Daniel Quinn
You ought to go and read this book right now. There’s a summary on Wikipedia, I’d recommend it. But I have a few snips to make you read through.
The sense that something is very wrong with a certain style of living 11, or that something big is being kept from you. where, coming from the guy, 45 I get it all the time, I’ve also always wanted to find a teacher like Ishmael.
If you can’t discover what’s keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual. Ishmael, 25
having impure thoughts about saving the world... Narrator, 28
Takers thought that the world needed someone to come in and straighten it out. Someone to put it in order. 71
In order to become fully human, man had to pull himself out of the slime. And all this is the result. As the Takers see it, the gods gave man the same choice they gave Achilles: a brief life of glory or a long uneventful life in obscurity. And the Takers chose a brief life of glory. Narrator, 75
The world was given to man to turn into a paradise, but he’s always screwed it up, because he’s fundamentally flawed. He might be able to do something about this if he knew how he ought to live, but he doesn’t – and he never will, because no knowledge about that is obtainable. So, however hard man might labor to turn the world into a paradise, he’s probably just going to go on screwing it up. Ishmael, 89
Takers explanation for why things are going badly in the world: something is fundamentally wrong with people. Yet Leavers lived in concert with nature for three million years before the Takers branched off ten thousand years ago. 118
The agricultural revolution sparked by the first Takers, is the manifesto on which the entire Taker society is based, as it was then, and as it will be until the Takers die off. 153
I need to read the Bible.
Quinn posits that parts of of the old testament are Leaver mythology, concerning the Takers.
Adam and Eve (Adam meaning Earth or Man; Eve meaning Life or Woman) in The Fall of Man, god casts the Takers from his kingdom with a vengeance. The Takers, having eaten from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, now are able to decide who lives (themselves) and who dies (anything preventing them from living). Adam said yes to Life, and began to grow without limit. 180-81
Cain and Abel represent the Takers and Leavers, Abel a shepherd, Cain a farmer. God favors Abel, yet Cain killed Abel. God then curses Cain to have to wander the earth the rest of his life. Having eaten the forbidden fruit, they rapidly proliferate, moving south, and killing herders and gathers. 173
Even though the story of Adam and Eve made so little sense to us Takers (because it is Leaver mythology, demonizing the Takers), it’s a big deal because we directly identify with Adam: he is us. 184
There’s nothing in the past for [Leavers]. The past is dreck. The past is something to escape from, something to be escaped from. Narrator, 210
Whereas the Leavers infallibly have a rich connection back to the beginning of the earth – their method of living has evolved through thousands of generations stretching back millions of years. None of the Leavers just invented their cultures, the Takers did.
And now the Takers have all but abolished that Leaver wisdom. 205-7
Taker culture sees Leavers leading an incredibly grim life, but they actually really don’t. 220
Yes. Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, “Have no care for tomorrow. Don’t worry about whether or not you’re going to have something to eat. Look at the birds in the air, They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect care of them. Don’t you think he’ll do the same for you?” In [Taker] culture, the overwhelming answer to that is, Hell no! Even the most dedicated monastics saw to their sowing and reaping and gathering in barns. Narrator, 228
The Takers are those who know good and evil, and the Leavers those who live in the hands of the Gods. 229
Takers assume that they are the pinnacle of the world, the best that it gets. It’s inherent in their culture – the earth was made by the gods in their name.
The Takers jumped out of the hand of the gods – they’ve eschewed the evolution that ruled all species and ushered the Takers to the point at which they jumped off the wagon.
They’ve removed the need for natural selection by deciding they knew what was right and what was wrong. They don’t need to adapt to their surroundings, they force their surroundings to adapt to their needs. 239
Takers: the world belongs to man; Leavers: man belongs to the world. 239
Yet the world does not belong to man, the takers have always been right.
[Man’s] destiny is to be the first to learn that creatures like man have a choice: They can try to thwart the gods and perish in the attempt – or they can stand aside and make room for all the rest. But it’s more then that. His destiny is to be the father of them all – I don’t mean by direct descent. By giving all the rest their change – the whales and the dolphins and the chimps and the raccoons – he becomes in some sense their progenitor… Oddly enough, it’s even grander than the destiny the Takers dreamed up for us. Narrator, 242
With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?
With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?