“I think what you’re groping for is that people need more than to be scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them.”
“Yes. Definitely. Stopping pollution is not inspiring. Sorting your trash is not inspiring. Cutting down on fluorocarbons is not inspiring. But this … thinking of ourselves in a new way, thinking of the world in a new way … This …”
I let it go. What the hell, he knew what I was trying to say.
7
“I trust you now see a point I made when we first began. The story being enacted here by the Takers is not in any sense chapter two of the story that was being enacted here during the first three million years of human life. The Leaver story has its own chapter two.”
“What is its chapter two?”
“You’ve just outlined it, haven’t you?”
“I’m not sure.”
Ishmael spent a moment in thought. “We’ll never know what the Leavers of Europe and Asia were up to when the people of your culture came along to plow them under forever. But we do know what they were up to here in North America. They were looking for ways to achieve settlement that were in accord with the way they’d always lived, ways that left room for the rest of life to go on around them. I don’t mean that they did this out of any sense of high-mindedness. I simply mean that it didn’t occur to them to take the life of the world into their own hands and to declare war on the rest of the community of life. Proceeding in this way for another five thousand years or ten thousand years, a dozen civilizations might have appeared on this continent as sophisticated as yours is now, each with its own values and objectives. It’s not unthinkable.”
“No, it’s not. Or rather, yes it is. According to Taker mythology, every civilization anywhere in the universe must be a Taker civilization, a civilization in which people have taken the life of the world into their own hands. That’s so obvious it doesn’t need to be pointed out. Hell, every alien civilization in the history of science fiction has been a Taker civilization. Every civilization ever encountered by the U.S.S. Enterprise has been a Taker civilization. This is because it goes without saying that any intelligent creature anywhere will insist on taking his life out of the hands of the gods, will know that the world belongs to him and not the other way around.”
“True.”
“Which raises an important question in my mind. What exactly would it mean to belong to the world at this point? Obviously you’re not saying that only hunter-gatherers truly belong to the world.”
“I’m glad you see that. Though if the Bushmen of Africa or the Kalapalo of Brazil (if there are any left by now) want to go on living that way for the next ten million years, I can’t see how this can be anything less than beneficial for them and for the world.”
“True. But that doesn’t answer my question. How can civilized people belong to the world?”
Ishmael shook his head in what looked like a mixture of impatience and exasperation. “Civilized has nothing to do with it. How can tarantulas belong to the world? How can sharks belong to the world?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look around you and you’ll see some creatures who act as though the world belongs to them and some creatures who act as though they belong to the world. Can you tell them apart?”
“Yes.”
“The creatures who act as though they belong to the world follow the peace-keeping law, and because they follow that law, they give the creatures around them a chance to grow toward whatever it’s possible for them to become. That’s how man came into being. The creatures around Australopithecus didn’t imagine that the world belonged to them, so they let him live and grow. How does being civilized come into it? Does being civilized mean that you have to destroy the world?”
“No.”
“Does being civilized make you incapable of giving the creatures around you a lit
tle space in which to live?”
“No.”
“Does it make you incapable of living as harmlessly as sharks and tarantulas and rattlesnakes?”
“No.”
“Does it make you incapable of following a law that even snails and earthworms manage to follow without any difficulty?”
“No.”
“As I pointed out some time ago, human settlement isn’t against the law, it’s subject to the law—and the same is true of civilization. So what exactly is your question?”
“I don’t know, now. Obviously belonging to the world means … belonging to the same club as everyone else. The club being the community of life. It means belonging to the club and following the same rules as everyone else.”
“And if being civilized means anything at all, it should mean that you’re leaders of the club, not its only criminals and destroyers.”