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