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Daniel Quinn
103 quotes
“The tribal life is precious because it tested out. For three million years it worked for people. It worked for people the way nests work for birds, the way webs work for spiders, the way burrows work for moles, the way hibernation works for bears. It doesn’t make it lovable, that makes it viable. People will also say to me, “Well, if it was so wonderful, why didn’t it last?” The answer is that it did last—it has lasted right up to the present moment. It continues to work, but the fact that something works doesn’t make it invulnerable. Burrows and nests and webs can all be destroyed, but that doesn’t change the fact that they work. Tribalism can be destroyed and indeed has largely been destroyed, but that doesn’t change the fact that it worked for three million years and still works today as well as it ever did. And the fact that tribalism works doesn’t mean that something else can’t work. The trouble is that our particular something else isn’t working—doesn’t work and can’t work. It bears with it its own seeds of destruction. It’s fundamentally unstable. And unfortunately it had to reach global proportions before the nature of its instability could be recognized.”
Daniel Quinn (1935–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And conversely, why should you be surprised if the founders of our culture, having obliterated a lifestyle tested over a period of three million years, were unable to instantly slap together a replacement that was just as good? Really, the task was a formidable one. We’ve been working at it for ten thousand years, and where are we? The very first thing to go was the very thing that made tribal life a success: its social, economic, and political egalitarianism. As soon as our revolution began, the process of division began, between rulers and ruled, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, masters and slaves. The suffering class had arrived, and that class (as it would always be) was the masses. I won’t repeat a tale everyone knows. Just a few thousand years separates the bare beginning of our culture in rude farming villages from the age of the god-kings, when the royal classes lived in mind-boggling splendor and all the rest—the suffering masses—lived like cattle.”
Daniel Quinn (1935–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Daniel Quinn (1935–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source