by Daniel Quinn
Daniel. If you’re going to learn to think like a Martian anthropologist, you’re going to have to become far more suspicious of the reasonable-sounding propositions that we’re constantly being presented with. Like this one, pointing out that there’s enough land in Texas to accommodate the whole world’s population in comfort. I’m sure that tens of thousands accepted this statement without blinking an eye, and that millions more would accept it the same way if it were presented to them.
Elaine. I’m sure you’re right.
Daniel. In effect, I’m trying to break you of the habit of automatically saying, “Yes, this makes sense. I’ll accept it.” I’m trying to train you to pause and say, “Yes, this seems to make sense. But does it?”
Elaine [after some thought]. I can say that I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not really sure I do. I mean … we’re trained to pause when something doesn’t make sense. But when something does make sense …? You surely don’t pause every single time something makes sense.
Daniel. You’re right, of course.
Elaine. So it’s a matter of knowing when to pause, isn’t it? How do you know when to pause?
Daniel. That’s a very valid question. A very useful and helpful one, in fact.
Elaine. Why helpful?
Daniel. It points me in a direction I hadn’t seen, hadn’t prepared myself to explore with you. Let me see if I can explain … If you were to follow an aboriginal hunter through the forest, he’d see things that were literally invisible to you. He’d see and recognize marks in the dirt that you’d have to concentrate to see at all. He’d notice disturbances in the grass that would be imperceptible to you.
Elaine. I’m sure that’s true.
Daniel. The same would be true for the hunter if he were to follow you through the women’s section of a department store. You’d immediately distinguish between the really good clothes and the cheap ones, which he certainly wouldn’t. You’d notice a clerk having a personal conversation on the phone. Without even thinking about it, you’d be aware of the subtle differences between a personal telephone conversation and a business conversation, and the hunter wouldn’t.
Elaine. True.
Daniel. What we see are the things our circumstances have trained us to pay attention to. Your circumstances don’t require you to notice slight marks in the dust. The hunter’s circumstances don’t require him to notice the difference between beautifully made garments and poorly made ones.
Elaine. True.
Daniel. I’ve trained myself to recognize the voice of Mother Culture in the things I read and hear. You know what I mean by Mother Culture.
Elaine. Yes. Mother Culture is … the personification of all the collective wisdom that comes to us from our parents, our schoolteachers, our textbooks, our movies, our television commentators …
Daniel. And our magazines, including Scientific American and the National Review.
Elaine. Right.
Daniel. I recognized Mother Culture’s voice immediately in the National Review observation that the whole world’s population could be accommodated comfortably within the boundaries of Texas. Do you see why?
Elaine. I’m not sure.
Daniel. Take a stab at it.
Elaine [after some thought]. Mother Culture wants to reassure us that everything we’re doing is okay. Reaching a population of six billion is nothing to be worried about.
Daniel. Because, look, you could fit all six billion of us inside Texas with room to spare. I recognized it instantly as the kind of reassurance Mother Culture wants us to have. That’s what made me pause to examine it. And once I started examining it, it took me only a few moments to identify its absurdity.
Elaine. Okay. But I can’t really say that this does me much good. You say that you’ve trained yourself to recognize the voice of Mother Culture in the things you read or hear, but how does this help me?
Daniel [after thinking about this for a minute]. I guess you could say that what the hunter is looking for as he moves through the forest are tip-offs, things that signal what’s going on around him. When you examine a shirt or a dress, there are probably things that tip you off as to its quality.
Elaine. Yes, I guess so.
Daniel. I’m looking for tip-offs as well. Or, as I say, I’ve trained myself to notice them. I don’t have to look for them, they leap out at me.
Elaine. But what are they?
Daniel. I can’t give you a list — it’s never occurred to me to make one. Maybe we’ll be able to compile one as we go along.
Elaine. What was the tip-off in this case?
Daniel [after some thought]. Its obvious tendentiousness. I mean by this that the statement clearly contains an implicit argument. If someone says that if you lined up all the cars in the world on a single highway, it would encircle the globe twice, there is no implicit argument. He’s just presenting you with an interesting fact. He’s not saying that this is something that could actually be done. He’s not making any special point about cars, highways, or the circumference of the earth. He’s just using his computational skills to give us a visual image of how many cars we have. The writer who says Texas could comfortably accommodate six billion people does have a point, and he is saying that it could be done.
Elaine. Okay. But I’m not sure I’d recognize a tendentious statement if I saw one.
Daniel. Of course you would. Let me see if I can think of a couple … Here’s one from, I believe, a French military man of the seventeenth century: “God is generally on the side of the big battalions against the small ones.”
Elaine. Uh-huh.
Daniel. I’m sure you can see what implicit point of view this statement expresses.
Elaine. Yes. He’s saying that, on the battlefield, God has nothing to do with who wins and who loses.
Daniel. Of course. Let me think for a bit … Pope John Paul the Second said, “Vast sections of society are confused about what is right and what is wrong.” Implicit in this statement is …?
Elaine. That he isn’t confused about it.
Daniel. Of course … From the beginning, I’ve been saying that our job is to look behind the words people give us in order to understand the implicit notions that are generating them.
Elaine. Yes, I see that — now. What are some other tip-offs?
Daniel. Things to look for are elements of the received wisdom of our culture — received without acknowledgment or examination. For example, it’s received wisdom that everyone knows the difference between right and wrong. We imagine that this knowledge arises from the structure of the human mind itself. In fact, we use this as a measure of sanity in our courts. And by this measure, I would be considered insane.
Elaine laughs.
Daniel. In one of my early books — I think it was probably Ishmael — I made the point that missionaries were astonished to find that the aboriginal peoples they worked among didn’t know right from wrong, and I said the missionaries were quite correct in their observation. I received several indignant letters about this from people who thought I was denigrating aboriginal peoples, implying that they were somehow subhuman. Whatever the missionaries thought, of course these peoples knew right from wrong!
Elaine. I’m not sure why you say you yourself don’t know right from wrong.
Daniel. To me — as to the aborigines being evangelized — these are quite arbitrary categories that can be switched back and forth at will. For example, you know very well that abortion was very seriously wrong before Roe v. Wade. After Roe v. Wade it became right, though naturally there are still people who think it’s wrong. Which is it, right or wrong?
Elaine. I think a woman has the right to choose to have an abortion.
Daniel. You mean she has the right to do something that’s wrong?
Elaine. No. It isn’t something wrong.
Daniel. Are you hesitant to call it right?
Elaine. No.
Daniel. But I’m sure you’re aware that tens of millions of Americ
ans would like to see Roe v. Wade reversed, would like to see abortion outlawed again.
Elaine. Yes.
Daniel. And if they succeeded in having the present law overturned, would abortion then be right or wrong?
Elaine has no answer.
Daniel. If you’d like to know how wrong abortion seemed to people fifty years ago, you should see a movie called Detective Story, based on a very successful Broadway play by Sidney Kingsley. The action takes place in a station house, where a detective played by Kirk Douglas is interrogating one of the most loathsome criminals he’s ever encountered, an abortionist. Unfortunately, his zeal leads him to a horrendous discovery — his own wife was once one of the abortionist’s clients. Now he sees his wife as almost as loathsome as the abortionist himself — and this revelation all but tears him apart. This was not a picture directed toward a bigoted, minority audience. It was nominated for four Academy Awards and won one.
Elaine still has nothing to say.
Daniel. If the present law were overturned, a woman would be imprisoned for having an abortion. Yes?
Elaine. That’s right.
Daniel. Would her punishment be wrongful?
Elaine. Not according to the law.
Daniel. Ah, the law! So by changing a law, something that’s right today can become something that’s wrong tomorrow. Isn’t that so?
Elaine. Yes. And of course the reverse is true as well. Something that’s wrong today can become something that’s right tomorrow, if the law is changed.
Daniel. Is capital punishment right or wrong?
Elaine. Some people think it’s right, some people think it’s wrong.
Daniel. So, collectively, do these people know right from wrong?
Elaine. Not in this instance.
Daniel. And in the instance of abortion do people collectively know right from wrong?
Elaine. No.
Daniel. Is sex between persons of the same gender right or wrong?
Elaine. Again, some people think it’s right and some people think it’s wrong.
Daniel. What about assisted suicide?
Elaine. The same. Some say it’s right and some say it’s wrong.
Daniel. What about using animals in scientific research?
Elaine. The same.
Daniel. But these are all people who would insist that they know right from wrong, aren’t they?
Elaine. Yes, I’d think so.
Daniel. But in fact, for some strange reason, they can’t agree on what’s right and what’s wrong in these and many other cases.
Elaine. They agree on it in most cases, I think. For example, they all agree that murder is wrong.
Daniel. Murder is defined as wrong, Elaine. Murder is wrongful killing. Isn’t that so?
Elaine. Yes.
Daniel. But not all killing is wrongful. Killing in self-defense isn’t wrongful, and it isn’t murder.
Elaine. True.
Daniel. People will also agree that theft is wrong, but again, theft is defined as wrong. Theft is wrongful taking. Everyone can agree that acts that are defined as wrongful are wrong. In other words, people know right from wrong when the law tells them which is which. But the same law is subject to change. What’s right today can be wrong tomorrow and vice versa.
Elaine. Yes, that’s true.
Daniel. Can you understand now why those aboriginals had a hard time grasping this distinction that was so clear to the missionaries? To the missionaries it seemed completely self-evident. To the aboriginals it seemed completely arbitrary — as it does to me.
Elaine. This is an example of something you described in Beyond Civilization. I don’t remember what you called it. The cultural … something or other.
Daniel. The cultural fallacy. The belief that the ideas that come to us as the received wisdom of our culture are innate to the human mind — that they actually arise from the structure of the human mind itself. According to this particular cultural fallacy, someone who can’t tell the difference between right and wrong is either retarded or insane … This looks like a good stopping point.
Elaine. I have a question.
Daniel. Okay.
Elaine. In your writings on the food race, and I think in “The New Renaissance,” you talk about the fact that we’re attacking the biodiversity of this planet by systematically converting the biomass of other species into human mass.
Daniel. Yes?
Elaine. Isn’t that something you would consider wrong?
Daniel. You haven’t quite gotten my point here. I’m not interested in sorting things out into these categories, right and wrong. In other words, my point is not that what we’re doing here is wrong but that it’s unsustainable. It’s undermining the human future on this planet, and I’m not going to quibble over whether this is to be categorized as right or wrong. I don’t give a damn which it is.
Elaine. Okay. You’re right. I hadn’t quite gotten your point about this. I think I see it now … While we’re right here, I have another question, or maybe it’s just an observation.
Daniel. Go ahead.
Elaine. It seems to me that the most astounding single sentence in all your work is “There is no one right way for people to live.” But I have the feeling this just floats over most people’s heads.
Daniel. It does seem that way, which surprises me. It certainly hasn’t aroused any great controversy that I’m aware of, though I’ve had a few questions about it. One reader wrote, “I think I know of one right way for people to live, and that’s letting everyone live the way they want to live.” How would you reply to that?
Elaine [after some thought]. I don’t know.
Daniel. Think about it over lunch. You have a tendency … This question comes from a certain frame of reference. You can’t just accept that frame of reference without challenge. Put yourself in this person’s mind and dig into his words. Then pull back away from it and see if it makes sense … It’s like a negotiation, and this is his first offer: “I know of one right way for people to live, and that’s letting everyone live the way they want to live.” If you look closely at the terms of his offer, you’ll see why it has to be rejected. What he’s saying is nonsense. You have to formulate a counteroffer in your own terms, from your own frame of reference, then you’ll have your reply.
Friday: Afternoon
Daniel. So. What did you come up with?
Elaine. Nothing, I’m afraid. I really don’t see how to argue with what he’s saying.
Daniel [after some thought]. I’ve been thinking about your difficulties in a general way, and I hope that you won’t be offended by my conclusion. It’s certainly not an observation original to me that women in our society are generally expected to get along by being acquiescent, whereas men are expected to be assertive.
Elaine. That’s certainly true.
Daniel. The reason you don’t see how to argue with this person’s proposition is that you’ve begun by acquiescing to it, by saying, “Yes, you seem to be making a lot of sense.”
Elaine. I guess that’s true. I see his point, and I see some validity to it.
Daniel. If we’re going to make any progress here, I’m afraid you’re going to have to resist the long-standing impulse to listen, nod, and acquiesce.
Elaine. A lifetime in the schools will do that to you.
Daniel. I understand completely, but it’s time to begin fighting the impulse.
Elaine. I know. I’ll do my best.
Daniel. In this case, what you have to do is turn the tables on this person. You understand the expression?
Elaine. Turn the tables? Yes, of course.
Daniel. What are “the tables”?
Elaine. Oh. Well. That I don’t know specifically.
Daniel. Do you play chess?
Elaine. Yes.
Daniel. Turning the tables is the most aggressive chess move of all. If you’re playing the black pieces and you see that your opponent has developed a winning position, you turn the table aroun
d so that you’re now playing the white pieces and he’s playing the black. You’ve usurped what appears to be his superior position.
Elaine. Hardly a legal move.
Daniel. No, but it’s the origin of the expression. Right now the person who has made this statement about the right way to live seems to have a superior position. His statement seems to make sense. I want you to turn the tables on him and play his position.
Elaine. How do I do that?
Daniel. His proposition is: “The right way to A is to let everyone A the way they want to A.” Substitute a B for his A. Any active verb.
Elaine. Well, let’s see … worship?
Daniel. Try it and see.
Elaine. The right way to worship is to let everyone worship the way they want to worship.
Daniel. What do you think of it?
Elaine. It doesn’t make any sense. Letting everyone worship the way they want to worship is not a way to worship.
Daniel. Try substituting a C.
Elaine [after a moment]. The right way to dance is to let everyone dance the way they want to dance. That doesn’t make any sense, either.
Daniel. Why not?
Elaine. Because letting everyone dance the way they want to dance is not a way to dance.
Daniel. So what about the original statement?
Elaine. It tells you one thing you should do, but it doesn’t tell you how to live. Letting everyone live the way they want to live is not a way to live.
Daniel. So it can hardly be the one right way to live.
Elaine. No.
Daniel [after some thought]. We haven’t actually done anything new here. We always have to get behind people’s words to see what’s going on in their minds. In this case, what was going on was just some fuzzy thinking. Some fuzzy thinking that sounded good. We brought this to light by substituting different terms for his term, live. We have to be ready to try anything that will help us get behind the words to the ideas that generate the words.
Elaine. I don’t seem to be much good at coming up with things to try.
Daniel. Well, I’ll tell you something. When I started getting questions, back in 1992, each one of them initially flummoxed me. It was only after answering hundreds of them that the techniques I’m showing you became second nature to me. And even now I occasionally get one that stumps me. Not that I don’t eventually crack it, but I have to go through the same steps we’ve been going through here, trying this and trying that until I see the answer.