“Three: It will be led by no one. Like the Industrial Revolution, it will need no shepherd, no organizer, no spearhead, no pacesetter, no mastermind at the top; it will be too much for anyone to lead.
“Four: it will not be the initiative of any political, governmental, or religious body—again, like the Industrial Revolution. Some will doubtless want to claim to be its supporters and protectors; there are always leaders ready to step forward once others have shown the way.
“Five: It has no targeted end point. Why should it have an end point?
“Six: It will proceed according to no plan. How on earth could there be a plan?
“Seven: It will reward those who further the revolution with the coin of the revolution. In the Industrial Revolution, those who contributed much in the way of product wealth received much in the way of product wealth; in the New Tribal Revolution, those who contribute much in the way of support will receive much in the way of support.
“Now here’s a question for you. What do you think will happen to the Takers in this revolution, Julie?”
“What do you mean ‘happen’?”
“I want you to begin thinking like a revolutionary now. Don’t make me do all the work. The first thing people will want to do is outlaw the Taker way. Isn’t that right?”
I stared at him blankly. “I don’t know.”
“Think, Julie.”
“How can they outlaw the Taker way?”
“I suppose the same way they outlaw anything.”
“But I mean … if there’s no one right way for people to live, how can you outlaw the Taker way? Or any way?”
“That’s better. If there’s no one right way for people to live, then of course you can’t outlaw the Taker way. The Taker way is going to continue, and the people who follow it are going to be the people who really like having to work to eat. They really like keeping the food locked up so they can’t get at it.”
“The Takers are going to lose a lot of people in this case, because the rest of us are going to want the food to be out there free for the taking.”
“Then that’s what’ll happen, Julie. You don’t have to outlaw the Taker life to make it disappear. You just have to open the prison door, and people will start pouring out. But there’ll always be some who prefer the Taker way, who really thrive on that lifestyle. Maybe they can all get together on the island of Manhattan. You can declare it a national park and send your kids there to study the inhabitants on field trips.”
“But how will the rest of it work, Ishmael?”
“Under the original system, tribal membership was determined by birth. That is, you were born a Ute or a Penobscot or an Alawa, you couldn’t become one by choice. I suppose it was possible, but it was certainly a rarity. Why would a Hopi want to become a Navajo, or vice versa? But in the New Tribal Revolution, tribal membership will have to be by choice exclusively, at least at first. Imagine a world in which Jeffrey, instead of traveling from one set of Taker friends to another, had been able to travel from one tribe to another—every tribe different, every tribe with its doors open for people to come in or to leave. Do you think he would have ended up walking into that lake?”
“No, I don’t. I think he would have ended up in a tribe where folks like to sit around playing the guitar and writing poetry.”
“They probably wouldn’t get much ‘accomplished,’ would they?”
“Probably not, but who cares? But aren’t there a lot of intentional communities like this out there right now?”
“Yes, more than ever. Unfortunately, they all operate inside the Taker prison. They pretty much have to do that, because the Taker prison has no outside. The Takers long ago claimed the entire planet for themselves, so it’s all inside.”
“What’s this have to do with it?”
“Inside real-life prisons, the inmates form groups for various purposes, some of them sanctioned by the prison authorities and some not. For example, some cliques exist for protection; the members watch each other’s backs. These cliques have no official status. They’re unsanctioned, even outlawed. And if they became sanctioned, they’d actually be worthless, because they wouldn’t be able to take actions that the prison authorities couldn’t condone. To perform the function they exist to perform, they must remain unsanctioned—free to break the rules. Once they become sanctioned, they become like a chess club or a book-discussion group—obedient to the prison rules and so of very marginal importance to the inmates’ real concerns.”
“What’s this got to do with intentional communities?”
“Intentional communities almost always start out with the goal of being sanctioned by Taker law. This keeps them from being hassled by the police, but limits the amount of importance they can achieve in their members’ lives. This is the difference between intentional communities on one hand and cults and gangs on the other. Intentional communities want to be officially sanctioned, whereas cults and gangs never do—and this explains how cults and gangs can come to have tribal importance in their members’ lives.”
“What do you mean by ‘tribal importance’?”
“I mean that belonging to the cult or the gang takes on the same importance as belonging to a Leaver tribe. Basically, I mean that membership becomes worth dying for, Julie. When the followers of Jim Jones realized that Jonestown was doomed, they saw no point in living. Jones told them, ‘If you love me as I love you, then we all must die together or be destroyed from the outside.’ I realize this happened a year or so before you were born, but I thought you might have heard of it.”
I told him I hadn’t.
“Nine hundred people committed suicide with him. Leaver tribes have done the same when they knew there was finally no hope of being allowed to go on as a tribe.”