. From the point of view of
ethology or evolutionary biology, however, the success of humans in
tribes is no more an idealization than the success of bison in herds
or whales in pods.

Our cultural excuse for failure is that humans are just "naturally"
flawed--greedy, selfish, short-sighted, violent, and so on, which
means _anything_ you do with them will fail. In order to validate that
excuse, people _want_ tribalism to be a failure. For this reason, to
people who want to uphold our cultural mythology, any suggestion that
tribalism was successful is perceived as a threat.

Making tribal success visible is the work of my other books and will
not be repeated here.








	      __Conspicuous success, invisible source__


Our culture has been conspicuously successful, in the sense that it
has overrun the world. For most of our history, this success was
perceived as merely an inevitability, the working out of human
destiny. People no more wondered about it than they wondered about
gravity. When Europeans "discovered" the New World, they considered it
a sacred duty to take it over. The people who were already living
there were just in the way, like trees or rocks or wild animals. They
had no real business being there, as we did. For us to take over this
hemisphere was just part of the larger plan (presumably God's plan)
for us to take over the entire world.

That we were _able_ to overrun this hemisphere (and indeed the entire
world) came as no surprise to us. This is simply what was _meant_ to
be, so naturally it _came_ to be. No one is amazed when clouds produce
rain.

Before Newton, people didn't wonder why unsupported objects are
compelled to fall to the ground. They just figured, what else _could_
they do? They _have_ to fall to the ground, and that's that. Our
historians have always been in the same condition when it comes to our
tremendous cultural success. They don't wonder why we were compelled
to take over the world. They just figure, what else _could_ we have
done? We _had_ to take over the world, and that's that.








		      __Vision is like gravity__


Vision is to culture what gravity is to matter. When you see a ball
roll off a table and fall to the floor, you should think, "Gravity is
at work here." When you see a culture make its appearance and spread
outward in all directions until it takes over the entire world, you
should think, "Vision is at work here."

When you see a small group of people begin behaving in a special way
that subsequently spreads across an entire continent, you should
think, "Vision is at work here." If I tell you that the small group I
have in mind were followers of a first-century preacher named Paul and
that the continent was Europe, you'll know the vision was
Christianity.

Dozens or perhaps even hundreds of books have investigated the reasons
for Christianity's success, but not one of them was written before the
nineteenth century. Before the nineteenth century it seemed to
everyone that Christianity no more needed reasons to succeed than
gravity does. It was bound to succeed. Its success was sponsored by
destiny.

For exactly the same reason, no one has ever written a book
investigating the reasons for the success of the Industrial
Revolution. It's perfectly obvious to us that the Industrial
Revolution was bound to succeed. It could no more have failed than a
ball rolling off a table could fall toward the ceiling.

That's the power of vision.








		       __The spread of vision__


Every vision is self-spreading, but not every vision spreads itself in
the same way. In a sense, the spreading mechanism _is_ the vision.

Our culture's spreading mechanism was population expansion: _Grow,
then get more land, increase food production, and grow some more_.
Christianity's spreading mechanism was conversion: _Accept Jesus, then
get others to accept him_. The Industrial Revolution's spreading
mechanism was improvement: _Improve on something, then put it out
therefor others to improve on_.

Clearly all spreading mechanisms have one thing in common: they confer
benefits on those who do the spreading. Those who get more land,
increase food production, and grow are rewarded with riches and power.
Those who accept Jesus and get others to accept him are rewarded with
heaven. Those who improve on something and put it out there for others
to improve on are rewarded with respect, fame, and wealth. The benefit
conferred shouldn't, however, be confused with the mechanism itself.
Our culture wasn't spread by people becoming rich and powerful,
Christianity wasn't spread by people going to heaven, and the
Industrial Revolution wasn't spread by people winning respect, fame,
and wealth.








		 __Vision: success without programs__


When a chemist puts water in a test tube and adds salt, an angel comes
along and dissolves the salt into charged particles called ions.
Because we perceive the universe to be self-governing according to
internally consistent and comprehensible principles, the angel in this
story seems completely superfluous to us. We therefore cut it away
with Occam's razor.

Although historians now look for the reasons behind Christianity's
success, they aren't looking for programs. Christianity thrived in the
Roman world because the people of that time were ready for it, and
historians would no more expect to find programs at work there
"promoting" Christianity than chemists would expect to find angels at
work in their test tubes. (It might be argued that Constantine's Edict
of Milan, allowing Christians freedom of worship, was a program of
support, but in fact it merely permitted what two and a half centuries
of persecution had been unable to stop, much as the twenty-first
amendment to the U.S. Constitution merely permitted what fourteen
years of Prohibition had been unable to stop.)

In the same way, the spread of our culture has never had to be kept
going by any program. It has never flagged for a single instant, and
the same can be said of the Industrial Revolution.








		    __When the vision turns ugly__


When the river of vision begins to carry people in a direction they
don't like, they start planting sticks to impede its flow. These are
the sticks I call programs.

Most programs take this form: _Outlaw the thing that's bothering you,
catch people who do it, and put them in jail_.

Old minds think: 
_We have to write tougher and more comprehensive laws_.

New minds think: 
_No  unwanted behavior   has  ever been  eliminated  by passing  a law
against it.


The fact that programs of this sort invariably fail doesn't trouble
most people.

Old minds think: 
_If it didn't work last year, let's do MORE of it this year_.

New minds think:
_If it didn't work last year, let's do something ELSE this year_.

Every year, without fail, we outlaw more things, catch more people
doing them, and put more of them in jail. The outlawed behavior never
goes away, because, directly or indirectly, it's supported by the
strong, invisible, unrelenting force called vision. This explains why
police officers are much more likely to take up crime than criminals
are to take up law enforcement. It's called "going with the flow."








	     __Programs aren't wicked, just inadequate__


When someone has received life-threatening injuries in a car accident,
the medics in the ambulance do whatever they can to keep him alive
till they reach a hospital. This first aid is essential but ultimately
inadequate, as everyone knows. If there's no hospital at the end of
the road, the patient will die, because the ambulance just doesn't
have the resources a hospital does.

The same is true of programs. There are many programs in place today
that are staving off our death--programs to protect the environment
from becoming even more degraded than it is. Like the first aid in the
ambulance, these programs are essential but ultimately inadequate.
They're ultimately inadequate because they're essentially reactive.
Like the medics in the ambulance, they can't make good things happen,
they only make bad things less bad. They don't bring into being
something good, they only drag their feet against something bad.

If there's no hospital at the end of the road, the patient in the
ambulance will die, because first aid (useful as it is) just doesn't
have the capacity to keep him alive indefinitely. If there's no new
vision for us at the end of the road, then we too are going to die,
because programs (useful as they are) just don't have the capacity to
keep us alive indefinitely.








	   __But how could we get along without programs?__


Once, in the land of broken legs, the inhabitants heard rumors of
another land far away where people moved around freely, because no
one's legs were broken. They scoffed at these tales, saying, "How
could anyone get around without crutches?"


To say that the Industrial Revolution is a terrific example of what
people can do without programs is an understatement. It's a
mind-boggling example. From the time Giambattista della Porta dreamed
up the first "modern" steam engine nearly four hundred years ago to
the present, this vast, world-transforming movement has been carried
forward by vision alone: _Improve on something then put it out
therefor others to improve on_. Not a single program was ever needed
to forward the Industrial Revolution. Rather it was forwarded by the
confident realization in millions of minds that even a small new idea,
even a modest innovation or improvement over some previous invention
could improve their lives almost beyond imagination. Over a few brief
centuries, millions of ordinary citizens, acting almost entirely from
motives of self-interest, have transformed the human world by
broadcasting ideas and discoveries and furthering these ideas and
discoveries by taking them step by step to new ideas and discoveries.
To acknowledge all this is not to make the Industrial Revolution a
blessed event--but neither does condemning it as a catastrophe make it
less than the greatest outpouring of creativity in human history.








		    __But how will we live then?__


No paradigm is ever able to imagine the next one. It's almost
impossible for one paradigm to imagine that there will even _be_ a
next one. The people of the Middle Ages didn't think of themselves as
being in the "middle" of anything at all. As far as they were
concerned, the way they were living was the way people would be living
till the end of time. Even if you'd managed to persuade them that a
new era was just around the corner, they would've been unable to tell
you a single thing about it--and in particular they wouldn't have been
able to tell you what was going to make it _new_. If they'd been able
to describe the Renaissance in the fourteenth century, it would have
_been_ the Renaissance.

We're no different. For all our blather of new paradigms and emerging
paradigms, it's an unassailable assumption among us that our distant
descendants will be just exactly like us. Their gadgets, fashions,
music, and so on, will surely be different, but we're confident that
their mindset will be identical--because we can imagine no other
mindset for people to have. But in fact, if we actually manage to
survive here, it will be because we've moved into a new era as
different from ours as the Renaissance was from the Middle Ages--
and as unimaginable to us as the Renaissance was to the Middle Ages.








	  __How can we achieve a vision we can't imagine?__


We can do it the way it's always done: _one meme at a time_. I'm aware
this statement needs explaining. The best would be for you to read
Richard Dawkins's _The Selfish Gene_, but in case this isn't
convenient for you right this second, I'll summarize. Briefly, _memes
are to cultures what genes are to bodies_.


Your body is a collection of cells. Every cell in your body contains a
complete set of all your genes, which Dawkins likens to a set of
building plans for a human body--and your body in particular. At
conception, you were a single cell--a single set of the building plans
for your body, one half of the set received from your mother and the
other half received from your father. This one cell subsequently
divided into two cells, each containing the complete set of building
plans for your body. These two subsequently divided into four, the
four into eight, the eight into sixteen, and so on--each containing
the complete set of building plans for your body.

A culture is also a collection of cells, which are individual humans.
You (and each of your parents and all your siblings and friends)
contain a complete set of memes, which are the conceptual building
plans for our culture. Dawkins coined the word _meme_ (rhymes with
_theme_) to apply to what he perceived to be the cultural equivalent
of the gene.








		  __The leaping of genes and memes__


Dawkins suggests that memes replicate themselves in the "meme pool"
(the thing I call culture) in a way that is analogous to the way genes
replicate themselves in the gene pool. That is, they leap from mind to
mind the way genes leap from body to body. Genes leap from body to
body by way of reproduction. Memes leap from mind to mind by way of
communication: in lullabies heard in the cradle, in fairy tales, in
parents' table conversation, in jokes, in television cartoons, in the
funnies, in sermons, in gossip, in lectures, in textbooks, in movies,
in novels, in newspapers, in song lyrics, in advertisements, and so
on.

A great deal of ink (real and virtual) has been spilled over Dawkins's
memes. Some authorities have dismissed them as nonexistent or as
nonsense. Others have gone so far as to wonder if memes exist in
brains in as physical a sense as dendrites or glia cells. I leave them
to it.

Every culture is a collection of individuals, and each individual has
in his or her head a complete set of values, concepts, rules, and
preferences that, taken together, constitute the building plans for
that particular culture. Whether you call them memes or marglefarbs is
irrelevant. There can be no question whatever that they exist.








		__Small percentages, big differences__


Unless you happen to be a geneticist, you'll probably be surprised to
learn that we differ from chimpanzees by only a very small percentage
of genes. We expect it to be the other way around. We're so manifestly
different from chimpanzees that we expect there to be a vast genetic
gulf between us. Obviously the genes we _don't_ share must in some way
"make all the difference." But it would be a mistake to think that,
without these genes, humans would be chimpanzees--or that, with these
genes, chimpanzees would be humans. Humans aren't just chimpanzees
with extra genes, nor are chimpanzees just humans with missing genes.
Nothing in the world of genetics (or any other world, for that matter)
is ever that simple.

Only a very small percentage of memes differentiated the Renaissance
from the Middle Ages, but obviously the new ones made all the
difference." The authority of the Church waned, new humanist ideals
emerged, the development of the printing press gave people new ideas
about what they could know and think about, and so on. To produce the
Renaissance, it wasn't necessary to change out ninety percent of the
memes of the Middle Ages--or eighty or sixty or thirty or even twenty.
And the new memes didn't have to come into play all at once. Indeed,
they _couldn't_ have come into play all at once. The Renaissance was
ready for Andrea del Verrocchio long before it was ready for Martin
Luther.








		__Which memes do we need to change?__


its question is a lot easier to answer than might be expected. The
memes we need to change are the _lethal_ ones.

Richard Dawkins puts it with irreducible simplicity: "A lethal gene is
one that kills its possessor." It may well strike you as unfair and
somehow unreasonable for such things as lethal genes even to exist.
You may also wonder how lethal genes manage to remain in the gene pool
at all. If they kill their possessors, why aren't they eliminated? The
answer is that genes don't all come into play at the same time. Most
genes, obviously, begin work during the fetal stage, when the body is
being built. Some, just as obviously, are dormant until the onset of
adolescence. Lethal genes that come into play before adolescence are
of course quickly eliminated from the gene pool, because their
possessors are unable to pass them on by reproduction. Lethal genes
that come into play early in adolescence also tend to be eliminated,
but those that come into play in middle or old age remain in the gene
pool, because their possessors are almost always able to pass them on
through reproduction before succumbing to their lethal effect.








			   __Lethal memes__


A lethal meme is one that kills its possessor. For example, the
Heaven's Gate cultists possessed a lethal meme that made suicide
irresistibly attractive to them--but I'm not much interested in memes
that are lethal to individuals. I'm interested in memes that are
lethal to cultures (and to our culture in particular).

Lethal genes don't start out as benign and then later become lethal.
Rather, they start out as having no effect or another effect, which
only later becomes lethal. The same is true of lethal memes. Early
Semitic witnesses to our cultural beginnings saw that their neighbors
had plucked some memes from the gods' own tree of wisdom. They said,
"Our neighbors to the north have got the idea they should rule the
world. This meme is benign in the gods but deadly in humans." Their
prediction was accurate, but it didn't come true immediately. The
memes that made us the rulers of the world are lethal, but they didn't
have a lethal effect ten thousand years ago--or five thousand or two
thousand. They were at work, turning us into the _rulers_ of the
world, but their deadliness didn't become evident until this century,
when they began turning us into the _devastators_ of the world.

Ridding ourselves of those memes is a matter of life and death, but it
_can_ be done. I know this because it _has_ been done--by others. 
Many times.









------------------------------------------------------------

P A R T    T W O 
Closing In on the Process




. . . was defaced and abandoned . . . 
. . . the city's ultimate collapse. . .
Whatever happened . . .
the city was destroyed . . . 
The collapse may have been caused by . . . 
. . . sites were abandoned . . . 
. . . towns were abandoned . . .

_PAST WORLDS: THE TIMES ATLAS OF ARCHAEOLOGY_



------------------------------------------------------------








		   __Survival machines for genes__


Each of us is a mixture of genes received from our mother and father,
and of course our mother and father are mixtures of genes received
from their mothers and fathers. Knowing this, we tend to think of our
genes as things that keep us going, generation after generation. But
here's a picture that's closer to reality: If genes could think, they
would think of _us_ as what keeps _them_ going, generation after
generation.

I say this is closer to reality because in fact we don't survive as
individuals, but our genes do. You and I, like all other living
creatures, are temporary mobile homes for the genes we received from
our parents, and our job (from our genes' point of view) is to make
sure we give those genes a home in the next generation--in our
children, of course. As far as our genes are concerned, when an
individual unit of temporary housing has no more reproductive value,
it's ready for recycling. This should show you clearly enough what's
what around here. We tend to think of ourselves as the VIPs of the
earth, the bosses and big shots, but in fact we're just the disposable
vehicles in which our genes are riding to immortality. "Survival
machines for genes" is the name Richard Dawkins gives these disposable
vehicles.








		   __Survival machines for memes__


In the same way, we're the disposable vehicles in which our memes are
riding to immortality. These memes come to us from all the speakers
who are vocal wherever we happen to grow up--parents, siblings,
friends, neighbors, teachers, preachers, bosses, co-workers, and
everyone involved in producing things like textbooks, novels, comic
books, movies, television shows, newspapers, magazines, internet
sites, and so on. All these people are constantly repeating to each
other (and of course their children, their students, their employees,
and so on) the memes they've received during their lifetime. All these
voices taken together constitute the voice of Mother Culture.

In case it needs saying, the immortality I'm talking about here isn't
absolute. Our genes will not survive the death of our planet, a few
billion years hence, and our memes have a much shorter life expectancy
than that.








		     __The fidelity of copying__


Let's say you've created a one-page document on your computer and
printed it out. If you make a xerographic copy of this original on a
good machine, you'll have a hard time telling the original from the
copy, which we'll call A. But if you use A to make another copy, B,
and then use B to make C and then use C to make D and then use D to
make E, this last copy will be easily distinguishable from the
original. This makes it evident that a little bit of the original was
lost in each copying generation. Between one generation and the next,
no loss is visible to the naked eye, but a build-up of losses is
clearly visible between the original and copy E. This happens because
you used an analog copier.

But if you go back to the document in your computer and copy what's on
the screen as file A, then copy file A as file B, then copy file B as
file C, and so on, you could go on making copies of this document all
day, one after another, and at the end of the day it's very likely
that no difference would be detectable between the original and the
very last copy. This happens because you used a digital copier rather
than an analog copier. This fidelity of copying is the very foundation
of the digital revolution.








		 __Genetic and memetic replication__


Genes replicate themselves with the same sort of astounding
fidelity--but the same can't be said of memes unless we add some
qualifications. Among tribal peoples living undisturbed (as, for
example, in the New World before the European incursion), the
transmission of memes from generation to generation generally takes
place with virtually perfect fidelity. This is why they perceive
themselves to have been living this way "from the beginning of time."
To us, therefore, tribal cultures seem static (a word that carries for
us a whiff of the pejorative) in comparison with our own culture,
which seems dynamic (a word that carries for us a whiff of the
admirable).

Our culture is dynamic (as we perceive it) because our memes are often
very volatile: newborn in one generation, swaggering with power in the
next, doddering in the next, and laughably old-fashioned in the next.
Nonetheless, there is a central core of culturally fundamental memes
that we've been transmitting with total fidelity from the foundation
of our culture ten thousand years ago to the present moment.
Identifying this core of fundamental memes isn't very difficult, and
it would have been done long ago if someone had thought of it.








		       __The best way to live__


One of these fundamental memes is _Growing all your own food is the
best way to live_. Apart from a few anthropologists (who know
perfectly well that this is a matter of opinion), this meme goes
unchallenged in our culture. And when I say that a few anthropologists
know this is a matter of opinion, I mean they know it chiefly as a
professional obligation. As anthropologists, they know that the
Bushmen of Africa wouldn't agree that growing all your food is the
best way to live, nor would the Yanomami of Brazil or the Alawa of
Australia or the Gebusi of New Guinea. As individuals, however, these
anthropologists would almost universally consider this to be the best
way to live and would unhesitatingly choose it for themselves above
all others. Outside this profession, it would be hard to find _anyone_
in our culture who doesn't subscribe to the belief that deriving all
your food from agriculture is the best way to live.

It's impossible to doubt that this meme entered our culture at the
very moment of its birth. We wouldn't have become full-time farmers
unless we believed it was the best way to live. On the contrary, it's
self-evident that we began to grow all our food for precisely the same
reason we _still_ grow all our food--because we were convinced this
was the best way to live.

Or...








	      __Maybe they just sort of fell into it?__


It's tempting to imagine that agriculture represents the path of least
resistance for people trying to make a living, but in fact nothing
could be further from the truth. Growing your own food represents the
path of _greatest_ resistance, and the more of it you grow, the greater
the resistance. It's been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that
there is an exact correlation between how hard you have to work to
stay alive and how great your dependence on agriculture is. Those who
grow the least also work the least, and those who grow the most also
work the most. The amount of energy it takes to put three ounces of
corn in a can of water on your supermarket shelf is almost beyond
belief, as is the amount of time you must work in order to possess
those three ounces of corn.

No, the founders of our culture didn't just fall into a lifestyle of
total dependence on agriculture, they had to whip themselves into it,
and the whip they used was this meme: _Growing all your own food is
the best way to live_.

Nothing less could imaginably have done this amazing trick.








		   __Maybe they were just hungry?__


A hunter-gatherer who needs 2,000 calories a day to live has to expend
only 400 calories to get them, because that's the rate at which
hunting and gathering pays off--1 calorie of work gets you 5 calories
of food. By contrast, a farmer who needs 2,000 calories a day to live
has to expend 1,000 calories to get them, because that's the rate at
which farming pays off--1 calorie of work gets you 2 calories of food.

For a food-hungry person to trade hunting-gathering for farming is
like a money-hungry person trading a job that pays five dollars an
hour for one that pays two dollars an hour. It makes utterly no sense,
and the hungrier you are, the less sense it makes.

Farming is less efficient at banishing hunger than hunting and
gathering, but it unquestionably confers other benefits (most notably,
providing a base for settlement and eventually civilization), and it
was to secure these benefits that the founders of our culture
ultimately adopted a lifestyle of total dependence on agriculture.
From that point, it became a matter of complete conviction among us
that growing all your food is the best way to live. We had invested in
that meme and in the future would protect that investment at any cost.








		  __New World adopters of the meme__


We weren't the only people in ancient times to recognize the benefits
of growing all our food. Among the notable adopters of this meme in
the New World were the Maya, the Olmec, the people of Teotihuacan, the
Hohokam, the Anasazi, the Aztecs, and the Inca.

What's significant for our study of this most fundamental meme is
that, by the time Europeans arrived in the New World at the end of the
fifteenth century, only the latest of these civilizations, the Aztec
and the Incan, were still clinging to it.








			     __The Maya__


The Maya probably became full-time agriculturalists not long after we
did, but (like us) they didn't begin to look like civilization-builders 
for several thousand years. Their first great cities in Yucatan began
to emerge around 2000 B.C.E., coincident with the founding of the
Middle Kingdom of Egypt and actually ahead of the founding of
Babylonia by some two centuries.

The Maya flourished for nearly three thousand years. Then at the
beginning of the ninth century of the common era, the cities of the
south suddenly began to be abandoned and before long were left
standing empty. The cities of the north continued to flourish for a
time under the domination of the Toltec but collapsed when the Toltec
themselves collapsed in the thirteenth century. Mayapan, to the west,
then emerged as the last great stronghold of Maya civilization, but
this remnant was itself only another two centuries away from collapse.

This is, by design, the sort of account you'd find in an ordinary
encyclopedia or historical atlas. Although it begins by talking about
people, it immediately becomes the tale of something else, something
like a vast ocean liner steaming through time. It carries passengers,
to be sure, but these are mere ballast, necessary only in the sense
that without them the ship must immediately go bottom-up and sink.








		    __The Olmec and Teotihuacan__


The Olmec agriculturalists of coastal Veracruz and Tabasco built great
ceremonial centers, principally at San Lorenzo and La Venta. San
Lorenzo, the oldest, flourished from 1200 B.C.E. to 900 B.C.E., when
(as it's said) it "was defaced and abandoned." The very same thing
happened at La Venta five centuries later. Lesser sites continued to
be occupied for a time, but the destruction of La Venta marked the end
of Olmec dominance in the area.

Some two hundred years later one of the great cities of the ancient
world began to be built in central Mexico. Teotihuacan was destined to
become the world's sixth largest city by 500 C.E. For two hundred and
fifty years it flourished as the center of its own empire, then
abruptly the usual happened. It "was destroyed"--burned and perhaps
even "ritually" wiped out. The ruins were occupied for a time, but the
city was dead.








		   __The Hohokam and the Anasazi__


The people who occupied the desert lands of southern Arizona from
about the time of Christ strike us as being hard workers rather than
civilization-builders. Their memorable undertakings, beginning around
700 C.E., were not cities but vast networks of irrigation ditches that
enabled them to grow all their own food. Single ditches, as much as 25
feet wide and 15 deep, could extend as far as 16 miles, and one
network along the Salt River connected 150 miles of ditches. The work
began to be abandoned at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and
within decades the workers became the Hohokam--"Those Who Vanished,"
in the language of the Pima Indians of the area.

The Anasazi occupied the Four Corners region, where modern-day
Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet. They flourished only
briefly, beginning around 900 C.E., and built no great cities, but
achieved a striking lifestyle in small towns and high-rise cliff
dwellings. It was all abandoned soon after 1300.








		      __Looking for the actors__


In writing these capsule histories, I've followed the popular model
for such accounts, starting in the active voice, with people _doing_
things, and ending in the passive voice, with things _being done_--
to "sites" or "cities" or "civilizations." The end always comes when
sites are "abandoned," "destroyed," "defaced," "burned," or
"desecrated"--one never learns by whom. One is left with a vague
impression of mystery; as if these things had happened in the Bermuda
Triangle or the Twilight Zone.

The authors of these accounts are clearly uneasy with the truth, which
is that these civilizations were all destroyed and abandoned by the
very people who built them. The Maya walked away from their cities
under their own steam--they weren't whisked away in flying saucers.
The Olmec themselves defaced and abandoned San Lorenzo and La Venta,
and Teotihuacan was torched by its own citizens. One day the
ditch-tenders of southern Arizona downed tools and walked away, and on
another day the villagers and cliff-dwellers of Chaco Canyon and Mesa
Verde did the same.

All these peoples did something even more outrageous that is almost
never alluded to in accounts of this kind. It was bad enough that they
abandoned their civilizations, but what they did next is almost
unthinkable: _they stopped farming_. They stopped growing all their
own food.

They gave up the very best way of living there is.








		       __"Those Who Vanished"__


In a very real sense, they all deserve to be called Hohokam, these
strange peoples who slipped out of their magnificent robes, put aside
the tools they'd used to create immortal works of art, trashed their
plans for temples and pyramids, discarded literacy, mathematics, and
the most advanced calendars in the world, consigned to oblivion
elaborate state religions and whole political systems . . . and melted
away into whatever landscape was at hand--tropical jungles, lush
plains, or high deserts. Of course, none of them actually vanished.
They just took up less conspicuous ways of making a living, either by
foraging or by some mixture of foraging and farming.

But any way you cut it, they deliberately threw over what _we_ think
to be the very best lifestyle in the world for something inferior.
They knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway . . . again and
again and again. Naturally there are explanations. Inexplicable
behavior can't be allowed to _remain_ inexplicable. Anthropologist
Jeremy A. Sabloff notes that dozens of hypotheses have been put
forward to explain the Mayan collapse, "including overuse of the soil,
earthquakes, hurricanes, climatic changes, diseases, insect pests,
peasant revolts, and invasions," and the Maya are no exception. The
same and other hypotheses have been advanced to explain all the other
collapses. They all have something in common, as Professor Sabloff
neatly concludes: "None of these explanations has proved to be totally
satisfactory."








		__Why none will EVER be satisfactory__


No such explanation will ever be satisfactory, because we all know
these things:


 - The soil may be depleted _here_, but it's not depleted
   _everywhere_.

 - Earthquakes and hurricanes don't last forever. 

 - Climatic changes can be ridden out.

 - Diseases run their course. 

 - Insect pests come and go. 

 - Peasant revolts can be put down--or survived. 

 - Invaders can be repelled--or absorbed.


It couldn't have been things like this that made these people quit,
because look at _us_. These things are mere inconveniences compared to
what _we've_ faced--all these things, plus much worse: famines, wars
of every kind, inquisitions, government by torture and assassination,
endlessly rising crime, corruption, tyranny, madness, revolution,
genocide, racism, social injustice, mass poverty, poisoned water,
polluted air, two devastating world wars, and the prospect of nuclear
holocaust, biological warfare, and extinction. We faced all that and
more--and never once have been tempted to abandon our civilization.

There _had_ to be something else at work--or missing--among these
people. And indeed there was something else.








	     __What a difference a _________ makes!__


Two guys on an airplane. One falls out, then a moment later so does
the other. The first guy splatters on the ground like a ripe tomato.
The second lands on his feet and walks away. It's obvious that the
second had something the first didn't, and what he had is also
obvious: a parachute.

Two guys face a gunman. One takes a bullet in the chest and falls
dead. The other takes a bullet in the chest, then calmly fires back,
shooting the gunman dead. Again it's obvious that the second one had
something the first didn't, and what he had is also obvious: body
armor.

Two civilizations. One goes along for a while, then maybe something
bad happens (or maybe not) and suddenly everyone just walks away from
it. The other civilization goes along for much longer, constantly
suffering every conceivable catastrophe--but no one dreams of walking
away from it for even one second.

Again it's obvious that the second civilization had something the
first didn't--but exactly _what_ it had is not so obvious.

It had a meme.








	   __For want of a meme, a civilization was lost__


One can imagine how desperately the pontiffs, potentates, dynasts,
princes, pendragons, princelings, rajahs, hierophants, priests,
priestesses, and palace guards of all these tottering civilizations
must have desired to implant in the minds of their vacillating
subjects this very simple concept: _Civilization must continue at ANY
cost and must not be abandoned under ANY circumstance_.

It goes without saying, however, that implanting alone isn't enough.
To take effect, a meme must be accepted without question. You can't
talk people into accepting an absurd idea like this one on the spur of
the moment. They have to hear it from birth. It has to come to them
from every direction and be buried in every communication, the way it
is with us.

All these peoples started out believing that the best way to live is
by growing all your own food. Why else would they become full-time
farmers? They started out that way and went on that way for a long
time. But then some very predictable things began to happen. For
example, the Maya, the Olmec, and the people of Teotihuacan became
rigidly stratified into wealthy, all-powerful elites and impoverished,
powerless masses, who naturally did all the grunt work that made these
civilizations magnificent. The masses _will_ put up with this
miserable life--we know that!--but they inevitably begin to get
restless. We know that too.








	       __When the underclass becomes restless__


Our history is full of underclass insurrections, revolts, rebellions,
riots, and revolutions, but not a single one has ever ended with
people just _walking away_. This is because our citizens know that
civilization must continue at any cost and not be abandoned under any
circumstance. So they _will_ go berserk, _will_ destroy everything in
sight, _will_ slaughter all the elite they can get their hands on,
_will_ burn, rape, and pillage--but they will never just _walk away_.

This is why the behavior of the Maya, the Olmec and the rest is so
unfathomably mysterious to our historians. For them, it seems
_self-evident_ that civilization must continue at any cost and never
be abandoned under any circumstance. How, then, could the Maya, the
Olmec and the others _not_ have known it?

But this is exactly what was missing in the minds of these peoples.
When they no longer liked what they were building, they were _able_ to
walk away from it, because they _didn't_ have the idea that it must
continue at any cost and not be abandoned under any circumstance.

This meme makes the same difference between them and us as the
parachute makes between the two guys falling from the plane or the
body armor makes between the two guys facing the gunman.








		    __What about all the others?__


There's no evidence that the Hohokam and the Anasazi had become
divided into all-powerful upperclasses and powerless underclasses. But
there is some evidence that the Hohokam were leaning in that
direction. Platform mounds in the Mesoamerican style (built _by_ whom
if not an emerging underclass?) were beginning to show up here and
there, as were leisure-class ball courts (built _for_ whom if not an
emerging upperclass?). The Anasazi experiment was the briefest of all
the ones I've examined here and the least highly developed as a
civilization (if it merits that name at all). Regardless, the same is
true for all. When, for whatever reason, they no longer liked what
they were building, they were _able_ to walk away from it, because
they didn't have the idea that it must continue at any cost and not be
abandoned under any circumstance.

I've mentioned (but not discussed) the other two great civilizations
of the New World, the Incan and the Aztec. Their early and middle
development followed lines laid down by the Maya and Olmec, but their
ending was not in their own hands, since they were destroyed by
invading Spanish armies in the sixteenth century. Obviously it's
impossible to know how they might have gone on if left to their own
devices, but my guess is that (lacking that critical meme) they would
ultimately have followed the example of all the others.








		       __The Cultural Fallacy__


To us, the meme _Civilization must continue at any cost and not be
abandoned under any circumstance_ seems intrinsic to the human
mind--self-evident, like _The shortest distance between two points is
a straight line_. A mind that doesn't possess that meme hardly seems
human to us.

We imagine humanity was _born_ with this meme in its head. _Homo
habilis_ knew he should be civilized but didn't have the brains to do
it. _Homo erectus_ knew he should be civilized but didn't have the
skills to do it. _Homo sapiens_ knew he should be civilized but
couldn't figure out what it takes. _Homo sapiens sapiens_ knew he
should be civilized, had the brains and the skills to do it, and got
down to it as soon as he figured out that agriculture is what it
takes. Naturally he knew it must continue at any cost and not be
abandoned under any circumstance.

What, therefore, was _wrong_ with all these New World civilization-
builders? It's hard for us to get over the idea that there was
something very mysterious about them. They knew (because it's
self-evident) that civilization must not be abandoned under any
circumstance--but they abandoned it anyway.

This is an example of the Cultural Fallacy, which is: _The memes of
our culture arise from the very structure of the human mind itself,
and if you don't have them, there must be something wrong with you_.

Naturally this too is a meme.








	    __The other mystery of "Lost Civilizations"__


The first mystery of the New World civilization-builders is easy to
discern, because it manifests itself as something they _did_: they
destroyed what they built. The second mystery is less easy to discern,
because it only manifests itself as something they _didn't_ do: they
didn't overrun the world.

At the height of their development, the Maya occupied an area no
larger than Arizona. By the time we reached the same height of
development, we occupied all the Middle East and Europe and much of
India and Southeast Asia. There was no one around equipped to oppose a
Mayan advance north or south of their homeland in Yucatan and
Guatemala, had they chosen to make it. They might have civilized the
entire hemisphere in the thousands of years they had--had they chosen
to do it. Oddly, mysteriously, they didn't choose to do it.

The Olmec were content to occupy a homeland smaller than Connecticut,
and had the metropolis Teotihuacan been built in the center of Los
Angeles, its imperial reach would have fallen well short of the city
limits.

What was wrong with these people? What did they lack that we had?

Go ahead, guess.








			 __The missing meme__


Unlike the soldiers who preceded them, the settlers of the New World
didn't come dragging their national borders behind them. Rather, they
came dragging a common _cultural_ border behind them. Behind this
border, people from Europe, the Near East, and the Far East could
settle down comfortably side by side, because they were cultural
siblings. Whether they came from England, China, Turkey, Russia,
Ireland, Egypt, Thailand, or Denmark, they were vastly more like each
other than they were like the savages on the other side of that
border. (And, naturally, they didn't go slave hunting except on the
other side of that border.)

This wasn't special to the New World. It was this way from the
beginning. The border that rippled outward in all directions from the
Fertile Crescent wasn't a national border, it was a cultural one. It
wasn't soldiers who conquered the Old World, it was farmers, who
taught their neighbors, who taught their neighbors, who taught their
neighbors, taking the message outward in a circle ever-widening until
it enclosed all but the undiscovered New World on the other side of
the planet.

The meme we brought with us to the New World was nothing new. We'd
been spreading it from the beginning: _Ours is the one RIGHT way for
people to live and everyone should live like us_. Possessing this
meme, we made ourselves cultural missionaries to the world, and,
lacking this meme, the Maya, the Olmec, and the others did not.








			    __Holy work__


When Columbus set off westward across the Atlantic, he wasn't looking
for an empty continent to colonize, he was looking for a trade route
to the Orient. And if he'd actually bumped into Asia instead of
America, the people of Europe would have said to themselves, "Let's go
do some business with these Orientals." No one would have dreamed of
saying, "Let's go over there, drive off the Orientals, and take Asia
for ourselves."

But of course Columbus didn't bump into Asia, he bumped into America,
which, as he saw it, was unoccupied (aside from a few savages). When
the people of Europe heard this, they didn't say to themselves, "Let's
go do some business with those savages." They said to themselves,
"Let's go over there, drive off the savages, and take America for
ourselves." This wasn't rapacity but rather sacred duty. When a farmer
clears a field and puts it to the plow, he doesn't think of himself as
taking that field away from all the wildlife that makes its home
there. He isn't stealing it, he's putting it to the use God intended
from the beginning. Before being cultivated, this land was merely
going to waste. And that's how the settlers saw the New World. The
natives were letting it all go to waste, and by taking it away from
them and putting it to the plow, they were performing holy work.

The New World fell not to a sword but to a meme.








			 __Pyramid builders__


The worker hordes who built the pyramids of Mesoamerica were not more
miserable than the ones who built the pyramids of Egypt. The workers
of Mesoamerica merely perceived themselves as having an alternative to
misery, which they eventually exercised (by walking away). We didn't,
so we slogged on, building a ziggurat here, a Great Wall there, a
bastille here, a Maginot Line there--and on and on and on--to the
present moment, when our pyramids are not being built at Giza or
Saqqara but rather at Exxon and Du Pont and Coca Cola and Proctor &
Gamble and McDonald's.

I visit many classrooms, and the students one way or another always
bring me round to a point where I ask how many of them are champing 

at the bit to get out there and start working on the pyramids their
parents worked on throughout their lives and their parents before
them. The question makes them uneasy, because they know they're
_supposed_ to be absolutely thrilled at the prospect of going out
there to flip burgers and pump gas and stock shelves in the real
world. Everyone's told them they're the luckiest kids on earth--
parents, teachers, textbooks--and they feel disloyal not waving 
their hands at me. But they don't.








			     __Pharaohs__


It took Khufu twenty-three years to build his Great Pyramid at Giza,
where some eleven hundred stone blocks, each weighing about two and a
half tons, had to be quarried, moved, and set in place _every day_
during the annual building season, roughly four months long. Few
commentators on these facts can resist noting that this achievement is
an amazing testimonial to the pharaoh's iron control over the workers
of Egypt. I submit, on the contrary, that pharaoh Khufu needed to
exercise no more control over his workers at Giza than pharaoh Bill
Gates exercises over his workers at Microsoft. I submit that Egyptian
workers, relatively speaking, got as much out of building Khufu's
pyramid as Microsoft workers will get out of building Bill Gates's
pyramid (which will surely dwarf Khufu's a hundred times over, though
it will not, of course, be built of stone).

No special control is needed to make people into pyramid builders--if
they see themselves as having no choice but to build pyramids. They'll
build whatever they're told to build, whether it's pyramids, parking
garages, or computer programs.

Karl Marx recognized that workers without a choice are workers in
chains. But his idea of breaking chains was for us to depose the
pharaohs and then build the pyramids _for ourselves_, as if building
pyramids is something we just can't stop doing, we love it so much.








			__The Mayan Solution__


The meme is as strong today among us as it was among the
stone-draggers of ancient Egypt: _Civilization must continue at any
cost and not be abandoned under any circumstance_. We're making the
world uninhabitable to our own species and rushing headlong toward
extinction, but _Civilization must continue at any cost and not be
abandoned under any circumstance_.

This meme wasn't lethal to pharaonic Egypt or to Han China or to
medieval Europe, but it's lethal to us. It's literally us or that
meme. One of us has to go--and soon.

But...

But...

But . . . _But surely, Mr. Quinn, you're not suggesting we go back to
living in caves and catching dinner on the end of a spear?_

I've never suggested such a thing or come anywhere close to suggesting
such a thing. Given the realities of our situation, going back to the
hunting-gathering life is as silly an idea as sprouting wings and
flying off to heaven. We can walk away from the pyramid, but we can't
melt away into the jungle. The Mayan solution is utterly gone for us,
for the simple reason that the jungle itself is gone and there are six
billion of us. Forget about _going back_. There is no back. Back is
gone.

But we can still walk away from the pyramid.








			__Beyond the pyramid__


If, having walked away from the pyramid, we can't melt into the
jungle, what on earth _can_ we do? Here's how the gorilla sage of
_Ishmael_ answered that question: "You pride yourselves on being
inventive, don't you? Well, invent." Not surprisingly, his pupil
shrugged this off as a nonanswer--and I'm sure most readers did the
same. They did this because in our meme about civilization there's
another meme that is implicit: _Civilization is humanity's ULTIMATE
invention and can never be surpassed_. That's precisely _why_ it must
be carried forward at any cost, because there cannot possibly be any
invention beyond it. If we were to abandon civilization (gulp!), then
we'd be _finished!_

If there's going to be any future for us, our first invention must be
a meme-killer. We must destroy in ourselves and in the people around
us the meme proclaiming civilization to be an unsurpassable invention.
It is, after all, _just_ a meme--just a notion peculiar to our
culture. It isn't a law of physics, it's just something we've been
taught to believe that our parents were taught to believe--as were
their parents and their parents and their parents and their parents
all the way back to Giza and Ur and Mohenjo-Daro and Knossos and
beyond.

Since there's no better meme-killer than another meme, try this one on
for size:

_Something BETTER than civilization is waiting for us._

Something _much_ better--unless you're one of those rare individuals
who just _loves_ dragging stones.









------------------------------------------------------------

P A R T    T H R E E
Walking Away from the Pyramid




I went out to buy transcendence 
and came back with a telephone.
_ANTHONY WEIR_


I am twenty-two years old and I will wait no longer.
_SCOTT VALENTINE_




------------------------------------------------------------








	    __Social organization and natural selection__

No one is surprised to learn that bees are organized in a way that
works for them or that wolves are organized in a way that works for
them or that whales are organized in a way that works for them. Most
people understand in a general way that the social organization of any
given species evolved in the same way as other features of the
species. Unworkable organizations were eliminated in exactly the same
way that unworkable physical traits were eliminated--by the process
known as natural selection.

But there is an odd and unexamined prejudice against the idea that the
very same process shaped the social organization of _Homo_ over the
three or four million years of his evolution. No one is surprised to
learn that the shape of a claw or a pattern of coloration has come
down to the present because it works for the possessor of that claw or
pattern of coloration, but many are reluctant to entertain the idea
that any human social organization could have come down to the present
for the same reason.








		     __Definitions and examples__


Lifestyle (or way of life): A way of making a living for a group or
individual. Hunting and gathering is a lifestyle. Growing all your own
food is a lifestyle. Scavenging (for example, among vultures) is a
lifestyle. Foraging (for example, among gorillas) is a lifestyle.

Social organization: A cooperative structure that helps a group
implement its way of life. Termite colonies are organized into a
three-caste hierarchy consisting of reproductives (king and queen),
workers, and soldiers. Human hunter-gatherers are organized into
tribes.

Culture: The totality of what is communicated by one generation of a
people to another by means of language and example. The Yanomami of
Brazil and the Bushmen of Africa have a common lifestyle (hunting and
gathering) and a common social organization (tribalism) but not a
common culture (except in a very general sense).








		    __The mysterious persistence__


Our cultural vision was shaped by people who were perfectly satisfied
with the notion that the universe they saw was in its final form, and
had come into being in that form--in a single stroke, so to speak. The
Genesis tale of creation didn't originate this notion, it merely
affirmed it: God did his work, saw it was in no need of improvement,
and that was that.

It hasn't been easy for us to give up this notion, and in fact many
people unconsciously cling to it even while talking the talk of
evolution. This is why the disappearance of New World civilizations
seems mysterious to our historians. If their worldview were
fundamentally Darwinian instead of fundamentally Aristotelian, they'd
realize that what they're seeing in these disappearances is merely
natural selection at work, and the aura of mystery would vanish.

During our three or four million years on this planet it can hardly be
doubted that thousands of cultural experiments have been made among
humans. The successes have survived--and the failures have
disappeared, for the simple reason that eventually there was no one
around who wanted to perpetuate them. People will (ordinarily) put up
with being miserable for only so long. It's not the quitters who are
extraordinary and mysterious, it's we, who have somehow managed to
persuade ourselves that we must persist in our misery whatever the
cost and not abandon it even in the face of calamity.








		 __Some DO want more than adequacy__


Before becoming full-time farmers, the Maya, the Olmec and all the
rest practiced hunting and gathering or some combination of farming
and foraging. _Doesn't the fact that they eventually became full-time
farmers indicate they were less than perfectly satisfied with these
lifestyles?_ That's exactly what it indicates.

At some point the idea of making all their living from agriculture
seemed more attractive than the traditional way. This doesn't
necessarily mean they hated their previous life, but it certainly
means they judged the agricultural life to be more promising. Very
probably they didn't regard their venture into the agricultural life
as an experiment at all but as a permanent, irrevocable choice. If so,
this doesn't negate the role of natural selection in this process but
rather underscores it. Each of these peoples began by abandoning a
traditional lifestyle for an innovation that seemed to promise more of
what they wanted. When the innovation ended up giving them less of
what they wanted, they abandoned it to resume their previous way of
living. The innovation in each case had failed the test.

_But doesn't this indicate that their traditional lifestyles were less
than perfect?_ Certainly it does. Natural selection is a process that
separates the workable from the unworkable, not the perfect from the
imperfect. Nothing evolution brings forth is perfect, it's just
damnably hard to improve upon.








		      __Tribalism the workable__


As I've said, if you note that hive life works well for bees, that
troop life works well for baboons, or that pack life works well for
wolves, you won't be challenged, but if you note that tribal life
works well for humans, don't be surprised if you're attacked with an
almost hysterical ferocity. Your attackers will never berate you for
what you've said but rather for things they've _invented_ for you to
say, for example, that tribal life is "perfect" or "idyllic" or "noble" 
or simply "wonderful." It doesn't matter that you haven't said any of
these things; they'll be as indignant as if you had.

Tribal life is not in fact perfect, idyllic, noble, or wonderful, but
wherever it's found intact, it's found to be working well--as well as
the life of lizards, racoons, geese, or beetles--with the result that
the members of the tribe are not generally enraged, rebellious,
desperate, stressed-out borderline psychotics being torn apart by
crime, hatred, and violence. What anthropologists find is that tribal
peoples, far from being nobler, sweeter, or wiser than us, are as
capable as we are of being mean, unkind, short-sighted, selfish,
insensitive, stubborn, and short-tempered. The tribal life doesn't
turn people into saints; it enables ordinary people to make a living
together with a minimum of stress year after year, generation after
generation.








		      __What would you expect?__


After three or four million years of human evolution, what would you
expect but a social organization that works? How else could _Homo
habilis_ have survived, except in a social organization that worked?
How else could _Homo erectus_ have survived, except in a social
organization that worked? And if natural selection provided _Homo
habilis_ and _Homo erectus_ with workable social organizations, why
would it fail to provide _Homo sapiens_ with one? Humans may have
tried many other social organizations in those three or four million
years, but if so, _none of them survived_. In fact, we _know_ that
humans have tried other social organizations.

The Maya tried one--and found after three thousand years that it
didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). _They returned to
tribalism_.

The Olmec tried one--and found after three hundred years that it
didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). _They returned to
tribalism_.

The people of Teotihuacan tried one--and found after five hundred
years that it didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). _They
returned to tribalism_.

The Hohokam tried one--and found after a thousand years that it 
didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). _They returned to
tribalism_.

The Anasazi tried one--and found after four hundred years that it
didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). _They returned to
tribalism_.

Not one of their experiments survived--but tribalism did. And that's
what natural selection is all about.








		   __If you like it so much . . .__


People who dislike what I'm saying will challenge me this way: "If
you're so crazy about the tribal life, why don't you get a spear and
go live in a cave?"

The tribal life isn't about spears and caves or about hunting and
gathering. Hunting and gathering is a lifestyle, an occupation, a way
of making a living. A tribe isn't a particular occupation; it's a
social organization that facilitates making a living.

Where they're still allowed to, gypsies live in tribes, but they're
obviously not hunter-gatherers.

Similarly, circus people live in tribes--but again, obviously, they're
not hunter-gatherers. Until recent decades there were many forms of
traveling shows that were tribal in organization--theatrical troupes,
carnivals, and so on.








	     __What people like about tribal societies__


Tribes exist for their members--and for all their members, because all
are perceived as involved in the success of the tribe. When the tent
goes up, there's no one in the circus more important than the
construction crew. When the rigging goes up, there's no one more
important than the riggers. When the show begins, there's no one more
important than the performers, human and animal. And so it goes,
through every phase of circus life.

Among hunter-gatherers, success obviously has nothing to do with
money. In the circus, of course, everyone knows the show must make
money in order to continue, but it's the circus, not the money, that
provides the livelihood. I mean that they don't keep the circus going
in order to make money; they make money in order to keep the circus
going. (An artist might see it this way: there's a difference between
painting in order to make money and making money in order to paint.)

The tribe is what provides them with what they need, and if the tribe
is gone, they're all out of luck. Everyone wants the circus owner to
make money, because if he stops making money, the show will close.
Everyone's interest lies in the success of the whole. What's good for
the tribe is good for everyone, from the owner down to the cotton-
candy butchers.

I lean on the example of the circus to emphasize the fact that the
tribal life isn't something that just worked long ago or just for
hunter-gatherers.








	  __Is there really such a thing as "the circus"?__


If there's such a thing as "the theater," "the opera," and "the
movies," then why wouldn't there be such a thing as "the circus"? But
is it really tribal?

It's because the circus is tribal that we notice when a particular
circus ceases to be tribal. The history of the Ringling Bros. and
Barnum & Bailey Circus is unmistakably a history of circus tribes, but
by now that particular circus is just a big business, as hierarchical
as General Motors or United Airlines. No one mistakes a show like the
Ice Capades for a tribal affair; it began as big business and has
never been anything else.

Many small businesses start in a very tribal way, with a few partners
pouring in all their resources and taking out only what's needed to
survive, but this tribal character quickly disappears if the company
becomes a conventional hierarchy. Even if it develops tribally, with
new members extending the living to include themselves, it risks
losing its tribal character if it becomes too large. At a certain size
it must either stop growing or begin to organize itself as a tribe of
tribes, which is probably the best way to understand the kinds of
circuses you're likely to see in any big city today.

A tribe is a coalition of people working together as equals to make a
living. A tribe of tribes is a coalition of tribes working together as
equals to make a living; each tribe has a boss, as does the coalition
as a whole.








		 __Circus people are tribal people__


What a tribal people transmits to the next generation is not a
ready-made fortune but rather a reliable way to make a living. For
this reason, the Busch family of brewers is a clan but not a tribe.
What the current generation of Busches received from the previous
generation was not a way to make a living but a ready-made fortune
that will be passed on to the next generation.

By contrast, the world-famous circus performers known as the Great
Wallendas have no billion-dollar corporation to transmit to succeeding
generations. What they have to transmit is a way to make a living. The
living isn't ready-made for them (as it was for August Busch III, who
wouldn't have to work a day in his life if he didn't want to). Just as
each succeeding generation of hunter-gatherers receives from the
preceding the knowledge and practice of hunting and gathering (but
must ultimately do their own hunting and gathering to stay alive),
each succeeding generation of Wallendas receives from the preceding
the knowledge and practice of circus performance (but must ultimately
do their own performing to stay alive).

In an ethnic tribe, it's not at all uncommon to see three and even
four generations at work side by side. The same thing is seen in
circus tribes like the Wallendas, where no one is amazed if
twelve-year-old Aurelia Wallenda performs the Cloud Swing with 
a forty-seven-year-old uncle, Alexandre Sacha Pavlata, a sixth-
generation circus performer.
 







			__"I beg to differ!"__


Just as many will see the aptness of classifying the circus as a
tribe, others will rise up to denounce it as false or absurdly
idealized. It will be pointed out, for example, that circuses
routinely hire casual laborers who work for a day or a week and then
are gone. These day-laborers are rarely members of the tribe and
rarely become members of the tribe--all perfectly true (though it
doesn't change the fact that some _do_ become members of the tribe).

In very small circuses, all the work is done by the same group of
people, who set up the equipment, man the booths, perform, and work
with the animals. In larger circuses, however, bosses, performers, and
workers are seen as belonging to different social classes, which
theoretically (at least in some circuses) don't fraternize. I have to
wonder, however, about the validity of seeing these as "social
classes." It's possible, in an ordinary social setting, to imagine the
worker class dreaming of overthrowing the "ruling" class. But this
would be nonsense in a circus setting. What imaginable good would it
do circus performers to "overthrow" the bosses? What imaginable good
would it do circus workers to "overthrow" the performers? Rather than
saddle the circus with "social classes" that don't quite work, I feel
it makes better sense to think of the circus as a tribe of tribes,
much as, for example, the Sioux were a tribe of tribes.








			   __Tribal tales__


One July day in 1986, reporter Ron Grossman of the _Chicago Tribune_
traveled with "the last little mud show in America" as it departed New
Windsor, Illinois, and set up at Wataga, thirty miles away. This was
the Culpepper and Merriweather Great Combined Circus touring company,
consisting of six performers, one roustabout, three goats, six dogs,
as many Shetland ponies, and two young tag-alongs in the great
tradition of Toby Tyler. While helping stake down the circus's
fifty-by-seventy foot tent in Wataga's Firemen's Park, owner and
ringmaster Red Johnson recalled his own circus history, which began at
age nine.

"My mother woke me real early one morning and we went to watch the
Cole Bros. Circus set up. I remember really flipping for the
blacksmith's shop," he said while swinging an eighteen-pound
sledgehammer in alternating strokes with clown B.J. Herbert and
tightrope walker Jim Zajack. "Afterwards, she got me a souvenir circus
book and on the inside cover wrote: 'Don't get any ideas.' "

"Funny thing is my folks said the same thing when they gave me a
circus book one Christmas," Zajack said. But by age seventeen, he'd
worn them down enough to let him take what was supposedly a summer job
with the Franzen Bros. Circus. He never went back home again, except
when a show folded.

"The circus," he told Grossman, "is like a little tribe of nomads.
Once initiated, you don't drop out."








		 __"Here you're part of something."__


Terrell "Cap" Jacobs, a whip-cracker with Culpepper and Merriweather,
zeroed in on the hierarchical nature of the bigger circuses, noting
that they have "the same kind of pecking order" as society in general.
"On Ringling's, performers think it's beneath them to talk to
roustabouts. Everybody has his own job to do; and, after the
performance, everybody goes back to the private world of his own RV.
Here, we're a family. We all work together, perform together, eat
together, and, yes, bitch and moan at each other. There's not enough
of us to play chiefs and Indians. It's got to be a democracy."

But it isn't just tiny shows that experience this tribal democracy. In
1992 David LeBlanc, tent boss (and later operations manager) for Big
Apple Circus, said: "You have a total community here. I grew up in the
suburbs, and I couldn't tell you the name of the people who live next
to my parents, and I lived there for fifteen years. Here you not only
live in the neighborhood, you're also working together for a common
goal. You're part of something."

After helping a female member of the crew uproot a particularly
stubborn tent stake, LeBlanc said, "That's the circus attitude. She
has the heart. And you know what? That had nothing to do with her job.
She was just helping out. People here are willing to do anything. In
the real world, people demand a ten-minute break after working three
hours, but here people are just devoted to what they do."








		   __The turn away from tribalism__


People don't plant crops because it's less work, they plant crops
because they want to settle down and live in one place. An area that
is only foraged doesn't yield enough human food to sustain a permanent
settlement. To build a village, you must grow some crops--and this is
what most aboriginal villagers grow: some crops. They don't grow all
their food. They don't need to.

Once you begin turning all the land around you into cropland, you
begin to generate enormous food surpluses, which have to be protected
from the elements and from other creatures--including other people.
Ultimately they have to be locked up. Though it surely isn't
recognized at the time, locking up the food spells the end of
tribalism and beginning of the hierarchical life we call civilization.

As soon as the storehouse appears, someone must step forward to guard
it, and this custodian needs assistants, who depend on him entirely,
since they no longer earn a living as farmers. In a single stroke, a
figure of power appears on the scene to control the community's
wealth, surrounded by a cadre of loyal vassals, ready to evolve into a
ruling class of royals and nobles.

This doesn't happen among part-time farmers or among hunter-gatherers
(who have no surpluses to lock up). It happens only among people who
derive their entire living from agriculture--people like the Maya, the
Olmec, the Hohokam, and so on.








		 __From tribalism to hierarchalism__


Every civilization that enters history _ex nihilo_ (that is, from no
previous civilization) enters with the same basic hierarchal social
organization firmly in place, whether it emerges in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, India, China, or the New World. How this remarkable result came
about (doubtless through some process of natural selection) would make
an interesting study--but not my study. _Why_ it happened I leave to
others. _That_ it happened is undisputed.

The rough outlines of this social organization are familiar to
everyone through the Egyptian model. You have a highly centralized
state organization that consolidates in itself all economic, military,
political, and religious power. The ruling caste, headed by a living
deity in the shape of a pharaoh, Inca, or other divine monarch, is
supported by a priestly bureaucracy that regulates and supervises the
labor force conscripted for (among other things) the construction of
palace and ceremonial complexes, temples, and pyramids.

The tribe is of course long gone--has by this time been gone for
centuries, if not millennia.








	       __What folks dislike about hierarchies__


To be fair, I suppose I might divide this into two sections: What the
rulers _like_ about hierarchal societies and What everyone else
_doesn't_ like about them, but I doubt if anyone really needs me to
explicate the first of these.

What people (aside from rulers) don't like about hierarchal societies
is that they don't exist for all their members in the same way. They
provide a life of unbelievable luxury and ease for the rulers and a
life of poverty and toil for everyone else. The way rulers benefit
from the success of the society is vastly different from the way the
masses benefit, and the pyramids and the temples testify to the
importance of the rulers, not to the masses who build them. And so it
goes, through every phase of life in a hierarchal society.

The difference between the circus and Disney World is that the circus
is a tribe and Disney World is a hierarchy. Disney World has
employees, not members. It doesn't provide these employees with a
living, it just pays them wages. The employees are working for
themselves, and if Disney World can no longer pay them, they'll
abandon it immediately. The owners have an investment in its success
and benefit from its success. The employees are just employees.

Kids of all ages run off to join the circus. No one runs off to join
Disney World.








	      __But aren't tribes actually hierarchal?__


This is a question asked by people who hate the idea that the tribal
life actually works for people. The answer is, no, this is not what's
found. Tribes have leaders, to be sure, and some times very strong
leaders, but leadership carries little or nothing in the way of
special benefits that are denied to other members of the tribe. Has
there never arisen a tribe that has "gone hierarchal," where the
leader has made himself into a despot? I'm absolutely certain this has
happened, perhaps thousands of times. What's important to note is that
no such tribe has _survived_. The reason isn't hard to find--people
don't _like_ living under despots. Again, that's natural selection at
work: tribes ruled by despots fail to hold onto their members and
become extinct.

In the circus everyone wants there to be a boss, taking care of
business, making sure the circus stays in the black, making unpleasant
decisions about who's going to be hired and fired, settling disputes,
working out contracts, and dealing with local authorities. Without a
boss, the circus would disappear in a hurry, but the boss is just
another person with a job--the job of being boss. The boss isn't
envied or even particularly admired. The stars of the show get the
glory (as well as the highest salaries and the fanciest clothes), but
they're nothing remotely like a ruling class.








		   __Dreaming away the hierarchy__


The ruled masses of our culture have been no less miserable than the
ruled masses of the Maya, the Olmec, and other civilization-quitters
we've examined. The difference between us and them is that we possess
(or are possessed by) a complex of memes that so far have utterly
barred us from quitting. We're absolutely convinced that civilization
cannot be surpassed any means and so must be carried forward even at
the price our own extinction.

Unable to walk away, we've used three very different rationales to
make sense of our inaction.








		__The first rationale: justifying it__


One reason we tend to think of East and West as culturally distinct is
that Easterners have a different way of rationalizing the hierarchy
under which they live; as they see it, this hierarchy results from the
fundamental operation of the universe, which assures the realization
of karma by means of reincarnation. Under the theory of karma, one's
sins and virtues are punished or rewarded in this and subsequent
lives. Thus if you're born to the life of an untouchable in Bhaktapur,
India, where you can never hope to rise to any occupation above
cleaning latrines, you have no one to blame but yourself. You have no
grounds to envy or hate the Brahmans who shun and despise you; their
life of felicity and leisure is only what they deserve, just as your
life of poverty and misery is only what you deserve.

In this way the arrangement of people into high, middle, and low
classes is shown to be justice made manifest in a divinely ordered
universe. If I'm rich and well fed and you're poor and starving, this
is only as it should be.

Buddhism may be seen as offering relief from this rigid posture of
resignation to one's lot.








	      __The second rationale: transcending it__


Buddha and Jesus alike assured their listeners that the poor and
downtrodden are (or ultimately will be) better off than the rich and
powerful, who will find it almost impossible to attain salvation. The
poor can live most happily, Buddha said, possessing nothing and living
on joy alone, like the radiant gods. The meek (that is, the ones who
always end up building the pyramids) will inherit the earth, Jesus
said, and the kingdom of God will turn the hierarchy upside down; the
kingdom of God will belong to the poor, not to the rich, and rulers
and ruled will change places, making the first last and the last
first. Jesus and Buddha agree that, contrary to appearances, riches
don't make people happy. Rather, says Buddha, riches just make them
greedy. And the poor shouldn't envy the rich their treasures, which
are always subject to being stolen by thieves or eaten up by moths and
rust; rather, Jesus says, they should accumulate incorruptible
treasures in heaven.


These are the "consolations" that led Karl Marx to call religion "the
opium of the people." This opium carries the masses out of their
misery and up into the empyrean of tranquil acceptance. More
important, from the viewpoint of the ruling class, this opium keeps
them quiet and submissive, the promised inheritance of the meek
remaining firmly and forever _in the future_.








	       __The third rationale: overthrowing it__


But dreams of heaven in the sky began to lose their universal appeal
as the Age of Faith declined, and new dreams began to take
shape--dreams of heaven _on earth_ this time, dreams of revolution,
dreams of turning everything upside down, of casting down the rulers
of the past and raising up new rulers out of the ruled.

Many such revolutions occurred, most notably in France, America, and
Russia, but in every case, strangely enough, the hierarchy merely
changed hands and went on as before. The masses still have their
stones to drag, day after day, and day after day the pyramids keep
going up.


French philosopher Simone Weil disagreed with Marx, saying that
revolution, not religion, is the opium of the masses. Shame on them
both for not understanding people and their drugs better. Religion is
a barbiturate, dulling the pain and putting you to sleep. Revolution
is an amphetamine, revving you up and making you feel powerful. When
people have nothing else going for them, they'll grab either one--or
both. Neither drug is going away. Far from it. Contrary to postwar
expectations, which saw religion slipping into the past like snake-oil
medicine shows, religion is on the rise, right along with revolution.
And in what is supposedly the happiest, most prosperous nation in
human history, more and more antigovernment terrorist groups attract
more and more members every year.








		 __Opium is the opium of the people__


When Marx made his famous pronouncement; opium itself was not a 
drug of the people, so what he was getting at is that religion is the
public's cheap narcotic. He could not have guessed, perhaps, that
opium itself (in one form or another) would eventually become the
opium of the people, despite its cost.


As things get worse and worse for us, we're going to need more and
more of all the things that give us relief and oblivion and all the
things that get us revved up and excited. More religion, more
revolution, more drugs, more television channels, more sports, more
casinos, more pornography, more lotteries, more access to the
Web--more and more and more of it all--to give ourselves the
impression that life is nonstop fun. But meanwhile, of course, every
morning we must shake off the hangover and forget about fun for eight
or ten hours while we drag our quota of stones up the side of the
pyramid.

What life could possibly be sweeter than this?








		    __My own life at the pyramid__


Readers are bound to be curious about my own working life. Have I,
they must wonder, suffered so much as a stone-dragger? No, in fact,
I've been one of the lucky ones. Early on I found a niche wherein I
could think of myself as an artisan rather than a mere draft animal.
You might say I dressed stones for others to drag, and I was proud of
my workmanship. I began my working life on a nice, respectable little
pyramid being built by Spencer Publishing in Chicago, called _The
American Peoples Encyclopedia;_ this was bought by a much larger
builder, Grolier, which moved it stone by stone to New York City. I
stayed behind in Chicago to work for Science Research Associates on a
pyramid called the Greater Cleveland Mathematics Program. SRA too was
soon bought by a bigger builder, IBM. I eventually moved on to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation, where I supervised
pyramid building in the mathematics department. I ended my career at a
company owned by another giant, the Singer Corporation, where I
supervised all multimedia pyramid-building. The end there came when
one day the president of the company told me my work was "too good."
It didn't have to be that good, he explained, because it was "just for
kids," and kids "don't know the difference." I finally realized I'd
never be able to accomplish my goals working on anybody else's
pyramids.








		  __Am I building my own pyramid?__


The craft I ply today is the one I plied for the companies I just
mentioned. I'm not doing anything different for myself than I did for
them. The work is the same . . . but I don't think it has anything to
do with building a pyramid.

The test is this. If you had a billion dollars in the bank, would you
go on doing the work you do to make a living? Really, honestly, truly?
I'm sure about ten percent of the people reading this book would say
yes--for example, Steven Spielberg and Bill Gates (who already has his
billion but still seems to love his work). I too am among that lucky
ten percent. If I had a billion in the bank, I'd go right on writing.

There's plenty of room in the world for the ten percent who love their
work. My passion is to make a little room in the world for the other
ninety percent who don't. I'm not trying to take away the fun that the
Spielbergs and Gateses have, I'm trying to open an escape route for
the billions who are _not_ having fun, who slog stones up the pyramids
not because they love stones or pyramids but because they have no
other way to put food on the table. We can give them a break without
taking away the break enjoyed by the lucky ten percent--but only if we
go beyond this thing called civilization.








		  __What does "civilization" mean?__


I can name a couple of concepts I personally find slippery (_mise en
scene_, for example, and _postmodernism_), but _civilization_ isn't
one of them. The _Oxford English Dictionary_ handles it in a mere
dozen words: "Civilized condition or state; a developed or advanced
state of human society." The _American Heritage Dictionary_
articulates it a bit more fully: "An advanced state of intellectual,
cultural, and material development in human society, marked by
progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of writing, and
the appearance of complex political and social institutions."

The thing that forces the institutions of any civilization to become
politically and socially "complex" is of course their hierarchical
arrangement. A confederation of farming villages isn't politically and
socially complex, and it's not a civilization. When, a thousand years
later, the royal family lives in a palace guarded by professional
soldiers and buffered from the masses by clans of nobles and a
priestly caste that manages the state religion, then you have the
requisite political and social "complexity"--and you have
civilization.

No tribal society, no matter how "advanced" in other respects, has
ever been called a civilization in this sense.








		   __Putting the pieces together__


The tribal life and no other is the gift of natural selection to
humanity. It is to humanity what pack life is to wolves, pod life is
to whales, and hive life is to bees. After three or four million years
of human evolution, it alone emerged as the social organization that
works for people. People like the tribal organization because it works
equally well for all members.

Wherever civilization emerges, tribalism withers and is replaced by
hierarchalism. Hierarchalism works very well for the rulers but much
less well for the ruled, who make up the mass of the society. For this
reason, the few at the top like it very well and the masses at the
bottom like it very much less well.

With one exception, the experience of history is that people who make
a trial of the hierarchal life ultimately abandon it as unsatisfactory. 
Some trials were still in progress when we destroyed them, so we can't
know how they might have ended otherwise. We're the one exception.
We're driven to cling to our hierarchical society by a complex of
memes that tell us that, what we have is unimprovable no matter how
much we dislike it, no matter if it devastates the world and results
in our own extinction. These memes tell us that what we have is the
life humans were meant to have from the beginning and cannot be
bettered by any other.








	       __Another experiment in hierarchalism__


The Natchez, a people found by seventeenth-century Europeans to be
flourishing in the area around modern Natchez, Mississippi, had a
society rather midway between a federation of farming villages and a
full-blown theocratic civilization like that of the Egyptians or Maya.
They had three classes of nobles and one class of commoners. At the
top were the Suns, the chief of whom was a living god, the Great Sun.
Next came the Nobles, then the Honored People. The commoners at the
bottom were the Stinkards.

What makes the Natchez experiment noteworthy is the fact that the
classes were hereditary, but membership in them wasn't (or at least
not exactly), because every member of the nobility was required to
marry a Stinkard. This meant that every member of the Stinkard class
saw its children rise a notch, while every member of the nobility saw
its children sink a notch. Passing over the details, the effect of
marrying into the Stinkard class was this, that the son of a Sun was a
Noble (not a Sun), and the son of this Noble was an Honored (not a
Noble), while the son of this Honored was a Stinkard. But having
reached the bottom of the social scale, this great-grandson of a Sun
was now eligible to marry a Sun woman, and their offspring would be a
Sun, thus beginning the cycle all over again.








			__A systemic problem__


In the Natchez system, no matter how exalted you were, one of your
parents was a Stinkard--and even if you were at the bottom of the
heap, you could marry a noble and have noble children. It's hard to
imagine how such a bizarre system could have evolved in the ordinary
way. I presume it was a deliberate contrivance, intended to correct
the perceived flaw that caused hierarchical systems elsewhere to be
abandoned. Perhaps the Natchez consciously perceived it as a way to
fix what was wrong with societies like the Mayan and the Olmec. If so,
the Natchez may have made the greatest discovery in the history of
human social development--a way to build a hierarchical society that
was actually tolerable to all its members, because no family ever
found itself stuck at the bottom but was constantly revolving through
the hierarchy. Would natural selection have rewarded the system with
survival? Would the Natchez have held onto their members? Sadly, we'll
never know, because they were wiped out by the French at the end of
the seventeenth century.

As promising as this system seems, however, it had a fundamental flaw.
Because all three noble classes had to marry into the lowest class,
marriageable Stinkards were chronically in short supply and had to be
augmented with captives from conquered neighbors. With this systemic
impetus toward conquest, the Natchez might (with a few thousand years
head start) have become the conquerors of the world instead of us--and
might now be facing exactly our sort of crisis.








		       __Beyond hierarchalism__


Every civilization brought forth in the course of human history has
been a hierarchical affair. The thing we call civilization goes hand
in hand with hierarchy--_means_ hierarchy, _requires_ hierarchy. Why
this is so would make a fascinating study--but, again, not my study.
It's enough for me to know that it _is_ so. You can have hierarchy
without civilization, but you can't have civilization without
hierarchy; at least we never have--not once, not anywhere, in ten
thousand years of civilization building. To have a civilization is to
have a hierarchical society.

To go beyond civilization therefore means going beyond hierarchalism.


Does going beyond civilization mean destroying civilization? Certainly
not. Why would it?

All dedicated pyramid-builders should stick with civilization. The
rest of us just want something else, and it's high time we had it.








	      __A wrong direction: "giving up" things__


Despite all the indicators of misery we live with--the overgrowing
incidence of social disintegration, drug addiction, crime, suicide,
mental illness, child and spousal abuse and abandonment, racism,
violence against women, and so on--most people in our culture are
thoroughly convinced that our way of life simply cannot be bettered by
any means whatever. Adopting anything different would therefore have
to be a comedown, an act of sacrifice.

Very typically, when people question me about the future, they ask if
I really believe people will be willing to "give up" the wonderful
things we have for the mere privilege of avoiding extinction. When I
speak, as I did in _Ishmael_, of "another story to be in," they seem
to imagine I'm touting a sort of miserable half-life of voluntary
poverty, donning sackcloth and ashes to do penance for our
environmental sins. They're sure that living in a sustainable way must
be about "giving up" things. It doesn't occur to them that living in
an UNsustainable way is _also_ about giving up things, very precious
things like security, hope, lightheartedness, and freedom from
anxiety, fear, and guilt.


When in doubt, think about the circus. People never run off to join
the circus to _give up_ something. They run off to the circus to _get_
something.








		       __Standards of living__


Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has written: "The world's most
primitive people have few possessions, _but they are not poor_.
Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a
relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between
people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of
civilization."

My wife, Rennie, and I learned this great truth for ourselves during
the 1980s, in the seven years we spent in Madrid, a mountain village
in central New Mexico. Eking out a living on a small inheritance, I
was at work on the book that would someday become _Ishmael_. During
this time we were poor by ordinary standards but just ordinary by
Madrid standards. In Madrid at this time _everyone_ was poor--and so
_no one_ was poor. The average Madrid _household_ income was probably
around three thousand dollars--vastly below the national poverty
level--but there were no poor people in Madrid. No one gloried in
being poor or in living "simply." All gloried in their independence,
in their ingenuity, in their acquisition of needed skills, and above
all in doing what they _wanted_ to do.

Visitors to Madrid (doubtless like visitors to circus back lots)
probably had the impression that it was a sort of "depressed area." In
fact, I've never lived in an area that was less depressed!








	       __Standards of living: Chicago-Madrid__


When Rennie and I moved from Chicago to Madrid, we recognized in a
vague way that we were lowering our standard of living, but we weren't
doing this to make ourselves harmless or to reduce our impact on the
planet. We were doing it to reduce our expenses while I was working on
the book that ultimately became _Ishmael_.

To give you an idea of the difference, in nearby Santa Fe at this time
you quite literally couldn't buy a rundown one-car garage for $80,000.
In nearby Madrid, by contrast, we were able to buy a nice little
building right on the highway that was serving as both living quarters
and a general store, complete with inventory, for $30,000. Even at
this price I'm not sure we would have bought it if it hadn't been
situated in a way that suited us perfectly. The principal element of
that situation was that it was on the town's main street and within
easy walking distance of all the town's urban resources (modest as
they were). In these respects, it was just like our previous residence, 
in Chicago, where we lived on Lake Shore Drive, within easy walking
distance of all the resources of the Belmont Harbor/New Town area. By
leaving Chicago and moving to Madrid, we managed to get _more_ of 
what we needed at that time by _lowering_ our standard of living.








	       __Standards of living: Madrid-Houston__


Another element of the Madrid house that suited us was the fact that
it had a large room (which most people would think of as a living
room) that served us as twin offices spaced far enough apart that we
were not working in each other's lap but close enough so we could
communicate easily.

Today, some twelve years later, we live on a main thoroughfare, within
easy walking distance of the urban resources of a major city. One of
the things that suits us about our residence is that it has a large
room (which most people would think of as a living room) that serves
us as twin offices spaced far enough apart that we're not working in
each other's lap but close enough so we can communicate easily.

Needless to say, there are some things available to us in Houston that
were not available in Madrid, and these are things we need in our
present circumstances, which are very different now. Roughly speaking,
by moving to Houston we've upped our standard of living by a factor of
ten over the Madrid years. What has _not_ been upped is our overall
feeling of contentment and well-being. If we're happier today (and we
are), it has nothing to do with our higher standard of living.

Spending more will certainly get you more, but it won't necessarily
get you more of what you _want_.








		     __A lover of civilization__


People who dislike what I'm saying will often try to reassure
themselves with the thought that I'm just someone who hates
civilization and would rather live "close to nature." This will bring
a smile to the face of anyone who knows me, for I'm a great lover of
civilization and live happily in the heart of the fourth largest U.S.
city, in easy walking distance to drugstores, supermarkets, video
rental shops, art galleries, restaurants, bookstores, museums, pool
halls, universities, and tattoo parlors. (And I live "close to nature"
every second of every day, 365 days a year, since "nature" is
something no one can escape living close to, no matter where you
happen to live.)

Or they challenge me to say how I'd like living without air
conditioning, central heating, indoor plumbing, refrigerators,
telephones, computers, and so on. They think I'm an apostle of
poverty, though they can't point to a single word in any of my
writings to support such a notion.

I'm not a Luddite or a Unabomber. I don't regard civilization as a
curse but as a blessing that people (including me) should be free to
walk away from--for something better. And something better is what I'm
after, and nothing less. Those who are looking for something _worse_
definitely need to consult a different book.








		   __Searching for an alternative__


Consulting any dictionary reveals that the word _civilization_
signifies to us something that is socially "advanced." There is, of
course, only one thing for it to be socially advanced _over_, and
that's tribalism. (Barbarianism doesn't represent a specific type of
social organization; barbarians are either tribal people or people at
a stage of civilization perceived to be more primitive than one's
own.)

In our cultural mythology we see ourselves as having left tribalism
behind the way modern medicine left the leech and the bleeding bowl
behind, and we did so decisively and irrevocably. This is why it's so
difficult for us to acknowledge that tribalism is not only the
preeminently _human_ social organization, it's also the only
unequivocally _successful_ social organization in human history. Thus,
when even so wise and thoughtful a statesman as Mikhail Gorbachev
calls for "a new beginning" and "a new civilization," he doesn't doubt
for a single moment that the pattern for it lies in the social
organization that has introduced humanity to oppression, injustice,
poverty, chronic famine, incessant violence, genocide, global warfare,
crime, corruption, and wholesale environmental destruction. To
consult, in our time of deepest crisis, with the unqualified success
that humanity enjoyed here for more than three million years is quite
simply and utterly unthinkable.

That, finally, is my purpose in this book: to think about the utterly
unthinkable.









------------------------------------------------------------

P A R T    F O U R
Toward the New Tribalism




We are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as _poor_ 
because they don't have anything; perhaps better to think of 
them for that reason as _free_.
_MARSHALL SAHLINS_




------------------------------------------------------------







		   __Revolution without upheaval__


Because revolution in our culture has always represented an attack on
hierarchy, it has always meant upheaval--literally a heaving up from
below. But upheaval has no role to play in moving beyond civilization.
If the plane is in trouble, you don't shoot the pilot, you grab a
parachute and jump. To overthrow the hierarchy is pointless; we just
want to leave it behind.

As everyone knows (especially revolutionaries), hierarchy maintains
formidable defenses against attack from the lower orders. It has none,
however, against abandonment. This is in part because it can imagine
revolution, but it can't imagine abandonment. But even if it could
imagine abandonment, it couldn't defend against it, because
abandonment isn't an attack, it's just a discontinuance of support.

It's almost impossible to prevent people from doing nothing (which is
what discontinuing support amounts to). 

But won't the powers that be _try_ to prevent people from doing
nothing? I can imagine them _trying_ (but I honestly need help
imagining them _succeeding_).








		   __Revolution without overthrow__


The object of ordinary revolution is to effect global change across
the board with a single, sweeping blow. Ideally, former rulers must
disappear overnight--en masse, along with all supporters and
minions--with a complete cast of successors ready to step into their
shoes the following morning to proclaim the new regime. Scenarios like
this one are meaningless to those who would move beyond civilization.

In the first place, there's no need for global change. Those who
insist on having nothing less than global change will wait a long
time, probably forever. There's no need for everyone in the world to
go to bed one night living one way and wake up the next morning living
another way. This isn't going to happen, and it's pointless to try to
make it happen.

There is likewise no need for change across the board--for everything
to suddenly begin to be done differently. It's unnecessary for this
to happen, and nothing in the world can make it happen. Always keep in
mind that _there is no one right way for people to live_. There never
has been and never will be.

Finally, we don't want the ruling class to disappear overnight. We're
not ready to see the infrastructure of civilization disappear (and may
never be). At least for the time being, we want our rulers and leaders
to continue to supervise civilization's drudgery for us--keeping the
potholes filled, the sewage and water treatment plants running, and so
on.








			 __No one right way__


People often imagine that it would be wonderful if all six billion of
us started living a new way tomorrow. It's one of our most deep-rooted
and misguided memes, that there absolutely must be some one right way
for _everyone_ to live.

I admire the Gebusi of New Guinea, but (trust me) not everyone in the
world should live the way they do. I admire the Gypsies, but not
everyone in the world should live the way they do--and (oddly enough)
if they did, their way of life would fail. I admire the Jalali--nomadic 
peddlers and performers of Afghanistan--but not everyone in the world
should live the way they do. I admire the Toupees of the Sudan, the
genuine of Kenya, and the Kariera of Western Australia, but not
everyone in the world should live the way they do. This isn't
sociological thinking, this is ecological thinking. Macaws have a 
good life, but their habitats would fail if all birds lived like
macaws. Giraffes have a good life, but their habitats would fail if
all mammals lived like giraffes. Beavers have a good life, but their
habitats would fail if all rodents lived like beavers.

Diversity, not uniformity, is what works. Our problem is not that
people are living a _bad_ way but rather that they're all living the
_same_ way. The earth can accommodate many people living in a
voraciously wasteful and pollutive way, it just can't accommodate
_all_ of us living that way.








			__No heavenly choir__


We don't need to have all six billion of us living like environmental
saints tomorrow--or ever, for that matter. To take such a thing as our
objective would merely assure failure. This is precisely the strength
of the strategy I'm proposing here. We don't need to achieve the
impossible dreams of global enlightenment, unity, and resolve that
people like Mikhail Gorbachev and Al Gore describe as humanity's only
hope. We simply can't, as Gorbachev suggests, wait for "all members of
the world community" to "resolutely discard old stereotypes." We can't
wait for all members of the world community to do _anything_, because
if we know anything at all, we know that all members of the world
community will never, ever do _anything_ as a body. "The time has
come," Gorbachev says, "to choose a new direction of global
development." But who's going to do this choosing? Everyone? And how
many decades (or even centuries) will have to pass before that
happens? Where on earth is Al Gore's "New Common Purpose" to come
from? When have the people of earth ever been able to agree on a
common _anything_? These are will-o-the-wisps, vain expectations that
keep us rooted in hopelessness, year after year, decade after decade.

We can't wait for our national leaders to save us. When all we demand
from them (or even tolerate from them) are instant short-term gains,
why would they suddenly begin thinking like global visionaries?








		       __Those who would wait__


Because we don't expect to overthrow governments, abolish world
capitalism, make civilization vanish, or turn everyone in the world
into walking buddhas, we don't have to wait for _anything_. But I have
to warn you that many people will tell you the opposite, that we have
to wait until we have a world that is _already_ perfect. They feel
absolutely nothing should happen until we've banished social
inequality, racism, sexism, poverty, and every other bad thing you 
can think of.

I've had people tell me we have to wait till everyone "respects"
everyone else. I've had people tell me we can't do anything till
everyone's "consciousness" has been raised. People who think like this
would wait for the cut to heal before applying a bandage, would wait
till daybreak to light a candle, would wait for the sinking ship to
rise before getting in the lifeboat. They're way past my
comprehension, and beyond offering the opinion that they're going to
have an awful long wait, I can't think of a thing to say to them.








		    __Fighters of the good fight__


A friend recently sent me a copy of _Deep Democracy_, a periodical
published by the Alliance for Democracy, whose mission is "to free all
people from corporate domination of politics, economics, the
environment, culture, and information; to establish true democracy;
and to create a just society with a sustainable equitable economy."
The cover featured an illustration in political-cartoon style of the
organization's self-perception: a diminutive David facing a Goliath
armed with the sword of money politics and the spear of greed, wearing
the armor of multinational corporations, and shielded by a mainstream
media monopoly. The title of the cartoon couldn't have been more apt:
"Deja Vu (All Over Again)." Indeed. Over and over and over and over.

I had to explain to my friend that, while I wish the Alliance the best
of luck, I don't perceive myself to be a participant in this struggle.
We can't afford to wait for David to finish off Goliath, because
obviously _David_ never finishes off Goliath. The two of them have
been standing there toe to toe for thousands of years--and they'll
still be standing there a thousand years from now.

We don't need to defeat Goliath. We need to change the ways he thinks.








		     __Goliath with a new mind__


Once upon a time in the commercial carpeting industry there was a
Goliath named Ray C. Anderson who had taken his company, Interface,
Inc., from a modest beginning to a position of global leadership in
about twenty years, becoming one of those wicked billionaire
multinational corporations you hear about. This Goliath had always
made a point of being in compliance with government regulations, but
these didn't stop the business from being a highly pollutive
one--petroleum based and contributing heavily to landfill.

But in 1994 he read two books that _changed his mind_ about what he
was doing. One was Paul Hawken's book, _The Ecology of Commerce_, the
other was _Ishmael_. After reading these books, Ray Anderson saw that
_being in compliance_ is not nearly enough. He immediately initiated
action to end his dependence on petroleum and to begin making one
hundred percent recyclable carpeting made from one hundred percent
recycled materials, thus reducing his company's contribution to
landfill to zero. It's important to note that these changes didn't
affect just his corporation. Suddenly all his competitors were
compelled to adopt _his_ standards in order to remain competitive.
This Goliath didn't just reform a business, he reformed an entire
industry--not because any plucky little David defeated him, but
because two books made him think a different way about the world 
and his place in it.

If people will _willingly_ reform an industry when their minds are
changed, why spend billions to enact and enforce laws to _compel_ 
them to do it?








		    __The incremental revolution__


I say again that, because we don't expect to overthrow governments,
abolish world capitalism, make civilization vanish, turn everyone in
the world into walking buddhas, or cure all social and economic ills,
we don't have to wait for _anything_. If ten people walk beyond
civilization and build a new sort of life for themselves, then those
ten are _already_ living in the next paradigm, from the first day.
They don't need the support of an organization. They don't need to
belong to a party or a movement. They don't need new laws to be
passed. They don't need permits. They don't need a constitution. 
They don't need taxexempt status.

For those ten, the revolution will already have succeeded.

They probably should be prepared, however, for the outrage of their
neighbors.








		__Ethnic tribalism won't work for us__


The tribes we grew up with during the first three or four million
years of human life were ethnic groups, extended families having a
common language, common laws and customs, and so on. Their social
borders were generally (but not absolutely) closed to members of other
tribes. Captives of war were an obvious exception, but a member of the
Sioux, for example, couldn't ordinarily just decide to become a
Navajo. It might happen under extraordinary circumstances, to be sure,
but tribal integrity would have suffered if it became a general rule.

Rennie and I have links to the Quinn clan and to the MacKay clan
(hers), but like most modern clan members, we go our way and they go
theirs. Very occasionally what might be considered a tribal action
will take place in these clans, but in the modern world no one is
surprised when people turn out to be closer to friends and colleagues
than to families.

But there's nothing specially sacrosanct about ethnic tribalism. The
sort of tribalism we see at work in the circus evolved in the same way
as ethnic tribalism. It too is the product of natural selection, works
as well (in its own way) as ethnic tribalism, and provides us with a
model that is perfectly adapted to the urban circumstances most of us
find ourselves in.








			     __Jeffrey__


In _My Ishmael_ I recounted the life of a young man named Jeffrey,
loosely based on Paul Eppinger, whose journal was published by his
father under the title _Restless Mind Quiet Thoughts_. Jeffrey was
attractive, intelligent, personable, and multitalented, but he
couldn't find anything he wanted to do, other than hang out with
friends, write in his journal, and play the guitar. His friends were
forever urging him to find a direction, get some ambition, and _care_
about something, but of course none of these things can be done at
will. He came to believe his friends when they told him he was
unusual--peculiar, even--in his aimlessness. In the end, despairing of
finding the purposefulness that seems to come so easily to others, he
quietly and without fuss took his own life.

I wasn't surprised to hear from many youngsters who feel exactly like
Jeffrey, who know the world is full of things they _should_ want to
do--and who imagine that there must be something dreadfully wrong 

with them for failing to want it. Because I've taken the trouble to
study cultures different from our own, I know there's nothing innately
human about wanting to "make something" of yourself or to "get ahead"
or to have a career, a profession, or a vocation. Notions like these
are foreign to most, aboriginal peoples, who seem perfectly content to
live just the way Jeffrey wanted to live--and why shouldn't they be?








			  __The open tribe__


Jeffrey died for lack of a tribe--but not, of course, for lack of an
ethnic tribe. Youngsters often tell me they long to run off to join
the Yanomami of Brazil or the Alawa of Australia, and I have to
explain that tribes like these aren't open to them. Though famously
hospitable, they can't afford to take in wide-eyed kids who show up on
their doorsteps completely devoid of the skills needed to help the
tribe survive.

Throughout his wanderings, Jeffrey stayed with people who were making
a living of one kind or another--family friends, ex-college chums,
their parents, and so on. But, not surprisingly, none of them were
making a living _tribally;_ they had jobs, professions, and careers, but
these were held _individually_, so there was no room for Jeffrey in
them. They weren't making a living as a collaborative effort, so there
was no way to extend their living to him. He was forever a guest, and
guests (however charming) inevitably wear out their welcome.

In a sense, Jeffrey was unable to find anyone who knew how to give him
as _little_ as he wanted. Many youngsters want as little, and if they'll 
work together tribally, they can get it quite easily. Every tribe has
the standard of living its members are _willing_ to support.

People like Jeffrey need to live in a world of tribes, and a world of
_open_ tribes. And they aren't alone in this. Far from it, I think.








		      __The limits of openness__


The circus is the very model of an open tribe. Things like
nationality, language, race, ethnic background, age, gender, sexual
orientation, political opinions, and religious beliefs won't exclude
anyone who can contribute to the living of the circus, but its
openness isn't absolute, of course. It isn't a refuge for the
homeless, for example; it doesn't take in people altruistically. This
isn't to say that there's a prohibition against altruism. The circus
must take good care of its members or they'll defect to circuses that
are more open-handed and bountiful. It's a question of survival. A
species that can't hold onto its members becomes extinct, and the 
same is true of a tribe.

On the other hand, a circus that is too altruistic (for example, that
takes in people who don't contribute to its success) soon has
difficulty making ends meet; it begins cutting salaries, lowering the
general living standard, skimping on quality across the board--and
begins to lose its most talented members to other circuses.

Circuses that find a workable balance between economic success and
community needs stay in business. Circuses that don't find that
balance disappear.








		       __Nontribal businesses__


Ordinary businesses don't burden themselves with tribal obligations.
Most obviously, they don't "take care" of their workers; to do so
would introduce them to a whole suite of problems in which there's no
profit whatever. Instead, they pay salaries and expect workers to take
care of themselves. One worker may thrive on a given salary, while
another languishes on it. From the company's point of view, there's no
injustice in this if the salary is fair in the first place. It's not
the company's fault that the second worker has a large family to
support or an ailing parent to take care of--or is just a bad manager
of money. The company can afford to be hard-nosed about this; it
doesn't risk losing this second worker to a competitor, because its
competitors are equally hard-nosed about it.

This unspoken agreement among businesses to limit their obligation to
issuing a paycheck is precisely what gives our society its prison
ambience. Workers have "no way out." Whether they move from company to
company or from nation to nation, their employers' obligation ends
with the paycheck (an arrangement that obviously suits employers very
well). Prisons are always arranged to suit the warders. That's the
anticipated order of things. No one thinks that prisons are built to
suit the needs of prisoners or that businesses are built to suit the
needs of workers.

Stepping into a tribe means stepping out of the prison.








	       __But how does it render us harmless?__


Having read this far, a student said to me, I love what you're
saying, but I don't see how just walking away from civilization helps
us live 'as harmlessly as sharks and tarantulas and rattlesnakes,'
which is the benchmark for success you established in _Ishmael_."

I think that, like many people, this person is more at ease with the
idea of giving up things than getting things. He worries that people
enjoying themselves may not be living as blamelessly as people denying
themselves. Well-intentioned people often want to feel they're giving
up something, which is only to be expected in a culture where all
ethical and religious systems commend self-denial. In hierarchical
societies it's always a good idea to make poverty sound like a
blessing (and the rich are always especially vain about their
austerities).

If you think this is something that no longer holds true, try this.
Find me a single elementary or secondary textbook that promotes 
_being rich_ as a value. Being rich is _never_ held up to school-
children as an ideal. Look all you want, you won't find a single text
that says: "Make lots of money so you can have the best of
everything-- exotic cars, luxurious mansions, yachts, servants,
designer clothes, extravagant jewelry, endless first-class travel, and
so on." Our official classroom mythology is as prissy about wealth as
it is about sex.








		  __"The culture of maximum harm"__


People have lived many different ways on this planet, but about ten
thousand years ago there appeared one people who believed everyone in
the world should live a single way--_their_ way, which they considered
the only "right" way. After ten thousand years of hard work, this one
people, whom I've called the Takers, had conquered every continent on
the planet and dominated the world completely. In the course of their
conquest, the Takers overran, swallowed up, displaced, or eliminated
every other culture and civilization in their path. Once the
civilizations of the New World were destroyed, there was only one
civilization left in the entire world--that of the Takers: ours. From
that point on, _civilization_ was synonymous with _our civilization_.

At the present time, the United States represents the high point of
maximum affluence that our civilization has reached. There's no place
on earth where people have more, use more, or waste more than the
United States. Though other nations haven't as yet reached this high
point, they yearn to reach it. They have no other goal. There's only
one right way for people to live, and the people of the United States
epitomize it. Everyone in the world should have a house, a car, a
computer, a television set, a telephone, and so on--at least one of
each, preferably several.

This I call "the culture of maximum harm," a culture in which all
members are dedicated to attaining the high point of maximum 
affluence (and to forever _raising_ the high point of maximum
affluence).








	     __But how can we contain their expansion?__


I've been asked, "If we don't crush the Taker way entirely, won't it
rebound and begin expanding again?"

The Middle Ages could only remain the Age of Faith for as long as
Christian mythology dominated people's minds, all the way from serfs
to kings. After that mythology was abased and superceded during the
Renaissance, it was inconceivable that such an Age of Faith could
recur. Never again will a whole civilization embrace the vision that
dominated the Middle Ages.

The same is true of Taker mythology. Once it has been exposed for what
it is--a collection of poisonous delusions--it will no longer be
capable of exercising the power it has exercised over us for the past
ten thousand years. Who, knowing that there's no one right way for
people to live, will take up the sword to spread the Taker vision?
Who, knowing that civilization is _not_ humanity's last invention,
will defend the hierarchy as if it were humanity's most sacred
institution?

But won't the last pharaohs in their maddened wrath turn their nuclear
arsenal on us?

Perhaps they would if they could, but where are they going to find us
except living right beside them in their own cities? Is the president,
seeing his/her power slip away, going to bomb Washington D.C. to
destroy the tribal people living there? Is the governor of New York
going to bomb Manhattan?








		   __Something better to hope for__


Because all six billion members of the culture of maximum harm are
striving to maximize their affluence, we shouldn't be alarmed solely
by the one percent who live like lords of the universe. We must be
equally alarmed by the other ninety-nine percent who are _hoping_ to
live like lords of the universe. It's probably not going to be the
billionaire pop stars, sports heroes, and deal-makers who are going to
lead us out of the prison we share with them. It's the rest of us who
must find the way out, who must discover something better to hope for
than inhabiting a sable-lined cell next to Barbra Streisand, Michael
Jordan, or Donald Trump.

The world can support a few million pharaohs, but it can't support six
billion pharaohs.

"Something better to hope for. . ." Is this by any chance a reference
to what I called "another story to be in" in _Ishmael?_ Is this what I
meant when I said that "people need a vision of the world and of
themselves that inspires them"? Is this what I meant when I said in
_The Story of B_ that "If the world is saved, it will be saved because
the people living in it have a new vision"?

Of course it is.








		__An intermediate goal: less harmful__


In case it isn't evident, I'm still working on my student's question:
"How does walking away from civilization help us live as harmlessly as
sharks and tarantulas and rattlesnakes?" Any move beyond civilization
represents a move away from the culture of maximum harm and therefore
reduces your harmfulness. Jumping over the wall of the prison won't
instantly make you as harmless as a shark, tarantula, or rattlesnake,
but it will instantly move you in that direction.

Look at it this way: no move beyond civilization will ever result in
_greater_ harm. If you want to do harm, you've _got_ to stick to
civilization. It's only inside that framework that you can burn up ten
thousand gallons of jet fuel just to have lunch at your favorite
restaurant in Paris. It's only inside that framework that you can
casually dynamite a coral reef just because it inconveniences you.

Moving beyond civilization automatically limits your access to the
tools needed to do harm. The people of the Circus Flora will never
build a Stealth bomber or open a steel mill--not just because they
wouldn't want to but because even if they wanted to, they wouldn't
have access to the tools. To regain access to the tools, they'd have
to leave the circus and find new places for themselves in the culture
of maximum harm.








		  __But is "less harmful" enough?__


Though it's a good and necessary start, being less harmful is _not_
enough. We're in the midst of a food race that is more deadly to us
and to the world around us than the Cold War arms race was. This is a
race between food production and population growth. Present-day
followers of English economist Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), like those
of the past, view producing enough food to feed our population as a
"win," just as American Cold Warriors saw producing enough weapons to
destroy the Soviet Union as a "win." They fail to see that, just as
every American "win" stimulated an answering Soviet "win," every win
in food production stimulates an answering "win" in population growth.

Right now our food race is rapidly converting our planet's biomass
into _human_ mass. This is what happens when we clear a piece of land
of wildlife and replant it with human crops. This land was supporting
a biomass comprising hundreds of thousands of species and tens of
millions of individuals. Now all the productivity of that land is
being turned into human mass, literally into human flesh. Every day
all over the world diversity is disappearing as more and more of our
planet's biomass is being turned into human mass. This is what the
food race is about. This is _exactly_ what the food race is about:
every year turning more of our planet's biomass into human mass.








		       __Ending the food race__


The arms race could only be ended in two ways, either by a nuclear
catastrophe or by the participants walking away from it. Luckily, the
second of these happened. The Soviets called it quits--and there was
no catastrophe.

The race between food and population is the same. It can be ended by
catastrophe, when simply too much of our planet's biomass is tied up
in humans, and fundamental ecological systems collapse, but it doesn't
_have_ to end that way. It can end the way the arms race ended, by
people simply walking away from it. We can say, "We understand now
that there can be _no final triumph_ of food over population. This is
because every single win made on the side of food is answered by a win
on the side of population. It has to be that way, it always _has_ been
that way, and we can see that it's never going to _stop_ being that
way."

But this isn't going to happen because of these few words--or even the
thousands I've devoted to it in my other books and speeches. This
subject engages our cultural mythology at the most profound level--a
level far deeper than I imagined when I thought it could be handled in
a few pages in _Ishmael_. This is the deadly man-eating Minotaur at
the center of the labyrinth of our culture . . . far beyond the scope
of the present expedition.








		  __100 years beyond civilization__


People will still be living here in one hundred years--_if_ we start
living a new way, soon.

Otherwise, not.

But how would we get there, and what would it look like? Utopians
can't let go of the idea of sweeter, gentler, more loving people
taking over. I prefer to look at what worked for millions of years 
for people _as they are_. Sainthood was not required.

To project into the future: as people begin going over the wall in the
early decades of the new millennium, our societal guardians are at
first alarmed, seeing it as portending the end of civilization-as-we-
know-it. They try heightening the wall with social and economic barbed
wire but soon realize the futility of this. People will keep dragging
stones if they're convinced there's no other way to go, but once
another way opens up, nothing can stop them from defecting. Initially
the defectors derive their living from the pyramid-builders, just as
circuses do today. As time goes on, however, they begin to be less
dependent on the pyramid-builders. They interact more and more with
each other, building their own intertribal economy.

After a hundred years civilization is still hanging on at about half
its present size. Half the world's population still belongs to the
culture of maximum harm, but the other half, living tribally, enjoys a
more modest lifestyle, directed toward getting more of what people
want (as opposed to just getting more).








		  __200 years beyond civilization__


Gradually the economic balance of power shifts between "civilization"
(by now almost always burdened with those quote marks) and the
surrounding "beyond civilization." More and more people are seeing
that they can trade off a plenitude of things they don't deeply want
(power, social status, and supposed conveniences, amenities, and
luxuries) for things they really do deeply want (security, meaningful
work, more leisure, and social equality--all products of the tribal
way of life). "The economy," no longer tied to an ever-expanding
market, has become an increasingly local affair as global and national
corporations gradually lose their reason for being.

Two hundred years out, the thing we call civilization has been left
behind and seems as quaintly obsolete as Oliver Cromwell's theocracy.
The cities are still there--where would they go?--as are the arts, the
sciences, and technology, but these are no longer instruments and
embodiments of the culture of maximum harm.


I don't indulge in these speculations in order to lay claim to powers
of prophecy. I toss them into the water to show you what part of the
pond I'm aiming at . . . and to let you follow the ripples back to the
shore of the present.








		  __But where exactly is "beyond"?__


In the paradigmatic utopian scenario, you gather your friends, equip
yourselves with agricultural tools, and find a bit of wilderness
paradise to which you can escape and get away from it all. The
apparent attraction of this weary old fantasy is that it requires no
imagination (being ready-made), can be enacted by almost anyone with
the requisite funds, and sometimes actually works for longer than a
few months. To advocate it as a general solution for six billion
people would set an all-time record for inanity.

Civilization isn't a geographical territory, it's a social and economic 
territory where pharaohs reign and pyramids are built by the masses.
Similarly, beyond civilization isn't a geographical territory, it's a
social and economic territory where people in open tribes pursue 
goals that may or may not be recognizably "civilized."

You don't have to "go somewhere" to get beyond civilization. You have
to make your living a different way.









------------------------------------------------------------

P A R T    F I V E
The Tribe of Crow





Yeah, 
Well, 
it's pretty lonely 
at the bottom, 
too.

_JOSEPH CHASSLER_




------------------------------------------------------------








			__Reluctant pioneers__


By conservative estimates, at any one time there are about half a
million people in the United States who have been thrust beyond
civilization into a social and economic limbo that nowadays is
identified as homelessness. Homelessness is slightly more than a
euphemism for poverty, since it draws attention to the special form
poverty takes in hypermodern cities, which might be defined as cities
in which space is so valuable that none of it can be spared for the
poor. With the complete disappearance of low-cost housing, there's
just no room "indoors" for the poor in such cities.

Several distinct streams come together in the homeless flood. One
consists of the mentally ill, turned out into the streets when
deinstitutionalization became the rage in the 1970s. Another consists
of semi- or unskilled workers whose jobs have been exported to
countries where labor is cheaper or made superfluous by downsizing or
automation. Another consists of those who in the fifties and sixties
would have been called the "disadvantaged"--abandoned women and
children, victims of racial or ethnic prejudice, undereducated,
unskilled, and chronically unemployed. All these are perceived as
victims or as the "deserving" poor. Others in the homeless flood are
runaways, drug addicts, bums, winos, transients, and vagabonds, who,
because they apparently "choose" to be homeless, are the "undeserving"
poor.








		  __Making the homeless disappear__


Public officials (reflecting the unspoken desires of their
constituents) naturally want the homeless to disappear. This isn't an
unkind impulse. The assumption is that the homeless really _want_ to
disappear (at least the "deserving poor" among them) by getting jobs,
finding homes, and resuming a "normal" life. The role of officialdom
is therefore to assist, prompt, and encourage the homeless to get
about the business of resuming that normal life. Above all, nothing
must be done that would encourage the homeless to _remain_ homeless.
In short, homelessness must be made as unremittingly difficult,
degrading, and painful as possible, and you may be sure that our
public b guardians know well how to accomplish this.

Naturally the public wants homeless shelters, but these are hardly
expected to be hospitable; no one should want to "stay" in one. If the
homeless began to "stay" in shelters, this would defeat the purpose,
which is to entice them out of homelessness. Avoiding officially
sanctioned shelters at all costs, the homeless take refuge almost
anywhere else--in alleys, parks, tunnels, and abandoned buildings,
under bridges, and so on. The police have to roust them from these
areas regularly because if the homeless become comfortable _anywhere_,
why motive have they to _stop_ being homeless? Making and keeping the
homeless as miserable as possible is cherished as a sort of tough
love--the very best and kindest thing we can do for then.

The only trouble is, for some strange reason, it doesn't work worth a
damn.








		__If it didn't work last year . . .__


The greatest discovery any alien anthropologist could make about our
culture is our overriding response to failure: _If it didn't work last
year, do it AGAIN this year (and if possible do it MORE)_.

Every year we pass more laws, hire more police, build more prisons,
and sentence more offenders for longer periods--all without moving one
inch closer to "ending" crime. It didn't work last year or the year
before that or the year before that or the year before that, but you
can be sure we'll try it again this year, knowing beyond a shadow of a
doubt that it won't work this year either.

Every year we spend more money on our schools, hoping to "fix"
whatever's wrong with them, and every year the schools remain
stubbornly unfixed. Spending money didn't work last year or the year
before that or the year before that or the year before that, but you
can be sure we'll try it again this year, knowing beyond a shadow of a
doubt that it won't work this year either.

Every year we try to make the homeless go away, and every year the
homeless remain with us. We couldn't shoehorn them back into "the
mainstream" last year or the year before that or the year before that
or the year before that, but you can be sure we'll try it again this
year, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it won't work this year
either.








		     __A new rule for new minds__


To figure out a better response to failure than this, you don't (as
they say) have to be a rocket scientist. I'd formulate it this way:
_If it didn't work last year or the year before that or the year
before that--or any year in recorded history--then TRY 
SOMETHING DIFFERENT_.

We deeply believe in taking a military approach to problems: We
proclaim a "war" on poverty. When that fails, we proclaim a; "war" on
drugs. We "fight" crime. We "combat" homelessness; We "battle" hunger.
We vow to "defeat" AIDS.

Engineers can't afford to fail as consistently as politicians and
bureaucrats, so they prefer accedence to resistance (as I do). For
example, they know that no structure can be made rigid enough to
resist an earthquake. So, rather than defy the earthquake's power by
building rigid structures, they accede to it by building flexible
ones. To accede is not merely to give in but rather to give in while
drawing near; one may accede not only to an argument but to a throne.
Thus the earthquake-proof building survives not by defeating the
earthquake's power but by acknowledging it--by drawing it in and
dealing with it.

As soon as someone is brave enough to deal with homelessness this 
way, by acknowledging it and drawing it in instead of fighting it,
remarkable things will begin to happen in that place--and not just 
for the homeless.








		    __Listening to the homeless__


One element of acceding to homelessness is accepting the fact that the
poor will consistently choose the least worst alternative available to
them. If you find them living under a bridge instead of in a nice,
clean municipal shelter just a block away, you can be absolutely sure
they haven't made a mistake--from their point of view. The shelter's
admittance procedures may be intolerably invasive, arbitrary, or
humiliating, or its rules may be Draconian. Whatever, the discomforts
of sheltering under the bridge are more endurable. Naturally what's
least worst to one individual isn't necessarily the least worst to
another. Street people in New York City will tell you there's so much
food around it's almost impossible to starve. Even so, there are some
who would rather shun that world of abundance and stay deep
underground, where fresh game is plentiful (once you get used to the
idea of hunting, killing, and cooking "track rabbits"--rats).

Another element of acceding to homelessness is accepting the fact that
the homeless understand their situation, not necessarily the way a
social scientist, economist, or urban planner would but from a
practical and personal point of view. They may not be able to
discourse on the process of deindustrialization, but they know that
people who smugly order them to "get a job" are living in never-never
land and imagining a world of work that hasn't existed in decades.








		  __Is homelessness an earthquake?__


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!"


Social Scientist Peter Marcuse has written: "Homelessness inspires not
only the intellectual realization that the machinery of the system has
failed somehow to produce basic shelter everyone needs, but even more
the social realization that the system has come up against some limits
it cannot exceed, has created _a world it can no longer control_."
(Emphasis added.)

I like this quote because its reference to "the machinery of the
system" fits my engineering analogy so neatly. This machinery has
created a world inhabited by _people it can no longer control_. To
translate this into my own metaphorical system, Marcuse is saying the
homeless have been pushed into a social and economic no man's land
that is _beyond civilization_. And when that machinery exerts itself
to force the homeless back where they belong, it fails--repeatedly 
and consistently.

Technology guru Jacques Attali has announced the end of the era of the
working class. "Machines are the new proletariat," he says. "The
working class is being given its walking papers." But we all know
there's no room for nonworkers within the structure known as
civilization. So where on earth are their walking papers supposed to
take them--except _beyond_ that structure?








		  __What would acceding look like?__


We know what "combating" homelessness looks like. We attack on two
fronts. On one front, for example, we open shelters for the homeless
but (since we don't want them to _stay_ in the shelters) we make them
as unwelcoming as possible. On the other front, we pass anticamping
legislation that criminalizes those who _won't_ stay in the shelters.
This legislation allows (or compels) the police to harass the
homeless, who are "out of place," who turn up where we don't want them
to be. Until the homeless straighten out, get jobs, and somehow
magically lift themselves into the mainstream of middle-class America,
the game is going to be "Heads we win, tails you lose."

Acceding to homelessness would look like _helping the homeless succeed
WHILE being homeless_. What an idea! I can almost hear the howls of
outrage from both liberals and conservatives that must greet such a
concept. Help people _succeed_ at being homeless? We want them to
_fail_ at being homeless! (So they'll return to the mainstream.)

Step one in acceding to homelessness would be to decriminalize and
deregulate the homeless. We can happily deregulate trillion-dollar
industries capable of doing immense harm, but deregulating the
relatively helpless poor--what a thought! The officers of deregulated
savings and loan institutions may have bilked us out of billions, but
at least they didn't hang around street corners in shabby clothes!








		  __Letting them house themselves__


Regulating and criminalizing homelessness is equivalent to defying
earthquakes with rigid structures. Deregulating and decriminalizing
homelessness is equivalent to acknowledging that "the machinery of the
system has . . . created a world it can no longer control." We should
abandon control of homelessness therefore, because it's _beyond_
control, just like the earthquake. Since we can't defeat it, we should
learn to make the best of it.


There are thousands of miles of unused, habitable tunnels under
Manhattan that are interdicted to the homeless for only one reason:
that the homeless might try to live in them. The homeless _do_ try to
live in them, so it's conceived to be the duty of officialdom to drive
them out. Officials explain that no one "should" live in the tunnels.
They weren't designed as living spaces. They're unsafe. They're
unhealthy. They're unsanitary. Despite all this, some of the homeless
would _rather_ live in these tunnels than in doorways or under
bridges.

Instead of sending in the police to drive the homeless out of the
tunnels, officials should send in city engineers to ask what services
the city could provide to improve conditions. What they would hear is,
"We need help with sanitation, with water, with electricity."

Don't try to drive the homeless into places _we_ find suitable. Help
them survive in places _they_ find suitable.








		   __Letting them feed themselves__


Just as we want to deny the homeless access to shelter in tunnels,
abandoned buildings, shack cities under bridges, and so on, we also
want to deny them access to the plenitude of perfectly edible food
that is discarded daily in our cities. Some restaurants have adopted
the practice of dousing discarded food with ammonia to render it
inedible. Others have installed locks on their dumpsters. Imagine
instead helping the homeless organize systems to distribute this food,
much of which now just ends up rotting in landfills.

Or, even better, imagine the outrage such a proposal would awaken in
the good burghers of our cities. How dreadful (even immoral!) it would
seem to them to allow a class of "loafers" to make a living out of
what we no longer need or want. More than merely "allowing" such a way
of life, we would actually be _encouraging_ it--_facilitating_ it!--when
instead we should be "combating" it, stamping it out!








		    __Letting them make a living__


In our culture, for some odd reason, we teach kids to despise
scavengers. Prey and predators are heroic, but scavengers are
contemptible. The truth is, our world would be unlivable without
scavengers. We'd be buried in corpses. Scavengers make their living by
ridding the world of its biological refuse. Far from cursing them, we
should bless them. Right now most road kills are made to disappear by
birds like crows and vultures. If these birds ever become extinct, we
ourselves will have to take over their duty. What these scavengers
presently do for us at no cost, we'll have to pay for out of our
pockets.

The only "honest" living available to the homeless in general is
scavenging--and in general they're quite content to make that living.
It's work they can do without having an address, submitting to
supervision, punching a clock, or maintaining a wardrobe of socially
approved clothing--and it's flex-time all the way.

David Wagner describes how teams of drunks work together to strip
sellable copper from abandoned buildings in the northern city of his
study. Naturally this is illegal, even though the copper would
otherwise just be lost. Instead of obstructing this sort of activity
as much as possible, why not facilitate it? Enormous amounts of
materials could be reclaimed and recycled in this way, not only
conserving resources but reducing the amount of material that goes
into landfills to degenerate into toxic waste.








			__Let my people go!__


The homeless are "beyond civilization" because they're beyond the
reach of civilization's hierarchy, which has been unable to develop a
structural extension to enclose them. The most it can manage is to
oppress, harry, and obstruct them. To accede to homelessness would be
to "let them go," much as the biblical pharaoh let the Israelites go.

Am I saying the homeless actually _want_ to be homeless? Not exactly.
Some are "short-termers" who have landed on the streets after a spell
of bad luck and who want only to get back on the road to middle-class
success. None of my proposals would hinder this. The rest are on the
streets not necessarily because they love being homeless but because
the alternatives are worse than being homeless--institutionalization,
unending family abuse, involvement in foster-care systems that are
blind or indifferent to their needs, and laboring in a job market that
offers no real hope of upward mobility.

The fact remains, however, that many who initially become homeless
against their will later gain a different perspective on it.








		 __"I like the way my life is now."__


This is what a tunnel-dweller told reporter Jennifer Toth. He goes on:
"I'm independent and do what I want. It's not that I'm lazy or don't
want to work. I walk all the way around the city most days to collect
cans. This is the life I want." Another, tunnel-dweller described
being tracked down by a brother, who wanted to help him back to 
normal life. "He offered me $10,000. He just didn't understand. This
is where I want to be for now. Maybe not forever, but for now."

One of David Wagner's subjects, escaping the constant battering of
home, found that street life "was cool. I slept where I wanted. I hung
out with people, I drank. I was free as a bird!" According to another,
who fled an abusive home at age twelve, "it was fine. I traveled, went
all the way down the coast, down South. It was great, and I was never
turning back, no matter what happened."

Even when the street is just the least worst alternative, people often
feel they have more support there than they had at home. One runaway,
describing his street friends to Katherine Coleman Lundy, said, "If
they need food, need a few dollars, I'll give 'em a few dollars . . .. 
Whenever I need something, if I need it, they got it, they'll give
it to me." A runaway told Jennifer Toth, "We've got real support from
each other, not for just an hour from some social worker, but from
people who really care and understand."








		      __What would come of it?__


If we let the homeless find their own places of refuge and helped them
habilitate those places (instead of rousting them wherever they
settle), if we channeled to them the vast amounts of food that are
discarded routinely every day (instead of forcing them to grovel for
food at shelters), if we actively assisted them to support themselves
on their own terms (instead of ours), just think--homelessness would
largely cease to exist as "a problem." It would become something we're
always working at in the cities, like street maintenance. The streets
in our cities are never going to be "fixed." They're going to be
falling apart _forever_--and we're going to be fixing them forever. We
don't think of street maintenance as "a problem," because it's
something we've _acceded_ to.

If we were to accede to homelessness, then we and the homeless would
(for a change) be working together instead of at loggerheads. Keeping
people sheltered, fed, and protected would become a common concern and
a common task.

Acceding to homelessness doesn't mean that panhandlers, bag ladies,
and street drunks are going to disappear--any more than maintaining
the streets means that potholes, closed lanes, and traffic jams are
going to disappear. Acceding to homelessness (like acceding to
earthquakes) means dealing with reality, it doesn't mean doing away
with it.








		     __I'm not ENTIRELY alone!__


Near the end of his landmark study of homelessness, _Checkerboard
Square: Culture and Resistance in a Homeless Community_, David 
Wagner writes:


      _What if homeless people . . . were offered the
      opportunity of collective mobility and collective
      resources rather than individual scrutiny,
      surveillance, and treatment? What if the dense
      social networks and cohesive subcultures that
      constitute the homeless community were utilized by
      advocates, social workers, and others? What if
      housing could be provided near the geographic
      areas in which street groups congregate, decent
      housing that does not require leaving the group
      but that could be shared by street friends . . .
      What if social benefits were distributed not
      individually but collectively so that income
      maintenance or resources for food, shelter, and
      other goods were given to an entire group of
      people, not to individuals. That is, one would not
      need to wait for hours, provide all aspects of
      one's personal life, and come into a welfare
      office continually to be recertified, but would
      obtain a collective grant as part of a cohort of
      homeless people (or other group of poor people)._


All these suggestions (which even Wagner concedes are radical)
represent accedence to the realities of homelessness They're designed
to help the homeless live decently _while_ homeless--and to live the
way they _want_ to live (as opposed to the way government caretakers
think they _should_ live).








			    __Objections__


The idea of acceding to homelessness will raise objections on all
sides. Liberals will perceive it as "giving up" on the homeless, but
this would be like saying that acceding to street decay means giving
up on the streets. Acceding to homelessness means listening to the
poor, who believe they can take care of themselves--with the help they
want instead of the help the respectably housed think they "should"
have.

At the other end of the political spectrum, conservatives will
perceive acceding to homelessness as coddling freeloaders, who should
be disciplined and punished until they "get a job." Eventually they
may see that it's like helping a poor fisherman get together some
fishing tackle instead of giving him fish to eat.

Officialdom's objections will be the loudest, however, because its
stake in homelessness goes beyond mere principles. Many people make
their living "fighting" homelessness, and they'll see its disappearance 
as threatening their livelihood (though naturally they won't be silly 
enough to put it this way).

In 1998 Los Angeles, stealing a shopping cart would earn you a
thousand-dollar fine and a hundred days behind bars. When an anonymous
donor arranged to distribute a hundred "legal" shopping carts to the
homeless, officials pulled a long face and denounced it as "well-
intentioned but misguided."








		__The most telling objection of all__


Acceding to homelessness--actually allowing the poor to make a living
on the streets--would open the prison gates of our culture. The
disenfranchised and disaffected would pour out. It would be the first
great movement of people to that social and economic no man's land I
call "beyond civilization."

The Tribe of Crow, no longer suppressed, would grow--perhaps
explosively.

We wouldn't want that to happen, would we? Heavens to Betsy, no.

It would be chaotic. It might even be exciting.


Carlos, a runaway living under a loose grate in Manhattan's Riverside
Park, told Jennifer Toth: "I'd change the world so there would be a
place for us. A good place where we would have real freedom and not
live in a hole."

Some dangerous ideas here . . . a place for the homeless. . . a good
place . . . real freedom . . . not in a hole . . .


Put more guards on the walls. Reinforce the gates.










------------------------------------------------------------

P A R T    S I X
The New Tribal Revolution




You never change things by fighting the existing reality. 
To change something, build a new model that makes the 
existing model obsolete.

_BUCKMINSTER FULLER_




The tracks of our ancestors have been wiped away by the 
Great Forgetting. It's not up to us to replant their exact 
footprints, but to make our own, equally original tracks. 

_CARL COLE, AGE NINETEEN_




------------------------------------------------------------








		  __The Tribe of Crow--and others__


Thanks to his father, Jeffrey was able to live as a vagabond without
ever being stigmatized as homeless. He clearly had no interest in
working, but no one ever sneered "Get a job!" at him, because he never
needed to stick out his hand for alms. He may have been too lucky for
his own good, for had he been truly homeless, he might have found his
true place in the world as a member of the Tribe of Crow. But of
course this tribe isn't for everyone.

When I first described the New Tribal Revolution in _My Ishmael_, I
was rather like an astronomer describing a planet whose existence has
been deduced but which has yet to be seen by any eye. If asked, I
couldn't have furnished a single example of what I was talking about.
Only after a year of vague groping did it occur to me that the circus
(which I'd used as another sort of model in _Providence: The Story o f
a Fifty-Year Vision Quest_) is in fact organized in a way that is
authentically tribal. (And I subsequently added this example to later
editions of _My Ishmael_.) But even so: only a single example?

After more months of vague groping, I realized I was preoccupied by
the ethnic tribal model, designed to make a group of sixty or seventy
individuals totally self-sufficient. I was looking at size and
structure and forgetting benefits.


		      __The East Mountain News__


As soon as I began looking at the problem in a different way, I
realized that Rennie and I and two other people had once (quite
unconsciously) made our living in an authentically tribal way
producing the _East Mountain News_ in a vast area east of Albuquerque,
New Mexico. Rennie and I started the paper as a speculative venture
with virtually no capital. After putting out a couple of issues we got
a call from Hap Veerkamp, an old newspaper man living in forced
retirement (because no one would hire him at his age). He said he
could do literally anything on a newspaper--except sell advertising.
We said we'd love to have his stories and pictures, but if we didn't
find people who could sell advertising we were going to be out of
business very soon. He said he'd give it a shot. A few weeks later we
heard from C.J. Harper, a young woman who wanted desperately to be a
writer and who had an idea for a column that we might like. We liked
the column and we liked her. The next question was, "Can you sell
advertising?"

She said, "I can sell anything."








			  __Why it worked__


Suddenly we were in business--in a modest way. None of us was
salaried. At the end of the week, when the issue was out, Rennie would
sit down with C.J. and Hap and divvy up the advertising revenue that
was left over from paying the printing bill. It was our rule only to
print as much newspaper in any week as could be paid for out of
advertising revenue. If we had enough advertising for twelve pages, we
printed twelve, and that was "a good week." If we had only enough for
eight pages, we printed eight, and that was "a fair week."

The newspaper worked for us for two reasons. First, we all enjoyed a
very low standard of living, so what we got from the paper (a pittance
by normal standards) was enough. Second, it wasn't just a way of
making money. We all loved the paper and were intensely proud of our
contributions to it. Hap's photos were as good as any published in any
big-city paper. C.J.'s columns were fabulous. Rennie's features and
news stories could have served as journalism-school models. Still
slogging away at the sixth version of the book that would someday be a
novel called _Ishmael_, I gave only three days a week to the paper,
doing design and typesetting, but it gave me a break from writing and
a chance to do other things I enjoy.

We were nothing like the size of an ethnic tribe, nor were we living
in community, but we were nonetheless receiving the chief benefits of
tribal life.








		 __The East Mountain News as circus__


As at the circus, each of us had a job to do that was essential to the
success of the whole. As at the circus, the worst job was the boss's
(and that was held by Rennie); no one envied her or dreamed for a
moment that she was overpaid.

Just as at the circus, everyone knew the paper had to make money, but
making money wasn't the object. Like circus folks, we had a way of
making a living that suited us. To keep that, we had to keep the paper
going. We all _needed_ the paper.

Without discussing it, we all knew that, like a circus, we had to keep
the paper going so the paper could keep _us_ going. The only trouble
was, the tribe needed a couple members more, and we didn't quite see
this. The boss needed to share some of her more exhausting tasks--and
there were plenty of those, considering that we were covering an area
the size of Rhode Island. Rennie was being progressively worn out, but
the people we needed didn't present themselves to throw in their lot
with ours and (at the same time) to extend our business so that they
too could make their living from it. Several people presented
themselves to be _hired_, but they were only interested in the wage.
When they saw how little they'd be making, they walked away. They
weren't content to live out of the paper and make its success their
own, as the rest of us were doing.








	       __The success and failure of the paper__


The startling success of the paper was that, by building it tribally,
Rennie and I were able to start a business with almost no capital (a
very small amount of cash and some retired typesetting equipment
generously contributed by Rennie's brother, James). It would have
taken hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a paper in the
ordinary way, staffing it entirely with personnel hired at normal
wages. Built in the ordinary way, it might have taken five or more
years for the paper to break even. Built tribally, it broke even the
first week. Given the huge area to be covered and its relatively small
advertising base, the paper would never have generated enough profit
to appeal to a publisher with ordinary capitalistic goals. And in
fact, after we sold it (to a local real estate broker who intended to
run it just as a business), it failed very quickly.

Realistically speaking, the area at that time couldn't support a
newspaper as a capitalistic venture. What it could have supported was
a shopper (an advertising sheet with a few token stories). And in
fact, after the _East Mountain News_ folded, its place was taken by a
shopper.








			__The tribal benefit__


The Albuquerque paper didn't cover the news on "our side" of the
mountain at all, except for the occasional homicide. For the first
time ever, because of the _East Mountain News_, people were able to
find out what was going on in their area--school events, political
events, social events--the whole spectrum of life that counts as
"news." Though they had no way of knowing it, this was a direct
benefit of our willingness to build the paper tribally. Building in
the ordinary way, we couldn't have _afforded_ to offer a real
newspaper.

I wasn't personally invested in making the _East Mountain News_ a
"real" newspaper. My end of the business was putting the ads together.
Once, after a succession of four- and eight-page issues had left us
all feeling pinched, I said, "Why don't we just do a shopper?" This
was instantly voted down. Rennie, Hap, and C.J. were in it because it
was a _newspaper_, not because it earned money. The fact that it would
earn more money as a shopper was irrelevant to them. They would have
ceased getting what they _wanted_ if it had become a shopper, and just
having more money wouldn't have compensated them for the loss.

The important thing to see is that we were not "giving up" something
by being tribal. We were _getting_ something by being tribal--
something that would have been out of reach otherwise. We weren't
tribal because we were noble and altruistic; we were tribal because we
were greedy and selfish.








		   __What happened to Hap and Q.?__


We used the paper as a means of providing a living for all of us. For
example, when Hap needed a new tire, we traded the local tire company
an ad for it. When C.J. couldn't get a phone on her own signature, we
co-signed with her. We didn't doubt for a moment that, if our
positions had been reversed, they would have done the same for us.


When we sold the paper, we strongly advised the new owner to keep on
working with Hap and C.J., but he soon made it clear he had other
ideas. Hap by this time had become something of a celebrity through
his work on the paper, so he had no trouble getting a job on the
Torrance Country _Citizen_, a paper whose area of coverage overlapped
ours to the south. He's still there as of this writing. The picture of
me that appears on the dust jacket of _Providence_ was taken by him
while we were revisiting the area in 1993.

C.J. got married, left the area, and has been out of touch ever since.
If you see her, tell her we'd like to hear from her.








		 __Tribal business: the ingredients__


Merely being tribal is no guarantee of success, of course. The normal
elements needed for success have to be there as well. In our case,
there had to be a public need for a newspaper and a fairly large
number of businesses looking for an advertising venue, and we had both
those things.

But beyond that, Rennie and I were quite incredibly lucky in finding
two people who were ready to throw in their lot with ours in building
a newspaper, who were content to make a living out of it (as opposed
to a killing), and who were used to living on very little (as we were
ourselves). With all this, we could hardly miss.

I think what's needed at a minimum is a group of people (1) who, among
them, have all the competencies needed to start and run a given
business, (2) who are content with a modest standard of living, and
(3) who are willing to "think tribally"--that is, to take what they
need out of the business rather than to expect set wages.








	       __What ventures lend themselves to it?__


As far as I can see, any enterprise that can succeed in the
conventional way can succeed in the tribal way--with a few exceptions.
A business that's built around the work of a single individual doesn't
seem to lend itself to a tribal approach. For example, it's hard to
imagine an internist and his or her office staff working together
tribally. The disparity between what the internist puts in and what
everyone else puts in is just too great. On the other hand, a tribal
hospital isn't inconceivable, for there the internist would be putting
in the same amount as the surgeon, the administrator, the
anesthesiologist, and so on. I haven't been able to figure out any way
to make the author's business into a tribal one (unless s/he prefers
to be self-published).

To mention just a few things, restaurants, lawn-care businesses, and
construction businesses could all be done tribally (and I'm sure many
already are). Keep in mind that, as previously defined, a tribe is
nothing more than a coalition of people working together as equals to
make a living. I really see no limit to the possibilities.








		       __A new tribal venture__


People often ask if I consider myself a Leaver. In the past I replied,
Certainly not. I'm a prisoner of the same Taker economic system as you
are. I'm entirely dependent on the vast corporate machinery that
publishes, distributes, and sells my books." I then added that I'd be
very glad to _reduce my dependence_ on this machinery, even by ten
percent, for this would represent at least a ten percent liberation
from the prison. But only recently have Rennie and I taken decisive
steps to achieve that ten percent.

I produce a lot of material that has little or no "commercial" value
(is not attractive to the corporate publishing machine), but this
doesn't mean that it's of no interest to my readers. In order to make
this material available to those who want it (and hopefully to win
that ten-percent degree of freedom), we decided to start a company
called New Tribal Ventures, which will make certain of my works
available to the public _outside_ the corporate machinery of U.S.
publishing. For example, two short books called _The Book of the
Damned_ and _The Tales of Adam_ contain some of the most powerful
expressions of my ideas I've ever achieved, but everyone agrees
they're not "commercial" properties. These will be offered by New
Tribal Ventures as a two-volume set entitled _An Animist Testament_.








	     __Tribal tasks and organizational patterns__


In the neo-futurist company, all members of the tribe do
everything--write, perform, sell tickets, clean up, and so on. The
same is true in the Culpepper and Merriweather Great Combined Circus,
where all do everything--set up the tent, take care of the animals,
perform, and so on.

The _East Mountain News_ was organized differently. Hap and C.J.
gathered news and sold advertising. I assembled the ads and did the
typesetting and copy-editing. Rennie assembled all the news, did the
layout, and was responsible for a host of managerial chores--far too
many chores, as it turned out. Since no one had presented himself or
herself to assist in a tribal way, we needed to hire people to shoulder 
some of her burdens, but we weren't making enough money to do that.

We failed to see that one important chore was not being done by any
one of us, a chore that might be called _marketing_. No one presented
himself or herself to extend the living of the tribe by performing
this function. As a result, through lack of business sense and
expertise, we ended up running into a wall we couldn't get around. We
needed to hire support for Rennie, but were unable to do so because we
were missing a tribal member we didn't even know we were missing.

A self-sustaining tribe needs to perform _all_ the functions that will
make it successful. A tribe of cabinet makers is not going to succeed
without a member who knows how to _sell_ cabinets.








		    __Cradle-to-grave security?__


Undoubtedly the greatest benefit of the ethnic tribal life is that it
provides its members cradle-to-grave security. As I must always begin
by saying, this isn't the result of the saintliness or unselfishness
of tribal peoples. Baboons, gorillas, and chimpanzees enjoy exactly
the same sort of security in their social groups. Groups that provide
such security are obviously going to hold onto their members much more
readily than groups that don't. Once again, it's a matter of natural
selection. A group that doesn't take good care of its members is a
group that doesn't command much loyalty (and probably won't last
long).

But will occupational tribes provide such security to their members?
Not instantly, obviously. If you and your brother start a conventional
business on Tuesday, he can hardly expect to retire on Wednesday with
full salary for the rest of his life--though he may hope to do that in
twenty years, if he helps to build the business during that time.

The fact that ethnic tribes can provide their members with
cradle-to-grave security is a true measure of their wealth. The people
of our culture are rich in gadgets, machines, and entertainment, but
we're all too aware of the dreadful consequences of losing a job. For
some people--all too many--it seems to spell the end of the world;
they go "postal," pick up the nearest automatic weapon, open fire on
their former bosses, and finish off with a bullet in their own brains.
These are people who are definitely short on feelings of security.








		 __What about care for the elderly?__


I've been asked if "retired circus performers are cared for by young
performers" the way the elderly are cared for in ethnic tribes. This
isn't how circus life works--but it also isn't how ethnic tribal life
works. Old hunters aren't "cared for" by young hunters.

To begin with, a circus isn't just performers. Performers are vastly
outnumbered by people who do all sorts of things, just as the actors
you see on a movie screen are vastly outnumbered by the people
involved in putting that image on the screen. Next, to talk about
"retired circus performers" doesn't reflect the reality of circus
life--or the reality of life in an ethnic tribe, where there's no such
thing as a "retired hunter." When performers can no longer perform,
they move on to other jobs in the circus. They don't need to be "cared
for" just because they're no longer working the high wire or
performing acrobatics.

What's your model of 'care" for the elderly? If it includes all the
services of a state-of-the-art hospital, then obviously no tribe is
going to provide such a thing. IBM and General Motors don't run
hospitals for the use of their employees; they offer them health
insurance, which any tribe is free to do as well.

If your model of "care" for the elderly includes food, clothing,
shelter, and the same sort of attention that elderly people in ethnic
tribes receive, then this is perfectly well within the scope of an
occupational tribe.








			__Tribes of the mind__


People tend to imagine occupational tribes in a sort of
postapocalyptic fantasy world. They're startled when I point out that
they can have health insurance and retirement plans (if they want
them) or that the government is going to be just as interested in
collecting their taxes and social security payments as anyone else's.
But if that's the case, they then ask, what's the point of what we're
doing? If the world is just going to go on as before, why bother?
These are questions that can't be answered often enough.

Mother Culture teaches that a _savior_ is what we need--some giant St.
Arnold Schwarzenegger who is a sort of combination of Jesus,
Jefferson, Dalai Lama, Pope, Gandhi, Gorbachev, Napoleon, Hitler, and
Stalin all rolled into one. The other six billion of us, according to
Mother Culture, are helpless to do anything. We must simply wait
quietly until St. Arnold arrives.

Daniel Quinn teaches that _no_ single person is going to save the
world. Rather (if it's saved at all), it will be saved by millions
(and ultimately billions) of us _living a new way_. A thousand living
a new way won't cause the dominant world order to topple. But that
thousand will inspire a hundred thousand, who will inspire a million,
who will inspire a billion--and _then_ that world order will begin to
look shaky!

(Next someone will ask, "But if the dominant world order gets shaky,
what about my health insurance?")








		     __The tribe IS its members__


In a famous interchange at Columbia University, a faculty member who
asserted that the faculty _is_ the university was immediately told by
the president of the university (former U.S. president Dwight D.
Eisenhower) that the faculty are _employees_ of the university. Mr.
Eisenhower isn't on hand to contradict me when I say that the members
of the tribe aren't employees of the tribe, they _are_ the tribe.
Indeed, that's the whole difference.

Because the tribe _is_ its members, the tribe is what its members
_want_ it to be--nothing more and nothing less. If the members of your
tribe expect it to provide exactly the sort of cradle-to-grave
security that members of ethnic tribes enjoy, then make it so. But
this isn't a requirement and may end up making little sense in a world
of open tribes. In such a world, for example, it's perfectly
conceivable that a husband and wife could belong to different
occupational tribes--and that their children might want to belong to
different tribes as well. Indeed, this openness to diversity is the
whole point.

A tribe is a group of people making a living together, and there's no
one right way for this to be done.

Be inventive.








		    __Why make a living at all?__


People sometimes react to my proposals as though there were something
slightly distasteful and superfluous about the whole idea of "making a
living"--tribally or otherwise. They seem to feel that if the New
Tribal Revolution is all it's cracked up to be, then we shouldn't have
to "make a living" at all, we should be able to live like the birds of
the air.

Exactly so. That's the whole point, you might say.

Their misunderstanding isn't about the New Tribal Revolution; it's
about the birds of the air. Sparrows may be "free as birds," but this
doesn't mean they don't have to make a living. On the contrary, every
living thing on earth has to do this. Gnats, geese, dolphins,
chimpanzees, spiders, and frogs all have to expend energy to get what
they need to stay alive. There is no creature that spends its life
just lying there inert while needed resources flow in and do the work
of keeping it alive. Even the green plants have a living to make. Each
one is like a cottage industry, a regular little factory that takes
energy from the sun and busily converts it into its own substance.

The tribe, in fact, is just a wonderfully efficient social
organization that renders making a living easy for all--unlike
civilization, which renders it easy for a privileged few and hard for
the rest.








		      __Another tribal example__


The Neo-Futurists are an ensemble of artists who write, direct, and
perform their own work dedicated to social, political, and personal
enlightenment in the form of audience-interactive conceptual theater.
(These words from the group's online Statement of Purpose.) Working in
a "low/no tech poor theatre format," the group put together a unique
postmodern dramatic endeavor that features an ever-changing collection
of thirty plays performed in sixty minutes under the umbrella title
_Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind_. This signature work has (as
of this writing) been running in Chicago since December 1, 1988, and
had a successful run at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York
City in 1993. In 1992 the Neo-Futurists opened their own
Neo-Futurarium, boasting a 154-seat theater and an art gallery.

As many as thirteen members are active in the company at any one time,
though the average performance tends to involve only eight or so. In
addition to writing, directing, and performing _Too Much Light_, these
thirteen perform virtually all chores associated with the theater and
the production--manning the box office, cleaning up, recycling,
producing the programs, buying the props, and so on.








		    __Scuffling in the usual way__


In a study of Gypsies and other itinerant peoples, anthropologist
Sharon Bohn Gmelch lists some reasons these groups survive. They keep
overhead low and have little interest in "material accumulation and
capital expansion." They're willing to "exploit 'marginal'
opportunities," to "fill gaps" in the economy, and to "accept a narrow
profit margin from multiple sources." In short, they're experienced
scufflers, as were all the residents of Madrid when we lived
there--and as were all the members of the _East Mountain News_, none
of whom made one hundred percent of his or her living from the
newspaper.

The same is true of The Neo-Futurists. Though their goal is to make a
living from the theater, most were probably deriving only twenty to
fifty percent of their income from it in 1998, according to founder
Greg Allen (who supplements his income by teaching theater history at
Columbia College). Others have part-time jobs as massage therapist,
physical trainer, CD-ROM writer, ultrasound technician, astrologer,
secretaries, traditional waiters, and one "honest-to-god rock star in
a famous punk band."

One of the company, Geryll Robinson, writes: "I wish I could lead my
life without supporting/being supported by corporate America. I can't.
I engage in a number of odd and often messy activities that people
give me money for . . . I visited Chicago. I saw _Too Much Light_. I
wanted in. I moved here. I auditioned. Now they own me. My life is
good. Very good."








		    __But can't an X be a tribe?__


This is a question I'm asked again and again--substituting various
terms for X. For example, I've been asked if an already-established
conventional business can be converted into a tribal one. Yes,
possibly, but with difficulty, the main one being that most people
involved in conventional businesses are there for a wage, period.
Some, having climbed up the wage scale, wouldn't care to climb down.
Just as these might not be happy having less than a wage, others might
not be happy having more than a wage--they just want to do their work
and go home. But of course nothing's impossible.

A student in my Houston seminar asked if a bunch of people couldn't
just get together and live tribally, and make their living elsewhere,
individually. Certainly, and this is fine, but this is a commune, not
a tribe, precisely because they're not involved in making a living
together.

But can't a tribe be a commune--and can't a commune be a tribe?

We need some background to get at these questions.








		 __Communities and tribes: origins__


Like Topsy, most of the communities we inhabit just "grow'd," without
mother or father, as it were. Once upon a time a century ago--or two
or five--a general store was joined by a feed store, a butcher, a
livery stable, a smithy, a tavern, and these were soon joined by a
bank, a dry goods shop, a boarding house, a lawyer, a barber, a
doctor, and so on. At some point or other, all realized they had a
stake in the community's success--and in each other's success to a
certain degree. The banker certainly wanted some grocer to succeed,
but he didn't care whether it was Smith or Jones. The owner of the
boarding house wanted some barber to succeed, but she didn't care
whether it was Anderson or Adams.

Communes never begin in this haphazard way. They're intentional
communities, originating among people who want to live together in
pursuit of common ideals, usually in relative isolation. Communes are
about living together and may or may not involve working together.

Tribes (and I speak here of "new" tribes, of course) originate among
people who want to pool their energies and skills to make a living
together. Tribes are about working together and may or may not involve
living together.








		__Communities and tribes: membership__


To the extent allowed by law and custom, ordinary communities make it
their policy to exclude certain kinds of people and include all the
rest. In other words, unless you belong to some abhorred race,
religion, social class, or ethnic group, you're welcome to move in.

Communes proceed in the opposite way. Their policy is to include
certain kinds of people and exclude all the rest. In other words,
unless you subscribe to the group's special values (social, political,
or religious), you're _not_ welcome to move in. The tribal rule of
thumb is: _Can you extend the living to include yourself?_ In other
words, if you want to live out of the tribal occupation, you'll have
to extend the group's earning power to the point where it covers you.
This is exactly what Hap and C.J. did for the _East Mountain News_. We
couldn't have included them in the business if they hadn't extended it
by selling advertising.








		   __Can't a tribe be a commune?__


A s I said above, tribes are about working together and may or may not
involve living together. But tribal people can live together without
becoming a commune. Speaking of artisan, trader, and entertainer
minorities such as Gypsies, Norwegian Taters, Irish Travelers, and the
Nandiwalla of India, anthropologist Sharon Bohn Gmelch notes
specifically that the social organization of these groups is flexible
and "at its core, noncommunal."

The difficulty I see with a tribe becoming a commune is that communes
traditionally choose their members on the basis of shared ideals.
Shared ideals aren't irrelevant to tribal applicants, but they're
overridden by the question "Can you extend our livelihood to include
yourself?"

I can certainly say that it didn't occur to any of us on the _East
Mountain News_ that we should "start a commune." The idea would have
struck us as ludicrous.

The tribe isn't about _living_ together but about _making a living
together_.








		   __Can't a commune be a tribe?__


The answer is, "Yes, a commune can definitely be a tribe; it's just a
problematical way to begin."

Communes generally start with people who want to "get away from it
all." Separating themselves from a corrupt, materialistic, and unjust
society, they typically want to live "close to nature" alongside
people with similar ideals. Because they intend to live simply, making
a living seems almost incidental. They may farm, produce craft goods,
or commute to ordinary jobs. As time goes on, all may work out exactly
as planned--or it may not. Rustic simplicity may be less charming than
expected. Perhaps some become bored with the work. Nerves fray, ideals
are forgotten, friendships dissolve, and the thing is soon over. Or it
may take a different direction. The members may refocus their
attention from ideals to making a living together in a way that's more
satisfactory. Remember, however, that this group originally came
together on an entirely different basis, so it will be luck rather
than design if they actually have some occupational interests and
skills in common.

It's rather like going shopping for groceries that start with the
letter _m_--mustard, mango, mackerel, mayonnaise, macaroni, and so
on--and then later wondering if you happen to have the ingredients for
_Cassoulet du Chef Toulousian_. It could happen, of course, but it's
not as likely as if you'd gone shopping for those ingredients in the
first place.








	   __"Let's do the show right here in the barn!"__


In cinematic legend this catch phrase springs to Mickey Rooney's lips
in half a dozen movies he made with Judy Garland in the 1940s. Whether
it was ever uttered in any film, its meaning is clear. Everyone
understands that it emanates from a troupe of young entertainers
looking for a chance to show off their talents.

It's important to note that it doesn't emanate from a group of people
trying to _invent_ something they might do together. In fact, they're
a group because they _already know_ what they can do together. Show
business brought them together in the same way that the newspaper
business brought us together with Hap and C.J. We might have been the
best of friends, but only the newspaper could have pulled us together
into a tribe. If we'd made up our minds to open an antique store or a
computer software business, Hap and C.J. would never have been
involved, no matter how close to them we might have been.

I say all this in answer to a question that must be in the back of
many minds: Can't a bunch of miscellaneous friends become a tribe? The
answer is yes, just the way a commune can become a tribe. It's
perfectly possible, it's just not very likely--unless that bunch of
friends was drawn together in the first place by a common occupational
focus (as were the Neo-Futurists).








		__Aren't the Amish a farming tribe?__


The Amish are a religious sect, an offshoot of the Mennonites. Here's
what makes them communal rather than tribal: If you apply for
membership, they'll be much more interested in your religious beliefs
and your moral character than in your agricultural ambitions.

A commune "can be" a tribe, just as a lighthouse "can be" a grain silo
and a prom gown "can be" a nurse's uniform. But the fact remains that
we give things different names because we perceive them as different
things. In Colonial New England, the settlers started communes, not
tribes, and they knew the difference. Tribes were for savages and
communes were for civilized people.

People will also ask, "Isn't Ben & Jerry's a tribal business?" And the
answer is, Ben & Jerry's was a tribal business when Ben and Jerry were
the company's only employees, personally making ice cream in a
four-and-a-half-gallon freezer and scooping it up for customers in a
remodeled gas station in Burlington, Vermont. After that point, their
business grew not by adding members to their tribe but by adding
employees in the conventional way. Ben & Jerry's isn't a tribal
business, it's a values-led business (which doesn't make it any less
admirable). Can a values-led business be a tribal business? Of course.
It just isn't _automatically_ a tribal business.

It's not my intention (or within my power) to divest the word _tribe_
of its ordinary meanings. Rather it's my intention to invest it with a
special one when used in the context of the New Tribal Revolution.








			  __Noble savages?__


While considering what it would take to start a health-care tribe, a
physician mentioned the fact that medical professionals in our society
generally have a pretty high standard of living--clearly implying that
she perceived this to be some sort of obstacle or problem. A few
questions revealed that she was unconsciously picturing the members of
her health-care tribe as noble savages--too noble to charge for their
services (and therefore unable to maintain the standard of living
they're used to).

It's hard to know how to cope with this familiar bipolarity, which
sees people as incapable of being anything but either totally selfish
or totally altruistic. Like an on/off switch, they can only flop from
one pole to the other. Tribal life functions in between these poles,
and a tribe of totally altruistic individuals will fail as surely as a
tribe of totally selfish individuals.

If a physician decided s/he would rather have a general practice in a
small town than a specialized practice in a big city, would s/he
expect to work for nothing? Of course not. People in small towns
expect to pay for medical services. If a physician decides s/he would
rather belong to a health-care tribe than to a conventional hospital,
why would s/he expect to work for nothing? People know that
physicians, whether they work in tribes or in hospitals, have to make
a living just like everyone else.








		 __An intermittent tribal business__


As the 1973 film _The Sting_ opens, we follow a pair of grifters,
Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) and Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones),
as they work a short con known as the Jamaican Handkerchief on a man
who, unbeknownst to them, is carrying money to mob boss Doyle Lonnegan
(Robert Shaw). When Lonnegan learns of the con, he has Coleman
murdered. To avenge his partner, Hooker decides to take Lonnegan for a
really big score. As he sets this in train, we see that he belongs to
a whole tribe of grifters, who generally make their living in straight
jobs (for example as clerks or bank tellers) but who are always ready
to come together as a tribe in one of the classic "big cons." A
striking point is made of their readiness. When the single, wordless
signal is given, they instantly abandon their jobs. Without asking how
big the score will be or what their share is, they come together
smoothly to assemble an elaborate theatrical production called a "big
store." As in the circus, each member is supremely important when his
or her moment comes. One studies Lonnegan to discover how to lure him
into the con. Others work on sets, on costumes, on props. Though Henry
Gondorff (Paul Newman) is clearly the boss, this doesn't make him
uniquely important. All the jobs _must_ be done--and the boss's is
just one of them. In hierarchal organizations, the boss is a supreme
being. In tribal organizations, the boss is just another worker. (This
is exactly the way it was on the _East Mountain News_.)








		    __My next tribal enterprise__


Long before I identified the concept as tribal, I wanted to open a
circus of learning such as I described in _Providence_ and _My
Ishmael_. Now I have a better idea of how to make this work in
reality. Houston appeals to me because it isn't zoned, making it a
crazy quilt of residential and commercial districts, and no one fusses
if you run a business from your home. This makes it an ideal site for
a learning circus, which combines spaces for working, exhibition, and
performance to provide a center for work, play, performance, and
education, involving (as teachers, performers, and participants)
acrobats, jugglers, clowns, dancers, musicians, actors, set designers,
magicians, lighting technicians, film makers, writers, potters,
painters, sculptors, photographers, weavers, costumers, carpenters,
electricians, and so on. No grades, no required courses, no
tests--just learn all you want, whenever you want. Although open to
all-age learners, it would make a marvelous resource for parents
homeschooling their children, an option becoming more and more popular
everywhere, with good reason. (Please note, however, that this isn't a
"community learning center" for "student-directed learning." These are
fine things, but I'm aiming at entertainment, not civic good works.)
Someone asked why students would prefer this learning circus over a
university. The two aren't competitive, and the strictly career-minded
will surely prefer the more conventional of the two. 

No timetable exists for this grand enterprise.








		    __To distinguish is to know__


It's important for me to point out (before others do) that I didn't
invent tribal businesses; I just distinguished them from conventional
ones and so made them especially visible. Now that you know what they
are, you'll probably see them everywhere. In discussion with my
seminar, Rennie brought to mind one we know in Portland, Oregon, the
Rimskykorsakoffeehouse. This quirky local landmark, the creation of
quirky local celebrity Goody Cable, almost has to be experienced to be
believed. To take a table is to enter a special world that can really
only be adequately described as tribal. When things get especially
busy, customers will often be pressed into service to wait tables, and
I know of one local author who waits tables one night a week just for
the privilege of belonging to the tribe. There are often long lines of
people waiting to get in; they like being there because the people
working there obviously _like_ being there. Tribal people get more out
of life.


Just think. It's taken me thirty thousand words to make those seven
sound plausible.








	    __The civilized hate and fear tribal people__


People in traveling shows of every kind are viewed as exciting but
dangerous people, people to be shunned when they're offstage. This is
part of their allure, especially for the young. In past ages Gypsies
were constantly suspected of stealing children, probably because more
than a few children in fact succumbed to the lure of Gypsy life. It's
long been suspected that the tribalism of the Jews has contributed to
their demonization. And certainly no effort has been spared on our
part to destroy the tribalism of native peoples wherever we find them.
Their tribalism is the very emblem of their "backwardness" and
"savagery."

The civilized want people to be dependent on the prevalent hierarchy,
not on each other. There's something inherently evil about people
making themselves self-sufficient in small groups. This is why the
homeless must be rousted wherever they collect. This is why the Branch
Davidian community at Waco had to be destroyed; they'd never been
charged with any crime, much less convicted--but they _had_ to be
doing something very, very nasty in there. The civilized want people
to make their living individually, and they want them to live
separately, behind locked doors--one family to a house, each house
fully stocked with refrigerators, television sets, washing machines,
and so on. That's the way _decent_ folks live. Decent folks don't live
in tribes, they live in communities.

Yet, oddly enough, as soon as you hold up the tribe as something
desirable, decent folks will start insisting they're as tribal as any
Bushman or Blackfoot.








		      __Tribes and communities__


Pressed into a hierarchal mold, the tribe becomes what the civilized
call a community. Within the hierarchy of civilization in any age,
community exhibits self-similarity at many different scales. The
medieval Yorkshire village of Wharram Percy was a microcosm of feudal
England, just as Evanston is a microcosm of modern America. This sort
of fractal self-similarity between microcosm and macrocosm is, as John
Briggs and David F. Peat point out, "a product of all the complex
internal feedback relationships going on in a dynamical system" like
our own. It's inevitable that Evanston--and East L.A. and Harlem and
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma--are all going to reflect the hierarchal
organization of our society as a whole, with rich folks here,
middle-class folks here, and poor folks there. It doesn't matter that
the rich of Evanston are better off than the rich of East LA. or that
the poor of Harlem are worse off than the poor of Broken Arrow. The
_structure_ is there.

The word _community_ is itself an acknowledgment of decency and is
withheld from the undeserving. Homosexuals struggled long and hard to
become "the gay _community_," but pederasts and pornographers don't
stand a chance. Hoodlums, criminals, convicts, and religious fanatics
don't have communities, they have gangs, mobs, populations, and cults.

I can imagine totally decent people being attracted to Objectivism or
Voluntary Simplicity or Creative Individualism. I have a harder time
imagining them being attracted to the tribal life. Maybe it's just me.








		  __A parable about sustainability__


An inventor brought his plans for a new device to an engineer, who
looked at them and said, "What you've got here is systemically flawed,
which means it'll destroy itself after just a few minutes of
operation."

"Not if it's well made," the inventor replied. "Every part must be
made of the finest material and to very exact specifications."

The engineer had the device built, but it destroyed itself after just
four minutes of operation. The inventor wasn't discouraged. "You
didn't do what I told you," he said. "You've got to use much finer
materials--the finest available--and make the parts to the most exact
specifications."

The engineer tried again, and the new model worked for eight minutes.
"You see?" said the inventor. "We're making tremendous progress. Try
again, using even finer materials and more exact specifications." The
new device lasted for ten minutes. The engineer was told to build yet
another model, using still finer materials and still more exact
specifications. The new model lasted for eleven minutes.

The inventor wanted to go on and on in this way, striving for perfect
parts, but the engineer refused, saying, "Can't you see that our
returns are diminishing here? It's a waste of time to try to make a
dysfunctional design work by improving its parts. Bring me a viable
design, and I'll guarantee you a device that'll work for years, using
parts made from ordinary materials, to ordinary specifications."








	       __Why what we've got is unsustainable__


It's a fundamental tenet of our cultural mythology that the only thing
wrong with us is that humans are not made well enough. We need to be
made of finer materials, to some set of better specifications
(provided, perhaps, by greened-up versions of our traditional
religions). We just need to be made kinder, gentler, sweeter, more
loving, less selfish, more far-sighted, and so on, then everything
will be fine. Of course, no one succeeded in making us better last
year or the year before that or the year before that or the year
before that--or indeed any year in recorded history--but maybe _this_
year we'll get lucky . . . or next year or the year after that.

What I've endeavored to say in all my books is that the flaw in our
civilization isn't in the people, it's in the _system_. It's true that
the system has been clanking along for ten thousand years, which is a
long time in the timescale of an individual life, but when viewed in
the timescale of human history, this episode isn't remarkable for its
epic length but for its tragic brevity.

In _Ishmael_ I compared our civilizational contraption to an aircraft
that has been in the air for ten thousand years--but in free fall
rather than in flight. If we stay with it, we'll crash with it, and
soon. But if most of us lighten its load by abandoning it, it can
probably stay in the air for a long time (while the rest of us try
something that makes better sense).








	       __Let's bail out and go over the wall!__


Professor of anthropology James W. Fernandez writes, "Anthropologists,
unlike philosophers, find that cultural worlds are brought into being
by the performance (enactment) of _mixed metaphors_." (Emphasis
added.)

So there. I'm happy to mix a few metaphors in the cause of bringing
into being a new cultural world.


After several hours spent discussing the movement beyond civilization
to tribal living, one of the members of my seminar said he still
couldn't see how it would serve to make human life more sustainable.
We've come a ways since the last time I addressed this issue, so I
should probably address it again here. It's a valid and important
question. The New Tribal Revolution may give people a better life, but
if it doesn't serve to perpetuate our species beyond a few decades,
what's the point?

Right now there are about six billion of us in what I've called the
culture of maximum harm. Only ten percent of these six billion are
being maximally harmful--are gobbling up resources at top speed,
contributing to global warming at top speed, and so on--but the other
ninety percent, having nothing better in sight, want only to be like
the ten percent. They envy that ten percent and are convinced that
living in a way that is maximally harmful is the best way to live of
all.

If we don't give them something better to want, we're doomed.








			__A systemic change__


The New Tribal Revolution is an escape route from the prison of our
culture. The walls of that prison are economic. That is, the need to
make a living keeps us inside, because there's no way to make a living
on the _other_ side. We can't employ the Mayan Solution--we can't
disappear into a life of ethnic tribalism. But we can disappear into a
life of _occupational_ tribalism.

Will this leave our civilization a smoking ruin? Certainly not. It
will _diminish_ it. As more and more people see that going over the wall
means getting something better (not "giving up" something), more and
more people will abandon the culture of maximum harm--and the more
this culture is abandoned, the better. The escape route leads beyond
civilization, beyond the thing that, according to our cultural
mythology, is humanity's very last invention.

The escape route leads to humanity's _next_ invention.

But even so, will this next invention give us a sustainable lifestyle?
Here's how I assess this. Humans living in tribes was as ecologically
stable as lions living in prides or baboons living in troops. The
tribal life wasn't something humans sat down and figured out. It was
the gift of natural selection, a proven success--not perfection but
hard to improve on. Hierarchalism, on the other hand, has proven to be
not merely imperfect but ultimately catastrophic for the earth and for
us. When the plane's going down and someone offers you a parachute,
you don't demand to see the warranty.








	    __But why "humanity's" next great adventure?__


In _The Story of B_ and elsewhere I made a great point of establishing
the fact that we--the Takers, the people of this culture--are _not_
humanity, and I'll certainly never draw back from that statement. It
isn't humanity that is presently converting this planet's biomass into
human mass, it's the people of one culture--ours. It isn't humanity
that is pressing thousands of species into extinction every year by
its expansion, it's the people of one culture--ours.

Why then do I describe the New Tribal Revolution as "humanity's" next
great adventure instead of "our" next great adventure? The answer is
simple: civilization was not "our" adventure. As I've pointed out
again and again in this book, civilization was an adventure that many
peoples embarked upon. "We" weren't the only ones; we were just the
only ones who stuck with it to the point of self-immolation. And if
civilization wasn't just "our" great adventure, how could the _next_
great adventure be just "ours"?

The New Tribal Revolution isn't intended to be ours alone--anyone can
join who wants to, after all. But neither is it compulsory. The old
tribalism with which humanity became humanity is as good as it ever
was. It will never wear out or become obsolete. Landing on the moon
was a great achievement for humanity, but that doesn't mean all humans
have to do it.










------------------------------------------------------------

P A R T    S E V E N 
Beyond Civilization



An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by 
gradually winning over and converting its opponents . . . . 
What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and 
that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from 
the beginning.

_MAX PLANCK_





------------------------------------------------------------








			    __Liberation__


During a period when millions were being liquidated as "enemies of the
people," there was a certain "dangerous" poet who was famous for his
uncanny ability to avoid Stalin's displeasure. A French journalist
sought him out to ask if he'd been silenced under the latest reign of
terror.

"Silenced!" the poet cried indignantly. "I declaim my poetry from the
stage of the -------- Theater every Monday night!"

The journalist made a point of being there the following Monday, only
to find the theater dark and locked. He hung around indecisively for a
hour, then, as he was about to leave, a side door opened and the poet
slipped out into the night.

"What happened?" the journalist asked him. "I thought you were going
to read here tonight."

"I _did_ read here tonight," the poet declared emphatically. It just so
happens that I'm at my best when reading before an empty house."


When people say my books have inspired them to "go someplace and start
a commune," I have to wish them the best of luck--and bite back the
impulse to tell them this is very far from anything I had in mind. If
you can only be free living on a mountaintop or a desert island, then
clearly you're something less than free.








		    __Listening to the children__


Whether by intention or not, suicides often reveal themselves in their
choice of means. The guilty hang themselves. Sacrificial victims slash
their throats. The discarded throw themselves off buildings or
bridges. Tormented minds blow their brains out. Jeffrey in _My
Ishmael_ walked into a lake, telling us he'd failed to find his true
element. He just couldn't get into his lungs the air others seem to
breathe so easily.

I've talked about Jeffrey (or his real-life prototype, Paul Eppinger)
to many audiences, always with the feeling that I haven't made my
point, which is that he wasn't extraordinary. He's to be found
everywhere among our children--if only we'll start listening. I don't
just mean listening to their words--they may not have the words.
Listen to the stories they tell with their gestures of profound
alienation and despair, the stories of pandemic suicide, of drug use
among younger and younger children every year, of mind-boggling acts
of violence committed by round-faced teens against their families and
friends. Listen to their words as well, of course, but never forget
that they've been schooled to say what people want to hear; the mass
murderers among them are almost always remembered as nice, polite
youngsters.

I know I've failed to make myself understood when people tell me
Jeffrey "should have gone to a commune." This idea represents a
profound misunderstanding of where the space of our freedom is to be
discovered.








		     __The Littleton bloodbath__


The previous page was written half a year before the mindboggling act
of violence committed on "Free Cookie Day," April 20, 1999, at
Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where fifteen died in
half as many minutes. Even though the perpetrators of this massacre
were two intensely unpopular boys, one classmate afterward managed to
remember at least one of them as _nice_.

I was unpopular at my own high school--not quite as unpopular as those
two, but I dealt with it the same way, by flouting it and even
perversely cultivating it. I too had an accomplice, achieving some
"solidarity in exclusion." Both of us resorted to violence on
occasion, but of course we didn't dream of assassinating hundreds,
dynamiting the school, and crashing an airplane into a city block.

Things were different then, almost half a century ago--not that they
were "good old days." We were never allowed to forget that one wrong
word or one insane moment could trigger a nuclear holocaust that would
leave our world a smoking ruin. But if that didn't happen, we two
faced a future of literally unlimited promise. No one had as yet
realized we were in the process of making the earth uninhabitable. No
one had as yet doubted that we could go on living exactly this way
_forever_. So we had _hope_--bushels, acres, and tons of hope. We had
a way to go that we _knew_ would work. We had _choices_. We didn't
doubt for a moment that we could do _anything_ we really wanted to do,
because everything was just going to go on exactly _this_ way, getting
better and better and better and better and better and better and
better and better and better and better and better . . . forever.








		    __Listening to the monsters__


Would Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have become "the monsters next
door" (as _Time_ magazine dubbed them) if they'd had another way to
go? At school they were harassed as "dirtbags" and "faggots" and
pummeled with bottles and rocks thrown from classmates' passing cars.
Did they go there because they _wanted_ this abuse? No, we understand
perfectly well why they went there: they had no choice in the matter.
They "had" to go, compelled by law and social pressure. If they'd had
another way to go, they would have disappeared from Columbine long
before their only dream became a dream of vengeance and suicide.

Would brain scans have revealed they were "genetically inclined to
violence?" Perhaps so, and so what? A brain scan might reveal the same
about me. Remind me to tell you about the time I came within a split
second of killing a man with my bare hands, a catastrophe only averted
by the narrowest margin of good luck for us both. Being "genetically
inclined to violence" doesn't doom you to becoming a mass
murderer--but having no hope may do just that. Frankenstein's creature
only became a monster when he saw he could never be anything else.

It's estimated that, since the days of my youth, depression among
children has increased by 1000% and teen suicide by 300%. Since 1997,
classroom-assassins have killed two in Mississippi, three in Kentucky,
five in Arkansas, and thirteen in Colorado. Make a graph of these
numbers and watch them go exponential in years to come--unless we
start giving our kids a new way to go and some real hope for the
future.








		   __A cultural space of our own__


People who are reluctant to spend their lives building some pharaoh's
pyramid all have a common need, but the need is felt most acutely by
the young, who are the real pack-animals of the operation. Sixty years
ago raw graduates took jobs in factories, where they could at least
expect to climb the same ladder of advancement as their parents. In
the postindustrial age young people (as James E. Cote and Anton L.
Allahar point out) are becoming increasingly ghettoized in retail and
service sectors, where they endlessly lift and carry, stock shelves,
push brooms, bag groceries, and flip burgers, gaining no skills and
seeing no path of advancement ahead of them.

For them and for us, it isn't geographical space we want, it's
cultural space. Carlos, who made his home under a grate in Riverside
Park, knew that a certain kind of freedom comes with living in a hole.
But he also knew it isn't "real freedom" if you have to live in a hole
to get it. He wanted the kind of freedom people have when they live
where they please and don't have to resort to a hole, even in "the
scenic Ozarks" or "the foothills of Kentucky." He wanted a whole
world's worth of freedom--and so do most of us, I think. To get that,
we'll have to take the world back from the pharaohs. It won't be hard.
They're not expecting it--but even if they were, they'd be helpless to
stop it.








	       __Why things didn't end up a-changin'__


Lots of songs about revolution came out during the hippie era of the
1960s and 1970s, but the revolution itself never materialized, because
it didn't occur to the revolutionaries that they had to come up with a
revolutionary way of _making a living_. Their signature contribution
was starting communes--a hot new idea from the same folks who gave us
powdered wigs.

When the money ran out and parents got fed up, the kids looked around
and saw nothing to do but line up for jobs at the quarries. Before
long, they were dragging stones up to the same pyramids their parents
and grandparents and great-grandparents had been working on for
centuries.

This time it'll be different. It'd better be.








		      __Another story to be in__


As developed in _Ishmael_, the "story" we're enacting in our culture
is this: _The world was made for Man to conquer and rule, and Man was
made to conquer and rule it; and under Man's rule, the world might
have become a paradise except for the fact that he's fundamentally and
irremediably flawed_. This story--itself mythology--is the foundation
for all our cultural mythology, and I said in _Ishmael_ that it isn't
possible for people simply to give up living in such a story. They
must have _another story to be in_.

It didn't occur to me when I wrote these words that people might
imagine this "other" story to be a brand-new fabrication that I or
some panel of mythologists was going to sit down and conjure up out of
nothing, but of course a few did. But oddly enough, when challenged to
articulate this other story, which I'd described as having been
enacted here during the first three million years of human life, I
found I couldn't do it in any very convincing fashion. This was
because I was trying to formulate it in a way that was parallel to
ours, point by point. I failed to realize for a good long time that
the other story was much simpler (much more "primitive") than
ours--and that I'd _already_ articulated it. To my mind it's the most
beautiful story ever told. 

_There is no one right way for people to live_.








			 __No one right way__


Once you recognize it, it's perfectly clear that this is the story
that was enacted here during the first three or four million years of
human life. Of course, there's a clear sense in which ours is just a
special case of a much wider story, written in the living community
itself from the beginning, some five billion years ago: _There is no
one right way for ANYTHING to live_.


No one right way to hinge a jaw. 
No one right way to build a nest. 
No one right way to design an eye. 
No one right way to move underwater.
No one right way to breed. 
No one right way to bear young. 
No one right way to shape a wing. 
No one right way to attack your prey. 
No one right way to defend yourself against attack.


This is how we humans got from there to here, by enacting this story,
and it worked sensationally well until about ten thousand years ago,
when one _very_ odd culture sprang into being obsessed with the notion
that there must be a single right way for people to live--and indeed a
single right way to do almost anything.








			 __Gotcha this way!__


But these words will hardly be taken in before some wiseacre thinks to
ask: "But aren't you saying, Mr. Quinn, that _the tribal way_ is the
right way for people to live?"

I'm saying nothing of the kind. As I noted above, the gifts of natural
selection aren't perfect (much less "right"), but they're damned hard
to improve on. The tribal way isn't the right way, it's just a way
that worked for millions of years, in contrast to the hierarchal way,
which has brought us face to face with extinction after a mere ten
thousand years.

For all I know, the tribal way may in the future be superceded by some
other way that works better for us in circumstances that are obviously
going to be very different from those of the past. In fact, isn't that
exactly what I'm proposing in these pages? After all, I'm not
suggesting we return to the tribal way as it was known here during the
first three million years of human life--or as it's still known among
surviving aboriginal peoples. Old-style ethnic tribalism is, for the
foreseeable future, utterly out of reach for us.

The tribalism of the New Tribal Revolution isn't proposed as an
end--as something _right_ and to be clung to at any cost--it's
proposed as a beginning, at a time when we must either make a new
beginning or reconcile ourselves to joining the dinosaurs in the very
near future.








			 __Gotcha that way!__


Someone else will try this: "But aren't you in fact saying, Mr. Quinn,
that having no one right way to live is _the one right way to live?_"

No, I'm not saying that, because that's just meaningless babble.
Having no one right way to live is _not_ a way to live, any more than
having no one right way to cook an egg is a way to cook an egg.

Knowing that there's no one right way to live won't tell you how to
live, any more than knowing that there's no one right time to go to
bed will tell you when to go to bed.








		   __The beginning is not the end__


Beyond civilization isn't a geographical space up in the mountains or
on some remote desert isle. It's a cultural space that opens up among
people with new minds.

Old minds think: 
_How do we solve these problems?_

New minds think:
_How do we make happen what we want to happen?_

As you discuss the ideas found in this book with your friends, you'll
be able to spot the old minds easily. They're the ones who are always
"playing the devil's advocate," always proposing and concentrating on
difficulties, always nailing the progress of your dialogue down to
problems. Focus instead on what you want to happen and how to make it
happen, rather than on all the things that might keep it from
happening.

Believe it or not, a real person once said to me, "Yes, but won't we
still have to pay taxes?" Yes, and you'll still have to curb your dog
and observe the speed limit and shovel your sidewalks when it snows.
And it will still be a good idea to get to the airport a few minutes
before your flight leaves.








			__What, no miracles?__


Jack and Jill spent some days with their friend Simon on his small
sailboat. One morning they woke up to find the boat was sinking.

"What in the world are we going to do?" Jill asked.

"Don't worry," said Jack, "Simon's very ingenious."

Simon called to them, "Come on, we've got to abandon ship."

Jill was alarmed, but Jack reassured her that Simon wouldn't let them
down.

"We're only a hundred yards from shore," Simon said. "Let's go!"

"But how are we going to save ourselves?" the couple wanted to know.

"We're going to swim for it, of course!" Seeing Jack's look of
disappointment, Simon asked him what was wrong.

Jack said, "I was hoping you could find a way of translating us
directly ashore, _without our having to get wet_."


An early reader expressed the same disappointment with me. He was
hoping I'd be able to find a way of translating us directly to our new
economic homeland without our having to "get wet" in the Taker economy
that surrounds us. The ultimate New Tribal economy (which at best I
can only dimly imagine) is the dry land ahead. To reach it while
holding ourselves disdainfully aloof from the economy around us would
make walking on water seem like a very minor miracle indeed.








		       __140 words of advice__


You don't have to have all the answers. Certainly I don't have them.
It's always better to say "I don't know" than to fake it and get into
hot water.


Make people formulate their own questions. Don't take on the
responsibility of figuring out what their difficulty is.

Never try to answer a question you don't understand. Make the askers
explain it; keep on insisting until it's clear, and nine times out of
ten they'll supply the answer themselves.


People will listen when they're ready to listen and not before.
Probably, once upon a time, _you_ weren't ready to listen. Let people
come to it in their own time: Nagging or bullying will only alienate
them.

Don't waste time with people who want to argue. They'll keep you
immobilized forever. Look for people who are _already_ open to
something new.








			__A dynamite ending__


Like any author, I figured that, when the time came, I'd have a
dynamite ending for this book--a great clash of cymbals, a ray of pure
sunshine knifing through the clouds (you know), but nothing like that
presented itself. I mentioned this to Rennie yesterday afternoon, just
as a matter of interest. I wasn't expecting her to work on the
problem, because it didn't occur to me it _was_ a problem. All the
same, at three in the morning, she woke me up to explain why no
terrific ending had presented itself and why no terrific ending was
_going_ to present itself. While she was at it, she told me I should
include Hap and C.J. in the dedication and that this was the first of
my books she actually _wanted_ to have dedicated to her (the other
dedications she more or less just put up with).

There's no ending in this book at all, she told me, because it's all
one hundred percent _beginning_, and of course she's right.

But this just means no dynamite ending is going to turn up _here_. The
dynamite ending is on the other side of this page and on out past the
cover, where the actual revolution is going to take place.

The dynamite ending is for _you_ to write.




















------------------------------------------------------------


Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following: The Providence
Journal Company for excerpts from "The Circus Atmosphere at Ninigret
Park" (_Providence Journal-Bulletin_, July 12, 19941. Reprinted by
permission. Anthony Weir for lines from _The Transcendental Hotel_. 
Reprinted by permission. Joseph Chassler for "LS of TP&D" from
_Addict's Damn_. Reprinted by permission.

Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York.
Member of the Crown Publishing Group.

Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland

www.randomhouse.com

THREE RIVERS PRESS is a registered trademark and the Three Rivers
Press colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover by Harmony Books in 1999.


Cover Design: Ashwini Jamboktar


------------------------------------------------------------








		     Other Books By Daniel Quinn



			      _Ishmael_

			_My Ishmael: A Sequel_

			   _The Story of B_

	 _Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest_










