First, Cain must stop murdering Abel

there is no one right way to live

“What you do is to teach a hundred what I’ve taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That’s how it’s always done.”

“Of course it’s not enough. But if you begin anywhere else, there’s no hope at all.

As long as the people of your culture are convinced that the world belongs to them and that their divinely-appointed destiny is to conquer and rule it, then they are of course going to go on acting the way they’ve been acting for the past ten thousand years

You can’t change these things with laws. You must change people’s minds

The Leaver life-style isn’t about hunting and gathering, it’s about letting the rest of the community live

Don't know if you were around at the time, but this post resonated to an amazing degree with concepts laid out in Daniel Quinn's Ishmael "trilogy", excerpts from which I once posted here (while they last at the Fray; some good stuff, e.g., by Thras, in the resulting threads, too):[Well, I see for whatever reason Slate has already dumped the last two. If our genial host Schmutie's length limits permit, I'll paste them below, instead.]If you haven't read the books ( Ishmael The Story of B , and My Ishmael ), I highly recommend them, and you seem the ideal audience: to start . First, preliminary correction of a fundamental misperception: it's not about interspecies competition -- e.g., chimps (of whom we're obviously not direct descendants, evolutionarily). It's about our singular "Taker" human culture dominating/eliminating most other perfectly functional, adapted ["Leaver"] human cultures, starting only ~10K years ago, i.e., a tiny, recent slice of the ~3 million years of human existence with our "totalitarian agricultural revolution". This is looking to be a common misperception -- see Ink in earlier threads -- and also very understandable from the consciously dicey methodology I adopted of presenting excerpted conclusory or even epiphanic climaxes, with only a limited portion of the "maieutic" ["Socratic"] dialogue leading up to them. This carries large risk of innocent misperception, obviously. As I've suggested previously, far better to just go read the books and ignore these threads entirely. But these posts hope to draw in people who wouldn't do so just cuz I suggest it. And, of course, to stimulate discussion, which they've done better than I might have expected.)[note: fairly long. If you're mainly interested in what's most responsive to previous posts, you might want to scroll to bolded portions {then return to the beginning if interested enough}])“When we began and I was trying to help you find the premise of the Taker story, I told you that the Leaver story has an entirely different premise.”“Yes.”“Perhaps you’re ready to articulate that premise now.”“I don’t know. At the moment I can’t even think of the Taker premise.”“It’ll come back to you. Every story is a working out of a premise.”“Yes, okay. The premise of the Taker story is the world belongs to man.” I thought for a couple of minutes, then I laughed. “It’s almost too neat. The premise of the Leaver story is man belongs to the world.”“Meaning what?”“Meaning –" I barked a laugh. “It’s really too much.”“Go on.”“It means that, right from the beginning, everything that ever lived belonged to the world – and that’s how things came to be this way. Those single-celled creatures that swam in the ancient oceans belonged to the world, and because they did, everything that followed came into being. Those club-finned fish offshore of the continents belonged to [the] world, and because they did, the amphibians eventually came into being. And because the amphibians belonged to the world, the reptiles eventually came into being. And because the reptiles belonged to the world, the mammals eventually came into being. And because the mammals belonged to the world, the primates eventually came into being. And because the primates belonged to the world, Australopithecus eventually came into being. And because Australopithecus belonged to the world, man eventually came into being. And for three million years man belonged to the world – and because he belonged to the world, he grew and developed and became brighter and more dexterous until one day he was so bright and dexterous that we had to call him Homo sapiens sapiens, which means that he was us.”Ishmael said, “We know what happens if you take the Taker premise, that the world belongs to man.”“Yes, that’s a disaster.”“And what happens if you take the Leaver premise, that man belongs to the world?”“Then creation goes on forever.”“How does that sound?”“It has my vote.”“Something occurs to me,” I said.“Yes?”“It occurs to me that the story I just told is in fact the story the Leavers have been enacting here for three million years. The Takers’ story is, ‘The gods made the world for man, but they botched the job, so we had to take matters into our own, more competent hands.’ The Leavers’ story is, ‘The gods made man for the world, the same way they made salmon and sparrows and rabbits for the world; this seems to have worked pretty well so far, so we can take it easy and leave the running of the world to the gods.’ "“That’s right. There are other ways to tell it, just as there are other ways to tell the story of the Takers, but this way of telling it is as good as any.”I sat there for a while. “I’m thinking about . . . the meaning of the world, divine intentions in the world, and the destiny of man. According to this story.”“Go ahead.”“The meaning of the world . . . I think the third chapter of Genesis had it right. It’s a garden – the gods’ garden. I say this even though I myself very much doubt that gods have anything to do with it. I just find this a wholesome and encouraging way to think of it.”“I understand.”“And there are two trees in the garden, one for the gods and one for us. The one for them is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the one for us is the Tree of Life. But we can only find the Tree of Life if we stay in the garden – and we can only stay in the garden if we keep our hands off the gods’ tree.”Ishmael gave me a nod of encouragement.“Divine intentions . . . It would seem . . . There is a sort of tendency in evolution, wouldn’t you say? If you start with those ultrasimple critters in the ancient seas and move up step by step to everything we see here now – and beyond – then you have to observe a tendency toward . . . complexity. And toward self-awareness and intelligence. Wouldn’t you agree?”“Yes.”“That is, all sorts of creatures on this planet appear to be on the verge of attaining that self-awareness and intelligence. So it’s definitely not just humans that the gods are after. We were never meant to be the only players on this stage. Apparently the gods intend this planet to be a garden filled with creatures that are self-aware and intelligent.”“So it would appear. And if this is so, then man’s destiny would seem to be plain.”“Yes. Amazingly enough, it is plain – because man is the first of all these. He’s the trailblazer, the pathfinder. His destiny is to be the first to learn that creatures like man have a choice: They can try to thwart the gods and perish in the attempt – or they can stand aside and make some room for all the rest. But it’s more than that. His destiny is to be the father of them all – I don’t mean by direct descent. By giving all the rest their chance – the whales and the dolphins and the chimps and the raccoons – he becomes in some sense their progenitor. . . . Oddly enough, it’s even grander than the destiny the Takers dreamed up for us.”“How so?”“Just think. In a billion years, whatever is around then, whoever is around then, says, ‘Man? Oh yes, man! What a wonderful creature he was! It was within his grasp to destroy the entire world and to trample all our futures into the dust – but he saw the light before it was too late and pulled back. He pulled back and gave the rest of us our chance. He showed us all how it had to be done if the world was to go on being a garden forever. Man was the role model for us all!”“Not a shabby destiny.”“Not a shabby destiny by any means. And it occurs to me that this . . .”“Yes?”“This gives a little shape to the story. The world is a very, very fine place. It wasn’t a mess. It didn’t need to be conquered and ruled by man. In other words, the world doesn’t need to belong to man – but it does need man to belong to it. Some creature had to be the first to go through this, had to see that there were two trees in the garden, one that was good for gods and one that was good for creatures. Some creature had to find the way, and if that happened, then . . . there was just no limit to what could happen here. In other words, man does have a place in the world, but it’s not his place to rule. The gods have that in hand. Man’s place is to be the first. Man’s place is to be the first without being the last. Man’s place is to figure out how it’s possible to do that – and then to make some room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he’s become. Not the only teacher, not the ultimate teacher. Maybe only the first teacher, the kindergarten teacher – but even that wouldn’t be too shabby. And do you know what?”“What?”I let it go. What the hell, he knew what I was trying to say.. . .. . .“But I do have another question,” I added.“Proceed.”Your ad said, ‘Must earnestly desire to save the world.’ "“Yes?”-- Daniel Quinn, Ishmael , pp. 239-244, 248-250