Go ahead, guess.
The missing meme
Unlike the soldiers who preceded them, the settlers of the New World didn't come dragging their national borders behind them. Rather, they came dragging a common cultural border behind them. Behind this border, people from Europe, the Near East, and the Far East could settle down comfortably side by side, because they were cultural siblings. Whether they came from England, China, Turkey, Russia, Ireland, Egypt, Thailand, or Denmark, they were vastly more like each other than they were like the savages on the other side of that border. (And, naturally, they didn't go slave hunting except on the other side of that border.)
This wasn't special to the New World. It was this way from the beginning. The border that rippled outward in all directions from the Fertile Crescent wasn't a national border, it was a cultural one. It wasn't soldiers who conquered the Old World, it was farmers, who taught their neighbors, who taught their neighbors, who taught their neighbors, taking the message outward in a circle ever-widening until it enclosed all but the undiscovered New World on the other side of the planet.
The meme we brought with us to the New World was nothing new. We'd been spreading it from the beginning: Ours is the one RIGHT way for people to live and everyone should live like us. Possessing this meme, we made ourselves cultural missionaries to the world, and, lacking this meme, the Maya, the Olmec, and the others did not.
Holy work
When Columbus set off westward across the Atlantic, he wasn't looking for an empty continent to colonize, he was looking for a trade route to the Orient. And if he'd actually bumped into Asia instead of America, the people of Europe would have said to themselves, “Let's go do some business with these Orientals.” No one would have dreamed of saying, “Let's go over there, drive off the Orientals, and take Asia for ourselves.”
But of course Columbus didn't bump into Asia, he bumped into America, which, as he saw it, was unoccupied (aside from a few savages). When the people of Europe heard this, they didn't say to themselves, “Let's go do some business with those savages.” They said to themselves, “Let's go over there, drive off the savages, and take America for ourselves.” This wasn't rapacity but rather sacred duty. When a farmer clears a field and puts it to the plow, he doesn't think of himself as taking that field away from all the wildlife that makes its home there. He isn't stealing it, he's putting it to the use God intended from the beginning. Before being cultivated, this land was merely going to waste. And that's how the settlers saw the New World. The natives were letting it all go to waste, and by taking it away from them and putting it to the plow, they were performing holy work.
The New World fell not to a sword but to a meme.
Pyramid builders
The worker hordes who built the pyramids of Mesoamerica were not more miserable than the ones who built the pyramids of Egypt. The workers of Mesoamerica merely perceived themselves as having an alternative to misery, which they eventually exercised (by walking away). We didn't, so we slogged on, building a ziggurat here, a Great Wall there, a bastille here, a Maginot Line there—and on and on and on—to the present moment, when our pyramids are not being built at Giza or Saqqara but rather at Exxon and Du Pont and Coca Cola and Proctor & Gamble and McDonald's.
I visit many classrooms, and the students one way or another always bring me round to a point where I ask how many of them are champing at the bit to get out there and start working on the pyramids their parents worked on throughout their lives and their parents before them. The question makes them uneasy, because they know they're supposed to be absolutely thrilled at the prospect of going out there to flip burgers and pump gas and stock shelves in the real world. Everyone's told them they're the luckiest kids on earth—parents, teachers, textbooks—and they feel disloyal not waving their hands at me. But they don't.
Pharaohs
It took Khufu twenty-three years to build his Great Pyramid at Giza, where some eleven hundred stone blocks, each weighing about two and a half tons, had to be quarried, moved, and set in place every day during the annual building season, roughly four months long. Few commentators on these facts can resist noting that this achievement is an amazing testimonial to the pharaoh's iron control over the workers of Egypt. I submit, on the contrary, that pharaoh Khufu needed to exercise no more control over his workers at Giza than pharaoh Bill Gates exercises over his workers at Microsoft. I submit that Egyptian workers, relatively speaking, got as much out of building Khufu's pyramid as Microsoft workers will get out of building Bill Gates's pyramid (which will surely dwarf Khufu's a hundred times over, though it will not, of course, be built of stone).
No special control is needed to make people into pyramid builders—if they see themselves as having no choice but to build pyramids. They'll build whatever they're told to build, whether it's pyramids, parking garages, or computer programs.
Karl Marx recognized that workers without a choice are workers in chains. But his idea of breaking chains was for us to depose the pharaohs and then build the pyramids for ourselves, as if building pyramids is something we just can't stop doing, we love it so much.
The Mayan Solution
The meme is as strong today among us as it was among the stone-draggers of ancient Egypt: Civilization must continue at any cost and not be abandoned under any circumstance. We're making the world uninhabitable to our own species and rushing headlong toward extinction, but Civilization must continue at any cost and not be abandoned under any circumstance.
This meme wasn't lethal to pharaonic Egypt or to Han China or to medieval Europe, but it's lethal to us. It's literally us or that meme. One of us has to go—and soon.
But …
But …
But … But surely, Mr. Quinn, you're not suggesting we go back to living in caves and catching dinner on the end of a spear?
I've never suggested such a thing or come anywhere close to suggesting such a thing. Given the realities of our situation, going back to the hunting-gathering life is as silly an idea as sprouting wings and flying off to heaven. We can walk away from the pyramid, but we can't melt away into the jungle. The Mayan solution is utterly gone for us, for the simple reason that the jungle itself is gone and there are six billion of us. Forget about going back. There is no back. Back is gone.
But we can still walk away from the pyramid.
Beyond the pyramid
If, having walked away from the pyramid, we can't melt into the jungle, what on earth can we do? Here's how the gorilla sage of Ishmael answered that question: “You pride yourselves on being inventive, don't you? Well, invent.” Not surprisingly, his pupil shrugged this off as a nonanswer—and I'm sure most readers did the same. They did this because in our meme about civilization there's another meme that is implicit: Civilization is humanity's ULTIMATE invention and can never be surpassed. That's precisely why it must be carried forward at any cost, because there cannot possibly be any invention beyond it. If we were to abandon civilization (gulp!), then we'd be finished!
If there's going to be any future for us, our first invention must be a meme-killer. We must destroy in ourselves and in the people around us the meme proclaiming civilization to be an unsurpassable invention. It is, after all, just a meme—just a notion peculiar to our culture. It isn't a law of physics, it's just something we've been taught to believe that our parents were taught to believe—as were their parents and their parents and their parents and their parents all the way back to Giza and Ur and Mohenjo-Daro and Knossos and beyond.
Since there's no better meme-killer than another meme, try this one on for size:
Something BETTER than civilization is waiting for us. Something much better—unless you're one of those rare individuals who just loves dragging stones.
PART THREE
Walking Away from the Pyramid
I went out to buy transcendence
and came back with a telephone.
ANTHONY WEIR
I am twenty-two years old and I will wait no l
onger.
SCOTT VALENTINE
Social organization and natural selection
No one is surprised to learn that bees are organized in a way that works for them or that wolves are organized in a way that works for them or that whales are organized in a way that works for them. Most people understand in a general way that the social organization of any given species evolved in the same way as other features of the species. Unworkable organizations were eliminated in exactly the same way that unworkable physical traits were eliminated—by the process known as natural selection.
But there is an odd and unexamined prejudice against the idea that the very same process shaped the social organization of Homo over the three or four million years of his evolution. No one is surprised to learn that the shape of a claw or a pattern of coloration has come down to the present because it works for the possessor of that claw or pattern of coloration, but many are reluctant to entertain the idea that any human social organization could have come down to the present for the same reason.
Definitions and examples
Lifestyle (or way of life): A way of making a living for a group or individual. Hunting and gathering is a lifestyle. Growing all your own food is a lifestyle. Scavenging (for example, among vultures) is a lifestyle. Foraging (for example, among gorillas) is a lifestyle.
Social organization: A cooperative structure that helps a group implement its way of life. Termite colonies are organized into a three-caste hierarchy consisting of reproductives (king and queen), workers, and soldiers. Human hunter-gatherers are organized into tribes.
Culture: The totality of what is communicated by one generation of a people to another by means of language and example. The Yanomami of Brazil and the Bushmen of Africa have a common lifestyle (hunting and gathering) and a common social organization (tribalism) but not a common culture (except in a very general sense).
The mysterious persistence
Our cultural vision was shaped by people who were perfectly satisfied with the notion that the universe they saw was in its final form, and had come into being in that form—in a single stroke, so to speak. The Genesis tale of creation didn't originate this notion, it merely affirmed it: God did his work, saw it was in no need of improvement, and that was that.
It hasn't been easy for us to give up this notion, and in fact many people unconsciously cling to it even while talking the talk of evolution. This is why the disappearance of New World civilizations seems mysterious to our historians. If their worldview were fundamentally Darwinian instead of fundamentally Aristotelian, they'd realize that what they're seeing in these disappearances is merely natural selection at work, and the aura of mystery would vanish.
During our three or four million years on this planet it can hardly be doubted that thousands of cultural experiments have been made among humans. The successes have survived—and the failures have disappeared, for the simple reason that eventually there was no one around who wanted to perpetuate them. People will (ordinarily) put up with being miserable for only so long. It's not the quitters who are extraordinary and mysterious, it's we, who have somehow managed to persuade ourselves that we must persist in our misery whatever the cost and not abandon it even in the face of calamity.
Some DO want more than adequacy
Before becoming full-time farmers, the Maya, the Olmec, and all the rest practiced hunting and gathering or some combination of farming and foraging. Doesn't the fact that they eventually became full-time farmers indicate they were less than perfectly satisfied with these lifestyles? That's exactly what it indicates.
At some point the idea of making all their living from agriculture seemed more attractive than the traditional way. This doesn't necessarily mean they hated their previous life, but it certainly means they judged the agricultural life to be more promising. Very probably they didn't regard their venture into the agricultural life as an experiment at all but as a permanent, irrevocable choice. If so, this doesn't negate the role of natural selection in this process but rather underscores it. Each of these peoples began by abandoning a traditional lifestyle for an innovation that seemed to promise more of what they wanted. When the innovation ended up giving them less of what they wanted, they abandoned it to resume their previous way of living. The innovation in each case had failed the test.
But doesn't this indicate that their traditional lifestyles were less than perfect? Certainly it does. Natural selection is a process that separates the workable from the unworkable, not the perfect from the imperfect. Nothing evolution brings forth is perfect, it's just damnably hard to improve upon.
Tribalism the workable
As I've said, if you note that hive life works well for bees, that troop life works well for baboons, or that pack life works well for wolves, you won't be challenged, but if you note that tribal life works well for humans, don't be surprised if you're attacked with an almost hysterical ferocity. Your attackers will never berate you for what you've said but rather for things they've invented for you to say, for example, that tribal life is “perfect” or “idyllic” or “noble” or simply “wonderful.” It doesn't matter that you haven't said any of these things; they'll be as indignant as if you had.
Tribal life is not in fact perfect, idyllic, noble, or wonderful, but wherever it's found intact, it's found to be working well—as well as the life of lizards, racoons, geese, or beetles—with the result that the members of the tribe are not generally enraged, rebellious, desperate, stressed-out borderline psychotics being torn apart by crime, hatred, and violence. What anthropologists find is that tribal peoples, far from being nobler, sweeter, or wiser than us, are as capable as we are of being mean, unkind, short-sighted, selfish, insensitive, stubborn, and short-tempered. The tribal life doesn't turn people into saints; it enables ordinary people to make a living together with a minimum of stress year after year, generation after generation.
What would you expect?
After three or four million years of human evolution, what would you expect but a social organization that works? How else could Homo habilis have survived, except in a social organization that worked? How else could Homo erectus have survived, except in a social organization that worked? And if natural selection provided Homo habilis and Homo erectus with workable social organizations, why would it fail to provide Homo sapiens with one? Humans may have tried many other social organizations in those three or four million years, but if so, none of them survived. In fact, we know that humans have tried other social organizations.
The Maya tried one—and found after three thousand years that it didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). They returned to tribalism.
The Olmec tried one—and found after three hundred years that it didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). They returned to tribalism.
The people of Teotihuacán tried one—and found after five hundred years that it didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). They returned to tribalism.
The Hohokam tried one—and found after a thousand years that it didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). They returned to tribalism.
The Anasazi tried one—and found after four hundred years that it didn't work (at least not as well as tribalism). They returned to tribalism.
Not one of their experiments survived—but tribalism did. And that's what natural selection is all about.
If you like it so much …
People who dislike what I'm saying will challenge me this way: “If you're so crazy about the tribal life, why don't you get a spear and go live in a cave?”
The tribal life isn't about spears and caves or about hunting and gathering. Hunting and gathering is a lifestyle, an occupation, a way of making a living. A tribe isn't a particular occupation; it's a social organization that facilitates making a living.
Where they're still allowed to, gypsies live in tribes, but they're obviously not hunter-gatherers.
Similarly, circus people live in tribes—but again, obviously, they're not hunter-gat
herers. Until recent decades there were many forms of traveling shows that were tribal in organization—theatrical troupes, carnivals, and so on.
What people like about tribal societies
Tribes exist for their members—and for all their members, because all are perceived as involved in the success of the tribe. When the tent goes up, there's no one in the circus more important than the construction crew. When the rigging goes up, there's no one more important than the riggers. When the show begins, there's no one more important than the performers, human and animal. And so it goes, through every phase of circus life.
Among hunter-gatherers, success obviously has nothing to do with money. In the circus, of course, everyone knows the show must make money in order to continue, but it's the circus, not the money, that provides the livelihood. I mean that they don't keep the circus going in order to make money; they make money in order to keep the circus going. (An artist might see it this way: there's a difference between painting in order to make money and making money in order to paint.)
The tribe is what provides them with what they need, and if the tribe is gone, they're all out of luck. Everyone wants the circus owner to make money, because if he stops making money, the show will close. Everyone's interest lies in the success of the whole. What's good for the tribe is good for everyone, from the owner down to the cotton-candy butchers.
I lean on the example of the circus to emphasize the fact that the tribal life isn't something that just worked long ago or just for hunter-gatherers.