Ishmael

“True. All the same…”

“Yes?”

“All the same, the people of my culture will not accept it.”

“You mean the people of your culture will not accept what you’ve learned here.”

“That’s right.”

“Let’s be clear about what they will and will not accept. The law itself is beyond argument. It’s there, plainly in place in the community of life. What the Takers will deny is that it applies to mankind.”

“That’s right.”

“That hardly comes as a surprise. Mother Culture could accept the fact that mankind’s home is not the center of the universe. She could accept the fact that man evolved from the common slime. But she will never accept the fact that man is not exempt from the peace–keeping law of the community of life. To accept that would finish her off.”

“So what are you saying? That it’s hopeless?”

“Not at all. Obviously Mother Culture must be finished off if you’re going to survive, and that’s something the people of your culture can do. She has no existence outside your minds. Once you stop listening to her, she ceases to exist.”

“True. But I don’t think people will let that happen.”

Ishmael shrugged. “Then the law will do it for them. If they refuse to live under the law, then they simply won’t live. You might say that this is one of the law’s basic operations: Those who threaten the stability of the community by defying the law automatically eliminate themselves.”

“The Takers will never accept that.”

“Acceptance has nothing to do with it. You may as well talk about a man stepping off the edge of a cliff not accepting the effects of gravity. The Takers are in the process of eliminating themselves, and when they’ve done so, the stability of the community will be restored and the damage you’ve done can begin to be repaired.”

“True.”

“On the other hand, I think you’re being unreasonably pessimistic about this. I think there are a lot of people out there who know the jig is up and are ready to hear something new—who want to hear something new, just like you.”

“I hope you’re right.”

9

“I’m not quite satisfied with the way we’ve formulated this law,” I said.

“No?”

“We refer to it as a law, but it’s actually three laws. Or at any rate I described it as three laws.”

“The three laws are branches. What you’re looking for is the trunk, which is something like, ‘No one species shall make the life of the world its own.’ ”

“Yes, that’s what the rules of competition ensure.”

“That’s one expression of the law. Here’s another: ‘The world was not made for any one species.’ ”

“Yes. Then man was certainly not made to conquer and rule it.”

“That’s too big a leap. In Taker mythology, the world needed a ruler because the gods had made a mess of it. What they’d created was a jungle, a howling chaos, an anarchy. But was it that in fact?”

“No, everything was in good order. It was the Takers who introduced disorder into the world.”

“The rule of that law was and is sufficient. Mankind was not needed to bring order to the world.”

10

“The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler’s mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.”

“That’s true. But what are you getting at?”

Instead of answering my question, Ishmael said, “Among the Leavers, crime, mental illness, suicide, and drug addiction are great rarities. How does Mother Culture account for this?”

“I’d say it’s because… Mother Culture says it’s because the Leavers are just too primitive to have these things.”

“In other words, crime, mental illness, suicide, and drug addiction are features of an advanced culture.”

“That’s right. Nobody says it that way, of course, but that’s how it’s understood. These things are the price of advancement.”

“There’s an almost opposite opinion that has had wide currency in your culture for a century or so. An opposite opinion as to why these things are rare among the Leavers.”

I thought for a minute. “You mean the Noble Savage theory. I can’t say I know it in any detail.”

“But you have an impression of it. That’s what’s current in your culture—not the theory in detail but an impression of it.”

“True. It’s the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It’s seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can’t watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor’s tepee. Living close to nature is wonderful for your mental health.”

“You understand that I’m not saying anything like this.”

“Yes. But what are you saying?”

“We’ve had a look at the story the Takers have been enacting here for the past ten thousand years. The Leavers too are enacting a story. Not a story told but a story enacted.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“If you go among the various peoples of your culture—if you go to China and Japan and Russia and England and India—each people will give you a completely different account of themselves, but they are nonetheless all enacting a single basic story, which is the story of the Takers. The same is true of the Leavers. The Bushmen of Africa, the Alawa of Australia, the Kreen–Akrore of Brazil, and the Navajo of the United States would each give you a different account of themselves, but they too are all enacting one basic story, which is the story of the Leavers.”

“I see what you’re getting at. It isn’t the tale you tell that counts, it’s the way you actually live.”

“That’s correct. The story the Takers have been enacting here for the past ten thousand years is not only disastrous for mankind and for the world, it’s fundamentally unhealthy and unsatisfying. It’s a megalomaniac’s fantasy, and enacting it has given the Takers a culture riddled with greed, cruelty, mental illness, crime, and drug addiction.”

“Yes, that seems to be so.”

“The story the Leavers have been enacting here for the past three million years isn’t a story of conquest and rule. Enacting it doesn’t give them power. Enacting it gives them lives that are satisfying and meaningful to them. This is what you’ll find if you go among them. They’re not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror of each other, not going crazy because their lives seem empty and pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through the days, not inventing a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make their lives worth living. And—I repeat—this is not because they live close to nature or have no formal government or because they’re innately noble. This is simply because they’re enacting a story that works well for people—a story