An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Ishmael 1) - Page 65

“We’ll have to approach it obliquely then—but keep it in mind as a question that needs answering.”

“Okay.”

3

“According to Mother Culture, what kind of event was your agricultural revolution?”

“What kind of event … I’d say that, according to Mother Culture, it was a technological event.”

“No implication of deeper human resonances, cultural or religious?”

“No. The first farmers were just neolithic technocrats. That’s the way it’s always seemed.”

“But after our look at chapters three and four of Genesis, you see there was a great deal more to it than Mother Culture teaches.”

“Yes.”

“Was and is a great deal more to it, of course, since the revolution is still in progress. Adam is still chewing the fruit of that forbidden tree, and wherever Abel can still be found, Cain is there too, hunting him down, knife in hand.”

“That’s right.”

“There’s another indication that the revolution goes deeper than mere technology. Mother Culture teaches that, before the revolution, human life was devoid of meaning, was stupid, empty, and worthless. Prerevolutionary life was ugly. Detestable.”

“Yes.”

“You believe that yourself, don’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose I do.”

“Certainly most of you believe it, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes.”

“Who would be the exceptions?”

“I don’t know. I suppose … anthropologists.”

“People who actually have some knowledge of that life.”

“Yes.”

“But Mother Culture teaches that that life was unspeakably miserable.”

“That’s right.”

“Can you imagine any circumstances in which you yourself would trade your life for that sort of life?”

“No. Frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would, given the choice.”

“The Leavers would. Throughout history, the only way the Takers have found to tear them away from that life is by brute force, by wholesale slaughter. In most cases, they found it easiest just to exterminate them.”

“True, But Mother Culture has something to say about that. What she says is that the Leavers just didn’t know what they were missing. They didn’t understand the benefits of the agricultural life, and that’s why they clung to the hunting-gathering life so tenaciously.”

Ishmael smiled his sneakiest smile. “Among the Indians of this country, who would you say were the fiercest and most resolute opponents of the Takers?”

“Well … I’d say the Plains Indians.”

“I think most of you would agree with that. But before the introduction of horses by the Spanish, the Plains Indians had been agriculturalists for centuries. As soon as horses became readily available, they abandoned agriculture and resumed the hunting-gathering life.”

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