AUSTIN, TX & THE
FATE OF THE WORLD
[Quinn interview, part 4 and conclusion]
by Lance Pierce
Do you think there’s
enough time?
Oh, you see, that’s the difference. We are not in
those days anymore. We are in these days. In these days, we have the Internet. We
can do things that were unthinkable a hundred years ago. We can accomplish things a
thousand times faster. Yes, it can be done and it can be done quickly.
The reason I ask is
because in The Story of B, I was surprised to see that you had actually laid down
an estimated time of when a collapse might occur. One of your main protagonists, Charles
Atterleigh, said we’re about two generations away.
That isn’t a number that was just picked out.
It’s a number that is given by folks at World Watch. I’m not remotely qualified
to make such a guess as to how long, so I wouldn’t stand behind anything as far as it
being X number of years. It could be a hundred years; it could be two hundred years, for
all I know. It could be tomorrow. World Watch does nothing but examine this question, and
they say about forty years. So, if we say forty years, I say that’s plenty of time.
So the mission of The
Story of B, then, is to not only further the message in Ishmael but to make it
as widely available to as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. And yet,
the book isn’t even out yet and you’ve already encountered some resistance to
it.
(Laughs) Yeah!
You’ve told me about
certain reviewers who called it a dangerous book. Not that anything in it was not true, or
unfactual, or intellectually dishonest, or anything like that...they just said it was a
dangerous book. Why the resistance? Why is it so dangerous? What is so threatening about
it, do you think?
Well, it’s threatening for the same reason Ishmael
is. The difference between the two is that many people who love Ishmael did not
perceive what is dangerous in it. They will perceive it in The Story of B because
I’ve exposed it and made it clear. I thought I was being pretty clear in Ishmael,
but it turned out I wasn’t. When I began to hear from people who I ex pected to hate
the book, they loved it. So, I knew that I’d muted the message too much. Well,
I’ve taken the mute off in The Story of B, and been more
confrontive, as well.
One writer is a great admirer of Ishmael and has
said great things about it. The publisher sent her a copy of The Story of B, hoping
that she would give us a quote for the cover. Her reaction was that the book should be
withdrawn from publication! Now what happened between Ishmael and The Story of
B, I think, was that she saw what I was saying. That’s just my theory. But I also
think the books that you burn are the ones that tell the truth, the ones that threaten
you. Of course, you don’t feel threatened by silly books, or by those books that are
unpersuasive, or are nonsense. Nobody ever burned Dr. Seuss’s books, and nobody ever
would.
I was gratified that in Ishmael
you provided a new destiny for us. You were very perceptive in pointing out that you
cannot take a culture’s destiny away without giving them one to replace it with.
However, you’ve said that Ishmael failed to provide a new vision...
What people sensed in Ishmael is that it is a
religious vision, and they came back to me and said, "Well where is it? What is it?
You haven’t told us what it is. You haven’t given it to us." I knew that
was the case. That’s why The Story of B had to come into being. I was
constantly surprised when I would go into classrooms and people would say, "Well,
what is your vision - your religious vision?" My rationale was, "Well, you
don’t want to know that. That’s just me." But no, they wanted to know.
In fact, this isn’t something that I invented. What I
articulated in The Story of B is the vision that makes it possible to see the
Leavers as one people. Leavers had a universal religion in the sense that they all shared
this vision that I call Animism. It wasn’t a terribly abstruse vision; it was a
vision that kept them centered in their lives.
I don’t want to go to deeply into it here, because I
think people should go to B and discover it there, and that’s only because I
can’t say it any better than it’s said there. But I think everyone knows
secretly that if we’re going to save the world, it will have to be by a new religious
awakening that technology isn’t going to be able to address. Governments aren’t
going to do it, laws aren’t going to do it for us, police aren’t going to do it
for us. It has to be an awakening among people of a religious kind. This is so serious
here, we’re talking about the extinction of the human race; that’s what’s
at issue. If the extinction of the human race isn’t a religious issue, what is?
But you see, all of the salvationist religions of our
culture, of which I include Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism...among
many of them is recently seen the desired ability of becoming environmental, of suddenly
passing themselves off as caring about the world. People are very upset with me when I
come along and say, "Yes, well, where were you five thousand years ago? Where were
you two thousand years ago? Where were you a century ago? The vision I’m talking
about was there before you were even dreamed of, and it’s just as fresh and as strong
and as good today as it ever was, and it was environmental from the beginning. In fact,
you are betraying your roots, when you pretend to care about the world." There
isn’t a single one of these religions, that if you look at the roots, isn’t a
denial of the world. There’s not a single one of them that doesn’t say the world
is shit. There isn’t a single one of them that doesn’t say salvation consists of
getting out of this world, one way or another.
For Christianity, of course, this world is meaningless.
It’s the empire of the Devil - Satan rules the physical world - and when it’s
gone this will be good. Many of the Christian sects are just eagerly awaiting the end of
the world. Our true home is in heaven. So don’t come to me and say that you love the
world. You may, but your culture doesn’t.
The vision I’m talking about is the vision of loving
the world, and we better start loving the world in damned short order. But there has to be
a basis for it, there can’t just be gibberish. It can’t be bogus crystal
rubbing, and aroma smelling. I’m talking about something that is as solid as 3
million years of human history.
This thing that I’m talking about, this Animism, is
about perceiving the world as a sacred place, and of our having a place in this world, as
opposed to being wretched creatures who should be destroyed, or being flawed. Animism sees
us as no more flawed than sparrows or tarantulas or sharks or deer. Rather than seeing us
as enemies of the world, we have a place in this world, and this world is a sacred place.
But none of this is self-evident to our culture or in any
of our religions. They all begin with the premise that the world is trash and that what
counts is spirit. They all say that God - if there is God; there’s no god in
Buddhism, but when you have a God - you generally find that he is some remote being,
certainly remote from the earth, that he looks down on us from a very, very, very, very,
very great distance. Now, where did that come from? I don’t know, but it’s
clearly antithetical to Animism, which does not look up to the sky. Animism looks here.
And all this is self-evident to our ancestors; it is
evident to the people who still live as Leavers today. They don’t write works of
theology. It’s no big deal for them. It is part of their world view. Our world view
is that the world is shit, we are treasures, but only as spirits, and there’s
something wrong with humans, and the world belongs to us, and all this crap. (laughs)
Hand in hand with
this, you talked in The Story of B, and I thought it was an important concept,
about the idea of implementing programs versus implementing a new vision.
Yeah. In Ishmael one of the favorite parts for
people is the jellyfish story. What they will take away from The Story of B will be
the river of vision. This came to me after I got hundreds of letters asking me for my
program, and grappling with this question of why I didn’t have a program. I’d
already said to them in Ishmael that it is the story. We must spit out the fruit of
this tree...the tree of knowledge of good and evil that says we know how to run the world.
We must get rid of it. What’s the program? There’s no program. This is about
knowledge. This is about worldview. And so, why ask me about programs? I’m not
talking about programs. But people kept saying, "Well, what is your program? I’d
like to be part of your program. Please send me information about your program."
As if you were setting up
another Greenpeace or Sierra Club.
Exactly! I felt very inadequate because I couldn’t
tell them what my program was. I think they were duly unimpressed by the fact that I
didn’t have one. So over years of struggling with it, I eventually reached this point
which I explained in The Story of B in a metaphor.
The metaphor says that what proceeds as vision, what is
supported by vision, is like a river. I give as an example the Industrial Revolution,
which began as a trickle in the 14th century, became a brook in the 15th century, a stream
in the 17th century, a river in the 18th century, a giant flood in the 19th century, and
an overwhelming inundation in the 20th century. No one during all that time ever had a
program for the Industrial Revolution. Never in all of that did anyone need to have a
program for it because it was supported by our cultural vision.
Anyone who attempts to oppose the river of vision is
putting sticks in the river to impede its flow. If you say, "Oh, yeah, we’ve got
this great technological river flowing here and it’s polluting our air, I’m
going to sponsor this stick here...we’ll put this stick in the river...this will make
it more difficult to pollute our air. This is a law that I’m going to have published,
passed in Congress, making it difficult for them to pollute the air. Here it goes,
I’m going to put this stick in the river." And, by golly, it does impede the
flow, microscopically, but it does a little something, you know. Now another person says,
"Well, we’ve got to have a lot of sticks like this," so you’ve got
whole bunches of people putting sticks in to try to impede the flow of this great crashing
river. Of course the river just keeps on going. That is vision.
The current idea for most people is, "Where do I put
a stick? Tell me what stick do I put in the river? I will get all my friends to help put
sticks in the river." "Well," I say, "I’m not interested in
putting sticks in the river. I’m talking about diverting the river." Get a new
vision and you don’t need sticks. When the river moves in a new direction and away
from catastrophe, then all you have over there is a dry bed with sticks sticking up out of
it. If we don’t do that, no amount of sticks is going to stop this river. So, now,
when people ask about my program, I send them this excerpt from B and say,
"Here is what I have to say about programs." In effect I’ve said,
"There is no program. I don’t have a program for you. I never will. You are
already doing what is necessary. You are telling your friends. You’re passing Ishmael
around. That’s all I do. That’s all I know to do."
We think in terms of our
destiny as being what is fated for us, but Ishmael says that we are at a point now
where our destiny is going to be of our own choosing. If we continue the way we are, then
our destiny will be to collapse. If we change what we are doing, then our destiny will be
to succeed. You say it is attainable and decisive.
It’s like you’re hanging over a ledge and
someone is saying, "There is a tree branch just over the edge, and if you can grab
the tree branch, then you can pull yourself up. Otherwise, you’re absolutely going to
slip." You can only hold on the cliff edge so long, and then you are going into the
chasm. So, you can either make an effort to reach up to grab the branch or you can wait
and fall. Of course, if you reach up you may fall anyway. I think given the choice I would
have to take the chance of reaching up for salvation rather than just waiting for the
ultimate catastrophe, and we can be sure that the catastrophe will come if we do
nothing. We can possibly succeed if we can get a new direction, but we will certainly fail
if we don’t. So I have to keep going with what I do because the alternative is to sit
here and wait for the inevitable.
Well, you’ve put Ishmael
out there, and its impact is markedly evident. The Story of B is getting ready to
come out. You’re not done, are you?
No. Not at all. A sequel is in the works: My Ishmael.
It is told by Ishmael’s unnamed narrator. It’s too early to reveal very
much of the plot, though. The transcript should be done by next spring, and it will not
be a retelling of the original. I’ll just say that our narrator finds someone.
I trust you’ll be
ready for the new wave of correspondence and feedback. Have readers brought you any
revelations or insights concerning Ishmael or his way of thinking?
They revealed to me my shortcomings and failures. Not
meaning to be ruthless, of course, but when someone asks, "Does this mean that we
should go and become hunter-gatherers?" I say, "Whoops." When many people
ask the same thing, I say, "I need to do something about this. I need to fix
this."
But it’s not just that. I am very inspired to see
people taking this new vision. They ask, "How do I change my life so that my vision
is closer to this vision? And how do I get people around me involved and take them with
me?" This is the thing in action. I’ve been shown that I was right not to give
people my 12-step program and to say to them instead, "Look, start with where you
are, wherever you are, it doesn’t matter. You can do something. I can’t tell you
what to do. I have no idea what you can do. Only you know what you can do."
That’s the difference between this and a 12-step program. A 12-step program is for
anybody, I guess. That’s cool, but I don’t know any 12-step program that’s
going to save the world. It just isn’t going to happen that way. It has to happen by
everybody, where they are, changing the way they live where they are. Who can tell them
that? They have to see it themselves. Five, six million people say, "Oh, I have to
change the way I live? How do I do that? Let’s talk about this. Let’s get
together. How do we do this?" Not saying, "What are the 12 steps?" There is
just no such thing. The people in this community have to say, "Okay. How do I do
this?" My problem is what I can do, yours is what you can do...and everybody can do a
lot. You can do a lot. Believe me. You can.
Boarding the plane home was uneventful.
The flight was only half-full, and I found myself able to rest comfortably with three
seats to myself. It was still misty outside, and the water once again cut trails on the
outside of the cabin window. Armrest up and tape recorder in hand, I listened to
Quinn’s voice at 37,000 feet. “You can do something,” he was telling me.
“Only you know what you can do.” I stopped the tape for a moment and reflected
on the hours I had just spent.
There’ve been special days in my life, but since we starting working on
ILLUSIONS I seemed to have had more than my share lately. Quinn’s hospitality and
generosity touched me deeply. His ideas colored my own.
Something shimmered. I leaned forward quickly and looked out the window. My eyes
were pulled downward, my gaze instantly focused almost directly beneath me. There, cast
against the bed of clouds below, was a bright, near-blinding radiant disk of light –
a reflection of the sun. Centered within it, in precise relief, was a shadow of our plane,
sharply defined and exact in proportion. And surrounding the light, shimmering and
iridescent, glowing and miraculous…was a perfect, circular rainbow.
Each band of color blended marvelously into the next. The entire assembly of light, shadow, and rainbow
shot across the clouds like a Frisbee, keeping absolute pace with the airplane. It danced
on the mist below me and silently sent a message which I heard and only think I
understand. I watched this phenomenon for what seemed like quite some time and pondered
again on special, magical days. Quietly, I said, under my breath, “Thank you.”
As if in answer, everything slowly faded away, like the Cheshire Cat, until only the
memory of its smile remained.
“The world is not indifferent to us,” I thought, “and not
only do we hang from the cliff and reach out for the branch, it reaches out to us.”
And from there, my thoughts turned to home, evening, and a quiet, quiet dinner with my
wife…
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