He shook his head. “Listen to her, don’t try to second-guess her. You mentioned one of her teachings on this subject a minute ago. Here it is: ‘You have some vague and probably incurable illness; you’ll never figure out exactly what it is, but here are some cures you can try. Try this one, and if that doesn’t work, try that one. And if that doesn’t work, try this one.’ Ad infinitum.”
“Okay, I see what you mean. Let me think.” I closed my eyes and after about five minutes began to get a glimmer. “This may be totally wrong,” I told him. “This may just be the simple truth, but this is what I hear: ‘Sure, you can save the world, but you’re really going to hate it. It’s really going to be painful.’ ”
“Why is it going to be painful?”
“Because of all the stuff we have to give up. But as I say, this may just be the simple truth.”
“No, it’s not the simple truth, Julie. It’s Mother Culture’s simple lie. Although Mother Culture is a metaphor, she really does behave uncannily like a real person sometimes. Why do you think she would tell this particular lie?”
“She wants to discourage us from changing, I guess.”
“Of course. Her whole function is to preserve the status quo. This is not a peculiarity of your Mother Culture. In every culture, it’s the function of Mother Culture to preserve the status quo. I don’t mean at all to suggest that this is a wicked activity.”
“I understand.”
“Mother Culture wants to forestall you right at the outset by persuading you that, for you, any change must be a change for the worse. Why is it the case that for you any change must be a change for the worse, Julie?”
“I don’t understand why you stress ‘for you.’ ”
“Well, think about the Bushmen of Africa instead of about you. Would any change be a change for the worse for them?”
“Oh. I see what you mean. The answer is no, of course. For the Bushmen of Africa, any change would be a change for the better, according to Mother Culture.”
“Why is that?”
“Because what they have is worthless. So any change would be an improvement.”
“Exactly. And why must any change for you be a change for the worse?”
“Because what we have is perfection. It just can’t get any better than this, so any change is ipso facto going to be a change for the worse. Is that right—ipso facto?”
“It’s quite right, Julie. I’ve been surprised by how many of you actually seem to believe that what you have is perfection. It took me a while to realize that this results from the strange understanding you have of human history and of evolution. A great many of you consciously or unconsciously think of evolution as a process of inexorable improvement. You imagine that humans began as a completely miserable lot but under the influence of evolution very gradually got better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better until one day they became you, complete with frost-free refrigerators, microwave ovens, air-conditioning, minivans, and satellite television with six hundred channels. Because of this, giving up anything would necessarily represent a step backward in human development. So Mother Culture formulates the problem this way: ‘Saving the world means giving up things and giving up things means reverting to misery. Therefore …’ ”
“Therefore forget about giving up things.”
“And, more importantly, forget about saving the world.”
“And what are you saying?”
“I too say ‘forget about giving up things.’ You shouldn’t think of yourselves as wealthy people who must give up some of your riches. You should think of yourselves as people in desperate need. Do you understand the root meaning of the word wealth, Julie?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What root word is the word warmth based on?”
“Warm, obviously.”
“So take a guess. What root word is the word wealth based on?”
“Well?”
“Of course. In its root sense, wealth isn’t a synonym for money, it’s a synonym for wellness. In terms of products, you are of course fabulously wealthy, but in terms of human wealth, you are pathetically poor. In terms of human wealth, you’re the wretched of the earth. And this is why you shouldn’t focus on giving up things. How can you expect the wretched of the earth to give up anything? That’s impossible. On the contrary, you must absolutely concentrate on getting things—but not more toasters, Julie. Not more radios. Not more television sets. Not more telephones. Not more CD players. Not more playthings. You must concentrate on getting the things you desperately need as human beings. At the moment you’ve given up on all those things, you’ve decided they can’t be had. But my task, Julie, is to show you that this isn’t the case. You don’t have to give up on the things you desperately need as human beings. They’re within your reach—if you know where to look for them. If you know how to look for them. And this is what you came to me to learn.”
“But how do we do that, Ishmael?”
“You’ve got to be more demanding for yourselves, Julie—not less. This is where I part company with your religionists, who tend to encourage you to be brave and long-suffering and to expect little from life—and to expect better only in a next life. You need to demand foryourselves the wealth that aboriginal people all over the world are willing to die to defend. You need to demand for yourselves the wealth that humans had from the beginning, that they took for granted for hundreds of thousands of years. You need to demand for yourselves the wealth you threw away in order to make yourselves the rulers of the world. But you can’t demand this from your leaders. Your leaders aren’t withholding it. They don’t have it to give to you. This is how you must differ from revolutionaries of the past, who simply wanted different people to be running things. You can’t solve your problem by putting someone new in charge.”
“Yeah, but who do we demand it of if we don’t demand it from our leaders?”