Another holdout people were the Kemke, who were used to dancing just a few hours a week and who loved the leisure this lifestyle gave them. They were resolved not to let happen to them what happened to the Singe, and they stuck to their resolve. But soon the Takers came to them and said, “Look, we can’t let you have all this land in the middle of our territory. You’re not making efficient use of it. Either start dancing the way we dance or we’re going to have to move you into one corner of your territory so we can put the rest to good use.” But the Kemke refused to dance like the Takers, so the Takers came and moved them into one corner of their land, which they called a “reservation,” meaning it was “reserved” for the Kemke. But the Kemke were used to getting most of their food by foraging, and their little reservation just wasn’t big enough to sustain a foraging people. The Takers said to them, “That’s all right, we’ll keep you supplied with food. All we want you to do is stay out of the way on your reservation.” So the Takers began supplying them with food. Gradually the Kemke forgot how to do their own hunting and gathering, and of course the more they forgot, the more dependent they became on the Takers. They began to feel like worthless beggars, lost all sense of self-respect, and fell into alcoholism and suicidal depression. In the end their children saw nothing on the reservation worth staying for and drifted off to start dancing ten hours a day for the Takers.
Another holdout people were the Waddi, who spent only a few hours a month dancing and were perfectly happy with that lifestyle. They’d seen what happened to the Singe and the Kemke and were determined that it wouldn’t happen to them. They figured they had even more to lose than the Singe and the Kemke, who were already used to doing a lot of dancing for the sake of having their favorite foods on hand. So when the Takers invited them to become Takers, the Waddi just said no thanks, we’re happy the way we are. Then, when the Takers finally came and told them they’d have to move onto a reservation, the Waddi said they didn’t care to do that either. The Takers explained that they weren’t being offered a choice in the matter. If they didn’t move to the reservation willingly, they’d be moved by force. The Waddi replied that they would meet force with force and warned the Takers that they were prepared to fight to the death to preserve their way of life. They said, “Look, you have all the land in this part of the world. You don’t need this little part that we’re living in. All we ask is to be allowed to go on living the way we prefer. We won’t bother you.”
But the Takers said, “You don’t understand. The way you live is not only inefficient and wasteful, it’s wrong. People weren’t meant to live the way you live. People were meant to live the way we Takers live.”
“How can you possibly know such a thing?” the Waddi asked.
“It’s obvious,” the Takers said. “Just look at how successful we are. If we weren’t living the way people were meant to live, then we wouldn’t be so successful.”
“To us, you don’t look successful at all,” the Waddi replied. “You force people to dance ten and twelve hours a day just to stay alive, and that’s a terrible way to live. We dance just a few hours a month and never go hungry, because all the food in the world is right out there free for the taking. We have an easy, carefree life, and that’s what success is all about.”
The Takers said, “That’s not what success is about at all. You’ll see what success is about when we send in our troops to force you onto the land we’ve set aside for you.”
And the Waddi did indeed learn about success—or at least what the Takers considered success—when their soldiers arrived to drive them from their homeland. The Taker soldiers weren’t more courageous or more skillful, but they outnumbered the Waddi and could bring in replacements at will, which the Waddi couldn’t. The invaders also had more advanced weapons and, most important of all, unlimited supplies of food, which the Waddi certainly did not. The Taker soldiers never had to worry about food, because fresh shipments arrived daily from back home, where it was being produced continuously and prodigiously. As the war dragged on, the Waddi force became smaller and smaller and weaker and weaker, and before long the invaders wiped them out completely.
This was the pattern not only for the years ahead but for the centuries and millennia ahead. Food production increased relentlessly and the Taker population increased endlessly, impelling them to expand into one land after another. Everywhere they went, they met peoples who danced a few hours weekly or monthly, and all these peoples were given the same choice that had been given to the Singe, the Kemke, and the Waddi: Join us and let us put all your food under lock and key—or be destroyed. In the end, however, this choice was only an illusion, because they were destroyed whatever they did, whether they chose to be assimilated, allowed themselves to be driven onto a reservation, or tried to repel the invaders by force. The Takers left nothing in their wake but Takers as they stormed across the world.
And it finally came to pass, after about ten thousand years, that almost the entire population of Terpsichore were Takers. There were just a few remnants of Leaver peoples hidden away in deserts and jungles that the Takers either didn’t want or hadn’t gotten around to yet. And there was none among the Takers who doubted that the Taker way was the way people were meant to live. What could be sweeter than having your food locked away and having to dance eight, ten, or twelve hours a day in order to stay alive?
In school, this was the history their children learned. People like them had been around for some three million years, but for most of that time they were unaware of the fact that dancing would encourage the regrowth of their favorite foods. This fact had been discovered only about ten thousand years ago, by the founders of their culture. Joyously locking away their food so that they couldn’t get at it, the Takers immediately began dancing eight or ten hours a day. The people around them had never danced before, but they took it up enthusiastically, seeing at once that this was the way people were meant to live. Except for a few scattered peoples who were too dim-witted to perceive the obvious advantages of having their food locked away, the Great Dancing Revolution swept across the world without opposition.
The Parable Examined
Ishmael stopped talking, and I stared into the space in front of me like a bomb-blast victim. Finally I told him I had to go out and get some caffeine and think about this. Or maybe I just staggered out without a word, I don’t really remember.
Actually, I went back to Pearson’s department store and rode the escalators for a while. I don’t know why this soothes me, but it does. Other people go for walks in the woods. I go for rides on department-store escalators.
Then I stopped for a Coke. Looking back, I see that this is the second time I’ve mentioned Coke. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was giving it a boost here. Everyone in the world should stop buying Coke as far as I’m concerned, but I’m afraid I do occasionally suck one down.
After forty-five minutes I was still feeling like a bomb blast victim, except that I wasn’t suffering or anything. I felt that I now understood what learning is. Of course, learning can be like looking up the meaning of a word. That’s learning, for sure, sort of like planting a blade of grass in a lawn. But then there’s learning that is like dynamiting the whole lawn and starting over, and that’s what Ishmael’s tale of the dancers did. Eventually some questions began to form in my mind, and I headed back to Room 105 to get them asked.
I said, “Let me see if I actually understand what I heard.”
“That’s a good plan,” Ishmael agreed.
“By ‘dancing’ you mean the practice of agriculture.”
He nodded.
“You’re saying agriculture isn’t just the full-scale, all-out farming we practice. You’re saying agriculture is encouraging the regrowth of the foods you favor.”
He nodded again. “What else could it be? If you’re stranded on a desert island, you can’t grow chickens and chickpeas—unless you find some already growing there. You can only regrow whatever is already growing.”
“Right. And you’re saying people were encouraging the regrowth of their favorite foods long before the Agricultural Revolution.”
“Certainly. There’s nothing mysterious about the process. People as smart as you had been around for as long as two hundred thousand years when your ‘revolution’ started. There were people in every generation smart enough to be rocket scientists, but you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that plants grow from seeds. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that it makes sense to stick a couple of seeds in the ground when you leave an area. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to do a little weeding. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that when you’re hunting game, it’s always better to take a male than a female. Nomadic hunters are only a step away from being hunter/herders who follow the migrations of their favorite animals, and these are only a step away from being herder/hunters who exert some control over the migration of their favorite animals and chase off other predators. And these are only a step away from being true herders, who control their animals completely and breed them for docility.
“So you’re saying that the revolution just consisted of doing something full-time that people had already been doing part-time for thousands of years.”
“Of course. No invention ever comes into being fully developed in a single step, from nothing. Ten thousand inventions had to be in place before Edison could invent the electric lightbulb.”
“Yeah. But you’re also saying that the real innovation of our revolution wasn’t growing the food, it was locking it up.”
“Yes, that was certainly the key. Your revolution would have ground to a halt without that feature. It would grind to a halt today without that feature.”
“That was the last thing I was going to bring up. You’re saying the revolution never ended.”