Ishmael

“All right. Why bother to learn what story is being enacted here by the people of your own culture?”

“Because enacting that story is destroying the world.”

“True. But why bother learning it?”

“Because that’s obviously something that should be known.”

“Known by whom?”

“By everyone.”

“Why? That’s what I keep coming back to. Why, why, why? Why should your people know what story they’re enacting as they destroy the world?”

“So they can stop enacting it. So they can see that they’re not just blundering as they do what they do. So they can see that they’re involved in a megalomaniac fantasy—a fantasy as insane as the Thousand Year Reich.”

“That’s what makes the story worth knowing?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now go away and come back when you can explain what makes the other story worth knowing.”

“I don’t need to go away. I can explain it now.”

“Go ahead.”

“People can’t just give up a story. That’s what the kids tried to do in the sixties and seventies. They tried to stop living like Takers, but there was no other way for them to live. They failed because you can’t just stop being in a story, you have to have another story to be in.”

Ishmael nodded. “And if there is such a story, people should hear about it?”

“Yes, they should.”

“Do you think they want to hear about it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think you can start wanting something till you know it exists.”

“Very true.”

2

“And what do you suppose this story is about?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you suppose it’s about hunting and gathering?”

“I don’t know.”

“Be honest. Haven’t you been expecting some noble paean to the mysteries of the Great Hunt?”

“I’m not aware of expecting anything like that.”

“Well, you should at least know that it’s about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about the destiny of man.”

“Yes.”

“As I’ve said half a dozen times, man became man enacting this story. You should remember that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“How did man become man?”

I examined that one for booby traps and gave it back. “I’m not sure what the question means,” I said. “Or rather I’m not sure what kind of answer you want. Obviously you don’t want me to say that man became man by evolving.”

“That would just mean that he became man by becoming man, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So the question is still there waiting to be answered: How did man become man?”

“I suppose it’s one of those very obvious things.”

“Yes. If I gave you the answer, you’d say, ‘Oh. Well of course, but so what?’ ”

I shrugged, defeated.

“We’ll have to approach it obliquely then—but keep it in mind as a question that needs answering.”

“Okay.”

3

“According to Mother Culture, what kind of event was your agricultural revolution?”

“What kind of event… I’d say that, according to Mother Culture, it was a technological event.”

“No implication of deeper human resonances, cultural or religious?”

“No. The first farmers were just neolithic technocrats. That’s the way it’s always seemed.”

“But after our look at chapters three and four of Genesis, you see there was a great deal more to it than Mother Culture teaches.”

“Yes.”

“Was and is a great deal more to it, of course, since the revolution is still in progress. Adam is still chewing the fruit of that forbidden tree, and wherever Abel can still be found, Cain is there too, hunting him down, knife in hand.”

“That’s right.”

“There’s another indication that the revolution goes deeper than mere technology. Mother Culture teaches that, before the revolution, human life was devoid of meaning, was stupid, empty, and worthless. Prerevolutionary life was ugly. Detestable.”

“Yes.”

“You believe that yourself, don’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose I do.”

“Certainly most of you believe it, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes.”

“Who would be the exceptions?”

“I don’t know. I suppose… anthropologists.”

“People who actually have some knowledge of that life.”

“Yes.”

“But Mother Culture teaches that that life was unspeakably miserable.”

“That’s right.”

“Can you imagine any circumstances in which you yourself would trade your life for that sort of life?”

“No. Frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would, given the choice.”

“The Leavers would. Throughout history, the only way the Takers have found to tear them away from that life is by brute force, by wholesale slaughter. In most cases, they found it easiest just to exterminate them.”

“True. But Mother Culture has something to say about that. What she says is that the Leavers just didn’t know what they were missing. They didn’t understand the benefits of the agricultural life, and that’s why they clung to the hunting–gathering life so tenaciously.”

Ishmael smiled his sneakiest smile. “Among the Indians of this country, who would you say were the fiercest and most resolute opponents of the Takers?”

“Well… I’d say the Plains Indians.”

“I think most of you would agree with that. But before the introduction of horses by the Spanish, the Plains Indians had been agriculturalists for centuries. As soon as horses became readily available, they abandoned agriculture and resumed the hunting–gathering life.”

“I didn’t know that.”