by Daniel Quinn
But perhaps you had a question at this point in the story: Why would the lovers return to the camp at all?
Oh, that’s exactly the crux of the law. It wouldn’t work at all without that. Suppose, after your night of lovemaking, you were to suggest to Gurtina: “Oh, why should we wait another day to be together? Let’s run away now!” What would she think? She would think, “Uh-oh, what have I gotten myself into here? What kind of a man is this? A coward, obviously, who would have us slink off into the night rather than go back to face the others and say, ‘Well, here we are! Do your worst!’”
And if she made the suggestion instead of you, you’d think the same of her. So the two of you must go back….
Every part of this process is the law, and every actor in it is a participant in the law. The law for these people isn’t a separate statute written in a book. It’s the very fabric of their lives—it’s what makes the Alawa the Alawa and what distinguishes them from the Mara and the Malanugga-nugga—who have their own ways of handling adultery, which are the best for them. It can’t possibly be said too often that there is no one right way for people to live; that’s only the delusion of the most murderous and destructive culture that history has ever produced.
I’m sure it’s all but self-evident to you that this law of adultery could not have been the invention of any committee whatever. It’s not an improvisation or a contrivance, and because it’s not an improvisation or a contrivance, it has weight with the Alawa. It might not occur to any of them to analyze it as I’ve done here tonight, but that doesn’t matter in the least. They don’t obey the law of the Alawa because it checks out under analysis. They obey the law of the Alawa because they’re the Alawa, and to give up the law would be to give up their identity—would be to become detribalized.
The world of the detribalized
Now I hope I’ve given you a handle on the price to be paid for becoming part of the Taker revolution: detribalization—the loss of tribal laws, customs, and identity. Since the detribalization of the Old World (by which I mean the Near East, the Far East, and Europe) occurred thousands of years before the earliest historical records, it became part of the Great Forgetting, and as such it was invisible to the foundation thinkers of our culture. As they reconstructed it in imagination, the first humans were just proto-urbanites—farmers without farms, villagers without villages, city dwellers without cities. They couldn’t possibly have imagined a whole world of tribal peoples becoming detribalized—or more importantly, what it meant to become detribalized. When they looked into the past, they saw people setting out to build civilization, being already innately inclined toward civilization. When we look into the past no longer under the influence of the Great Forgetting, we see something very different: people inadvertently (but systematically) obliterating a highly successful lifestyle—then scurrying like mad to knock together something to replace it with. We’ve been scurrying ever since, and every year our legislators and political thinkers go back to work at the ceaseless task of trying to knock together something as workable as what we destroyed.
People will sometimes charge me with just being in love with tribalism. They say to me in effect, “If you love it so much, why don’t you just go do it and leave the rest of us alone?” Those who understand me in this way totally misunderstand what I’m saying. The tribal lifestyle isn’t precious because it’s beautiful or lovable or because it’s “close to nature.” It isn’t even precious because it’s “the natural way for people to live.” To me, this is gibberish. This is like saying that bird migration is good because it’s the natural way for birds to live, or like saying that bear hibernation is good because it’s the natural way for bears to live. The tribal life is precious because it tested out. For three million years it worked for people. It worked for people the way nests work for birds, the way webs work for spiders, the way burrows work for moles, the way hibernation works for bears. That doesn’t make it lovable, that makes it viable.
People will also say to me, “Well, if it was so wonderful, why didn’t it last?” The answer is that it did last—it has lasted right up to the present moment. It continues to work, but the fact that something works doesn’t make it invulnerable. Burrows and nests and webs can all be destroyed, but that doesn’t change the fact that they work. Tribalism can be destroyed and indeed has largely been destroyed, but that doesn’t change the fact that it worked for three million years and still works today as well as it ever did.
And the fact that tribalism works doesn’t mean that something else can’t work. The trouble is that our particular something else isn’t working—doesn’t work and can’t work. It bears with it its own seeds of destruction. It’s fundamentally unstable. And unfortunately it had to reach global proportions before the nature of its instability could be recognized.
It’s important to realize that ours wasn’t the only lifestyle experiment going on at this time. Birds experiment with nests—that’s how nests evolved in the first place and how they continue to evolve. Moles experiment with burrows—that’s how burrows evolved in the first place and how they continue to evolve. Spiders experiment with webs—that’s how webs evolved in the first place and how they continue to evolve. We can’t know what experiments in human culture were made in the Old World—they were all obliterated by the Taker experiment—but we know a lot about experiments that were made elsewhere. What’s fascinating about them is that these cultural variants were being tested just the way variants within a species are tested. What worked survived, what didn’t work perished, leaving behind its fossilized remains—irrigation ditches, roads, cities, temples, pyramids. People everywhere were looking for alternatives to the traditional tribal way of making a living—hunting and gathering. They were looking at full-time agriculture and settlement, but if their particular experiment didn’t work, they were prepared to let it go—and they did so again and again. It used to be considered a great mystery. What became of these ancient builders who carved strange cities out of the jungles and the deserts? Were they whisked away into another dimension? No, they just quit. They just went back to something they could count on to work.
What made the Taker experiment different from all of these was its very quirky belief that the Taker way was the way people were meant to live—people everywhere, forever, no matter what. To the Takers, it didn’t matter whether it worked. It didn’t matter if people liked it. It didn’t matter if people suffered the torments of hell. This was the one right way for people to live. This bizarre notion made it impossible for people to give it up, no matter how badly it worked. If it doesn’t work, then you’ll just have to suffer.
If it doesn’t work, suffer
And suffer they did.
It’s not hard to figure out what made people cling to the tribal life—and makes them cling to it wherever it’s still found today. Tribal peoples have their full share of suffering to do, but in the tribal life, no one suffers unless everyone suffers. There’s no class or group of people who are expected to do the suffering—and no class or group of people who are exempt from suffering. If you think this sounds entirely too good to be true, check it out. In the tribal life there are no rulers to speak of; elders or chiefs—almost always part-time—exert influence rather than power. There’s nothing equivalent to a ruling class—or to a rich or privileged class. There’s nothing equivalent to a working class—or to a poor or underprivileged class. If this sounds ideal, well, why shouldn’t it be, after three million years of evolutionary shaping? You’re not surprised that natural selection has organized geese in a way that works well for geese. You’re not surprised that natural selection has organized elephants in a way that works well for elephants. You’re not surprised that natural selection has organized dolphins in a way that works well for dolphins. Why should you be surprised that natural selection organized people in a way that worked well for people?
And conversely, why should you be surprised that the founders of our culture, having obliterated a lifestyle teste
d over a period of three million years, were unable to instantly slap together a replacement that was just as good? Really, the task was a formidable one. We’ve been working at it for ten thousand years, and where are we?
The very first thing to go was the very thing that made tribal life a success: its social, economic, and political egalitarianism. As soon as our revolution began, the process of division began, between rulers and ruled, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, masters and slaves. The suffering class had arrived, and that class (as it would always be) was the masses. I won’t repeat a tale everyone knows. Just a few thousand years separates the bare beginning of our culture in rude farming villages from the age of the god-kings, when the royal classes lived in mind-boggling splendor and all the rest—the suffering masses—lived like cattle.
At last we’ve entered the historical era. The Great Forgetting was complete. The tribal life had been gone for thousands of years. No one in the entire civilized world, East or West, remembered a time when perfectly ordinary people—the kind of people who now made up the suffering masses—lived well, and human society was not divided into those who are expected to suffer and those who are exempt from suffering.
Everyone thought it had been this way from the beginning. Everyone thought this was the nature of the world—and the nature of Man. They began to think that the world is an evil place. They began to think that existence itself is evil. They began to think (and who can blame them!) that there was something fundamentally wrong with humans. They began to think that humankind was doomed. They began to think that humankind was damned.
They began to think that someone needed to save us.
It’s important for you to see that none of these ideas sprang from the tribal life—or could imaginably have sprung from the tribal life. These are ideas you expect to find welling up among people leading anguished lives, empty lives. You can make people live like cattle, but you can’t make them think they’re living well. You can render them powerless, but you can’t render them dreamless. The suffering masses knew they were suffering—knew something was desperately wrong—knew they needed something. And what they needed was salvation.
The origin and cause of human suffering—and the means of ending it—became the first great intellectual and spiritual preoccupation of our culture, beginning about four thousand years ago. The next three millennia would see the development of all those religions that were destined to become the major religions of our culture—Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and each had its own theory about the origin and cause of human suffering and its own approach to ending it, transcending it, or putting up with it. But all were united in a single, central vision: Whether it’s release from the endless round of death and rebirth or blissful union with God in heaven, salvation is the highest goal of human life, unimaginably beyond any other, such as wealth, happiness, honor, or fame—and each of us is utterly alone in the universe with it. There is no marketplace in which nirvana or merit or grace or the forgiveness of sins can be purchased. No parent or spouse or friend can obtain salvation for you by any means whatever. And because nothing remotely compares with it in value, salvation is the one thing about which you may be totally and blamelessly selfish. Your salvation need not take second place to anything—friendship, loyalty, gratitude, honor, king, country, family. In the entire universe of possibilities, not a single one of them takes precedence over your salvation, and anyone who asks you to put something ahead of it is asking too much—no matter what it is—and may be refused without the slightest hesitation, reservation, or apology.
Is B the Antichrist?
Now at last we’re ready to tackle this most difficult problem that so many of you have brought to me for solution. Again and again you say to me, “Tell me how to face those who accuse. Tell me how to explain that you are not the Antichrist!”
You have to begin by understanding what the Antichrist stands for. All serious commentators on the subject agree that Antichrist is just the latest name for an ancient figure in the religious legends of our culture—far more ancient than the Christ to which this name makes him opposed. In other words, he doesn’t just represent the antithesis of Jesus. All our Salvationist religions have feared the appearance of one who would lead the righteous from the paths of salvation. The Antichrist isn’t just the antithesis of Jesus, he’s equally the antithesis of Buddha, of Elijah, of Moses, of Muhammad, of Nanak, of Joseph Smith, of Maharaj Ji—of all saviors and purveyors of salvation in the world. He is in fact the Antisavior.
Accompanying the legend of the Antichrist has been the bizarre and almost laughable notion that his massive global appeal will be his unbridled wickedness. This shows what a low opinion our Salvationist religions have of their members. This is how they despise us that they think we yearn for evil and vileness and corruption and will slavishly follow anyone who promises these things.
So now I’m ready at last to tell you how to face the accusers of B. When they say to you, “B is the Antichrist,” don’t think you’re doing something admirable if you say, “Oh no, no, no, you don’t understand.” These accusers do understand.
When they say to you, “B is the Antichrist,” here’s what you should say to them. Say to them, “Yes, you’re right—absolutely right. B means to steal the hearts of the people away from you so that the world may live. B means to gather the voices of humans all over the planet into one voice singing, ‘The world must live, the world must live! We are only one species among billions. The gods don’t love us more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies. The age of the Great Forgetting has ended, and all its lies and delusions have been dispelled. Now we remember who we are. Our kin are not cherubim, seraphim, thrones, principalities, and powers. Our kin are mayflies, lemurs, snakes, eagles, and badgers. The blinding we suffered in the Great Forgetting has abated, so we no longer imagine that Man was ill-made. We no longer imagine that the gods botched their work when it came to us. We no longer think they know how to make every single thing in the whole vast universe except a human being. The blinding we suffered in the Great Forgetting has passed, so we can no longer live as though nothing matters but us. We can no longer believe that suffering is the lot the gods had in mind for us. We can no longer believe that death is sweet release to our true destiny. We no longer yearn for the nothingness of nirvana. We no longer dream of wearing crowns of gold in the royal court of heaven.’”
Say to them, “You’re right to see that we’re straying from the path of salvation. We’re straying from that path exactly as you always feared we might. But listen, we’re not straying from the path of salvation for the sake of sin and corruption, as you always imagined we might. We’re straying from the path of salvation because we remember that we once belonged to the world and were content in that belonging. We’re straying from the path of salvation—but not for love of vice and wickedness as you contemptuously imagined we might. We’re straying from the path of salvation for love of the world, as you never once dreamed in a thousand years of dreaming.”
The evangelist John wrote, “You must not love the world or the things of the world, for those who love the world are strangers to the love of the Father.” Then, just two sentences later, he wrote: “Children, the final hour is at hand! You’ve heard that the Antichrist is coming. He’s not one but many, and when the many of him are among us, you’ll know the final hour has come.”
John knew what he was talking about. He was right to warn his followers against those who love the world. We are the ones he was talking about, and this is the final hour—but it’s their final hour, not ours. They’ve had their day, and this is indeed the final hour of that day.
Now our day begins.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Quinn is the author of Ishmael, My Ishmael, A Newcomers Guide to the Afterlife, and Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest.
Contact other readers of The Story of B, Ishmael, and My Ishmael at
http://www.I
shmael.org
Ishmael is back
If Ishmael redefined the way you view human history and The Story of B shattered your perception of the modern world, then turn the page and go on another adventure of the mind and spirit: Daniel Quinn’s stunning and provocative sequel to his award-winning Ishmael:
MY ISHMAEL
You’ll never look at the world the same way again.
“Enthralling, shocking, hope-filled, and utterly fearless.”—Susan Chernak McElroy, author of Animals as Teachers & Healers
MyGod, It Isn’t Me!
“Among her friends in college,” Ishmael began, “my benefactor Rachel Sokolow counted a young man named Jeffrey, whose father was an affluent surgeon. Jeffrey became an important person in many lives at this time and later, because he presented people with a problem. He couldn’t figure out what to do with himself. He was physically attractive, intelligent, personable, and talented at almost anything he turned his hand to. He could play the guitar well, though he had no interest in a musical career. He could take a good photograph, produce a good sketch, play the lead in a school play, and write an entertaining story or a provocative essay, but he didn’t want to be a photographer, an artist, an actor, or a writer. He did well in all his classes but didn’t want to be a teacher or a scholar and wasn’t interested in following in his father’s footsteps or pursuing a career in law, the sciences, mathematics, business, or politics. He was drawn to things of the spirit and was an occasional churchgoer but didn’t care to become a theologian or a clergyman. In spite of all this, he seemed ‘well-adjusted,’ as it’s called. He wasn’t notably phobic or depressive or neurotic. He wasn’t doubtful or confused about his sexual orientation. He figured he’d settle down and marry one day, but not until he’d found some purpose in life.