Quail and Pheasant
I-In the natural community, whenever a population’s food supply increases, so does its number, and visa versa. If you wanted to increase your number what would you do? s-Kill off whatever else is eating your food. Right, and this is considered holy work by the Takers. Kill off everything but your food supply and your food supply’s food supply. You end up with a community in which every other species is systematically exterminated in order to support the expansion of your own. You also end up constantly worried about how to feed an ever expanding population. I-What does Mother Culture say about this? s-Mother Culture says that it is possible to increase the food production without increasing the population.
And why increase food production? To feed the starving millions. And if you feed the starving millions? Then they will reproduce and increase the population. Is this a problem? What does Mother Culture have to say about this? Mother Culture says it is not a problem, because if it becomes a problem we will just resort to birth control. But despite all the ads urging us to send food to others who are starving, there are precious few that suggest that we send birth control devices. As long as man is acting out a story which says that the world belongs to him, living that story will mean increased food production for today and population control tomorrow. Only tomorrow never comes. But shouldn’t we attempt to eliminate famine? Famine is not a phenomenon unique to humans. All species are subject to it, everywhere in the world. And, when a species runs out of food, its population decreases until the current food supply is enough to support it. Man says that he is exempt from this law; when he sees a community that is suffering from lack of resources, he rushes in with resources from the outside; thus ensuring that there will be more people to starve in the next generation. Man in First world countries exercises his philanthropy by maintaining millions in Third world countries in a state of chronic starvation.
I-So we have discovered a law by which the community of life must live in order to avoid extinction. s-Still, people won’t accept it. Let’s be clear about what the people will and will not accept. The law itself is beyond argument, clearly in place amongst the community of life. What the Takers will deny is that it applies to humankind. Mankind has to see that they are effected by this biological law. I don’t think they will do that. Then the law will make them see. If they refuse to live under the law, then they simply won’t live. You might say that this is one of the law’s basic operations: Those who threaten the stability of the community by defying the law automatically eliminate themselves. Luckily I think that people want to hear something new. I-So tell me another way to phrase the law. s-The world was not made for any one species. And… Mankind was not needed to bring order into the world, it was in fine shape before we began to mess with it. The people of the world cling with fanatic tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they want, just the way Hitler’s mythology about Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe.
I-Among the Leavers, crime, mental illness, suicide and drug addiction are great rarities. What does Mother Culture say about this? s-Mother Culture says that this is the price of civilization. The story that the Leavers have been enacting here for the past three million years isn’t a story of conquest and rule. Enacting it doesn’t give them power. Enacting it gives them lives that are satisfying and meaningful to them. They’re not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror of each other, not going crazy because their lives seem empty and pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through the days, not inventing a new religion every week to give them something to hold onto, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in to make their lives worth living. And I repeat: This is not because they live close to nature or have no formal government or because they are innately noble. This is simply because they are enacting a story that works well for people a story that worked well for three million years and still works well where the Takers haven’t yet managed to stamp it out.
I-There is a very special knowledge that you must have if you are to rule the world. The Leavers lack this knowledge, and the Takers are very surprised at this because they believe the knowledge to be self evident. Who else has this knowledge? s-The gods. Yes, and I will tell you a story about how the gods came to have this knowledge. The gods one day were contemplating sending a cloud of locusts down upon a great plain so that the locusts could feast on the vegetation and the lizards and birds could flourish by feasting on the locusts. They then thought that this might not be such a great idea since then the animals which ordinarily feasted on the plants might suffer. This presented a problem because whichever way they went, they would be favoring one species over another. While they were debating they saw a fox and decided to send a quail for the fox to eat. But then they thought that it would be a crime to make the quail suffer. As they turned this over they saw that the quail was about to eat a grasshopper and they began to fret about whether they should spare the grasshoppers life by sending the quail to the fox. This was a great puzzle; if they acted then they would inflict evil on some and good on others, yet the same would occur if they did not act. Finally they perked up and remembered that at one time they had made a garden that contained the fruit of good and evil. They went to the garden and ate of the fruit and their eyes were opened. So they then went about and decided one day to spare the fox and another to spare the quail.