Daniel
Quinn’s bestselling book, Ishmael, was awarded the $500,000
Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for fiction offering creative and
positive solutions to global problems.
Beyond Civilization: An
Interview with Daniel Quinn
by Robert Scheer
Your first three books are about people
with a desire to save the world. Who must it be saved from?
Daniel Quinn: The people of our culture
are captives of a civilizational system that is devouring the world.
The system is arranged in such a way that there is virtually no way
for any of us to make a living without becoming collaborators in the
devastation to a greater or lesser degree. And making a living is
something we must do, just like all other living creatures on this
planet. The problem is that, in this system, making a living has
(for us) become directly linked to devouring the world. Although we
certainly created this system, we did so without recognizing its
consequences and without realizing that in the end we would become
its prisoners. This means that what the world must be saved from is
not a who but rather a what.
How is it that you include the people of
India, China, Japan, and the Islamic world as “people of our
culture?
D.Q.: If you take it as given that
these people represent the whole of humanity and are living the way
humans have always lived, then of course the differences among them
will stand out. But if you step back and look at the whole of
humanity, then what stands out is how different these people are
from rest (and how completely alike they are in their difference).
For 99.9% of human history people lived in a
radically different way (and there are still remnants we haven’t as
yet exterminated who continue to live in a radically different way),
and the key difference is this: Among the humans who lived for the
first 99.9% of human history (and their present-day cultural
descendents), food was free for the taking; all they had to do was
go and get it. What distinguishes us from them (and makes us all
fundamentally alike) is the fact that whether you’re in America,
China, India, Japan, or the Islamic world, all the food is under
lock and key—and you definitely can’t just go and get it. This is
why people in all these lands work, after all—why they go out daily
to put their shoulders to the wheel of civilization. Not for love of
work, to be sure, but because if they don’t work, they don’t eat.
Putting the food under lock and key was by far the greatest
innovation of the Neolithic revolution—and keeping it there is the
device that keeps our civilizational system running.
To us—globally—having the food locked up seems
like the natural order of things. Where else would food be except
under lock and key? To me, it seems nothing less than bizarre. We’re
not only the only culture in human history to lock away from
ourselves the food we need to stay alive, we’re the only species to
do so.
This is the basis of my rule of thumb.
Wherever you go, if the food is under lock and key, then you’re
among members of our culture (though of course they may dress
differently, worship differently, or speak a different language).
But if you find yourself among people where food is free for the
taking, then you’re not.
In The Story of B, you state that all major
religions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism—share
the same philosophy. How could that be?
D.Q.: If five friends sit down to play
poker, what they’re acutely aware of are their differences: Tom is a
successful lawyer who doesn’t really much care whether he wins or
loses (which makes him a careless player); Dick is a
middle-management executive who has had a losing streak in recent
weeks (which has made him over-cautious and vulnerable to being
bluffed); Harry is an orthodontist who plays by the book (which
makes him a solid player but a bit predictable); and so on. Their
awareness of differences may be even more refined than that. Tom may
be aware that when Fred is bluffing, he chews his lower lip. Chuck
may be aware that, when Harry has a pat hand, he tries to build the
pot by keeping everyone in the game. Dick may be aware that after
three beers Tom consistently tends to overestimate the strength of
the cards he’s holding.
But their differences are not what is
noteworthy to an outsider (who knows neither the players nor the
game). What the outsider finds noteworthy is the fact that they’re
all white, all male, and all middle-aged. The outsider wants to know
what it is about this mysterious enterprise of exchanging chips and
playing cards that draws white middle-aged men together.
The same is true of our “major” religions.
They are acutely—even murderously—aware of their differences. Within
each, whole schisms may occur over differences so subtle that
they’re all but incomprehensible to those outside the sect.
But their differences are not what is
noteworthy to an outsider. Looking at them in the context of the
whole of human history, I notice their remarkable similarities.
First, they are all native to a single culture: ours; they all
emerged in our cultural heartland; none of them emerged in Africa,
Australia, or the Americas; no first-contact missionary or
anthropologist has ever come across an aboriginal tribe of
Episcopalians or Muslims. Second, they all emerged during the same
very brief period of time. When I look at this period of time, what
I notice is that it corresponds to the period during which our
civilizational hierarchy was being set in stone throughout the
region. At the top of this hierarchy are, of course, the rulers and
the wealthy, who have a life of luxury and leisure; at the bottom
are the masses, the slaves and laborers who must struggle simply to
stay alive. Third, they all provide an answer to this question, “Why
is it that my life is one of misery and toil while others have a
bountiful life of luxury and leisure?”
The religions of the East provided this
answer: “One’s sins and virtues are punished or rewarded in this and
subsequent lives. Thus if you’re born to a life of misery and toil,
you have no one to blame but yourself (because you were a sinner in
your previous life). You have no grounds to envy or hate those who
are born to a life of luxury and leisure, for this is only what they
deserve, just as your life of poverty and misery is only what you
deserve.” The religions of the West provided a different answer:
“This world is only a testing-ground. If you have a life of poverty
and misery, remain steadfast in your faith, because in the Kingdom
of God, it will all be different: those who are at the bottom now
will be at the top then, and those at the top now will be at the
bottom.” (It was originally assumed that the Kingdom of God was
going to be established here on earth; later it came to be
understood that this kingdom was heaven, to be entered only at
death.)
I have nowhere said that our religions “share
the same philosophy.” What they share is the same function: to help
people make sense of their suffering under a system that rewards
some with wealth and a pleasurable life and others with poverty and
a miserable life. Although my take on the matter is somewhat more
articulated than his, Marx made the same general observation when he
called religion “the opium of the masses.”
Some people see organized religion as the
cause for many of the world’s miseries, from the Crusades and the
Inquisition to the ongoing fighting in Ireland and the Middle East.
Am I correct in understanding that you regard war and religion as
two symptoms of a more fundamental problem?
D.Q.: Although I don’t think of it that
way, I suppose you can call our religions symptoms of a problem.
They exist to help people make sense of the suffering they endure in
this civilizational hierarchy of ours. Eastern religions make sense
of it as something deserved because of past sins. Western religions
make sense of it as a test, which, when passed, is eternally
rewarded in heaven. War and generalized fighting are certainly
symptoms of a more fundamental problem, but there’s no great mystery
about what that problem is: increased competition among an
ever-increasing population for ever-diminishing resources (including
very importantly, mere living space). The more our population
increases, the faster those resources will disappear, and I’m afraid
the results are not likely to be peace on earth.
You suggest that we need to find ways to
move “Beyond Civilization.” Does this mean giving up electricity and
running water?
D.Q.: To move beyond is not necessarily
to leave behind (or give up). In the early decades of the twentieth
century, painters began to feel a need to go beyond the figurative,
to go beyond painting pictures “of” something. By the middle of the
century, abstract expressionists had moved entirely beyond
figures—beyond pictures of people or places or table-settings. But
they certainly didn’t think of themselves as “giving up” something;
they thought of themselves as gaining something. At the same time,
figurative painting didn’t disappear or fall into disrepute. Those
who liked figurative painting continued to paint figures, and those
who wanted to go beyond it went beyond it.
It’s part of our cultural mythology that
civilization represents humanity’s final and unsurpassable
destination. We are living the way people were meant to live from
the beginning of time, and nothing beyond this way of living is
possible or thinkable. The only conceivable direction of change for
us (according to this mythology) is backwards: giving up
electricity, running water, and so on. There can be (again,
according to this mythology) no possible forward direction of
change. What all this ultimately means is that we must maintain and
advance civilization even if it kills us. In Beyond Civilization I
challenge this mythology and attempt to indicate a direction that is
neither civilization in reverse nor civilization in forward but in a
new direction that is simply beyond what we have.
Daniel Quinn is the author of
Ishmael,
The Story of B,
My Ishmael,
Beyond Civilization,
Providence,
The Holy and
Tales of Adam. His website
www.ishmael.com,
includes suggestions on how people can live without being a menace
to the world.
This interview reprinted courtesy of
New York Spirit magazine.
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