Why improve ourselves?

It seems as if a huge part of Taker culture involves "getting ahead", aka getting more money for the most part. But it also seems to be that we never are happy with what we have, do, or are. We always have to be messing with it, trying to improve on things somehow.

If things were working, would we continually do that?

I read this yesterday:

Roadmap to Sustainability: Interpreting Daniel Quinn, by Doug Brown (free pdf download or you can buy it at that site)

Overall, a good critique of Daniel Quinn's works (some of which I haven't read yet). It definitely has an academic tone to it, which makes it hard to read at times. The author gets a bit leftist and twee for my tastes at the end, as he seems to think all we need to do is tweak a few things and we'll all turn into a Leaver utopia. But it's nice to see that someone has a vision at least for returning to our roots that doesn't involve Stone Age technology.

One of the best things about this book was a diagram which he uses to discuss some insights that Quinn hinted at but never fully fleshed out. It's worth reading just for that.

You really have to read the text for the explanation to the "second aberration", because the diagram is a bit simplistic and I don't think capitalism per se is the actual problem. But I think the author is on to something here.

In any case, if you have an interest in DQ's work you'll find this book interesting.

Consequences

This morning I thought about a book I read long ago called "Blood Music". It's a story about a man who develops a way to make the individual cells in the body sentient.

Now, this might sound like a good idea at the face of it. I mean, if you could tell blood cells to go after cancer, or where to fight an infection, that might be cool, right? But the guy decides to inject himself with this stuff, and of course these newly sentient blood cells have their own agenda.

(Here's where I put the spoiler alert -- if you should have a desire to read the book, which was pretty good, you might want to skip the rest of this post.)

Basically what happens is that the cells in the man's body, after getting him to go through an all-night marathon with his girlfriend, disintegrate her down the shower drain and merrily go off into the world, turning it into an individual-cell paradise, with our civilizations and biosphere sacrificed in the end.

Today I thought how well this applies to our Taker culture.

We have used our Fertile Crescent (which is now a desert wasteland), then spread out into the world, merrily turning the whole world into our little paradise, slaughtering thousands of other civilizations and cultures, as well as pretty much destroying our own ecosystem.

Just as the man in the story never thought about the consequences to creating cell sentience, neither did our ancestors think of the end result to developing totalitarian agriculture. And here we are, as the last man on Earth did, staring at the results of this folly, wondering if anything will survive as we know it.

The new hunter-gatherers

I've been pondering as to why Americans have lost the desire to store up food for hard times the way their grandparents did (for example), and I realized that just like the modern hunter-gatherers, food here is plentiful, available, and easy to obtain (if you have money).

And like the hunter-gatherer, the most common reply to why they have no food in the house (you know how many people go to the store daily?) is: why should I? The food is right there!

Of course, the day when food isn't "right there" will be a shock, but I think most people will adapt, moving on to better areas.

To me this proves how much we are really meant to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, even though most people would fight tooth and nail not to admit it.

B

I read "My Ishmael" a couple of weeks ago, just because I couldn't get hold of "The Story of B" right off. I actually liked "My Ishmael" better than "Ishmael", mainly because I liked the main character better. But I read "The Story of B" this week, and this one I think affected me most of all.

I feel like I need to read it again, but I have to ask myself, "Am I B?" If not, what am I still missing?

Reactions

When I first posted how I felt about Ishmael and started writing here, I got some interesting reactions.

I was told by really good friends that they had read the book and thought it was boring. How could I possibly like it? was the implication.

Hmm. Not upset about it ... I came to the conclusion that you had to be in the right place to get anything out of it. Like the teacher was there but the student wasn't ready yet.

Another woman who has a popular blog wanted me to write a review.

I told her no, that it was the sort of book you had to read for yourself.

That was a couple of weeks ago. I don't think she's read it for herself.

This lady is pleasant enough, but her attitude is very common among Takers -- instead of living life, you delegate someone to live it for you.

Here's what I mean: the ideal life to a Taker is to have someone else do your work for you. We have people haul our trash to the dump, have people process our feces and urine, have people grow and pick and package and cook our food. We go to people -- religious and secular -- who will (for a price) give us the secrets to having a happy life instead of us figuring it out ourselves. We have people teach our children, tend our yards, make our clothes, take care of our problems with others via the police and courts ... if we're really rich, we even have people clean our homes for us!

Our ideal life is one where we don't have to live life, just "relax" and "play" in manicured golf courses, sit around pools of artificially-cleansed water taken care of by others, be fed by someone else, be driven around by someone else ... you get the picture.

I'm not offended at all by her request for a review -- most people would be flattered. She has way more readers than I do. But it set a light bulb off in my face, because how in the world would you really explain the book?

Maybe I should have her direct her readers over here. ;)

Control

We all like to have control over our lives.

We control as much as we can, down to the temperature of our houses. Some of us want to control other people too: our children, our neighbors (just let your grass grow long and see what I mean), our friends. We don't like it when people think differently or act differently or worship differently. You don't have to go further than a newspaper or news website to see it. People rant about how the Muslims are going to take over the US, or how gays are destroying marriage, or how liberals/atheists/Republicans/socialists are the cause of everyone's problems.

If only everyone was like me (we tend to think) then everything would be perfect. There was a Twilight Zone episode like that.

I'm not sure if it's just human nature (as Mother Culture tells us), because it feels like a reaction to fear to me.

If we knew we were perfectly safe, would we still have to control everything and everyone around us?