was identical in talent, interest, and character, and to drill and test them into submission, all for the purpose of neatly fitting them into one of the slots our economy had so thoughtfully prepared. “But what an uncharitable depiction of school and all those hardworking teachers!” you might say. No doubt. But true revolutionaries will spare no one and nothing in their relentless quest to turn their vision into reality. As T.E. Lawrence wrote, “The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” And by now we had all become dreamers. Schooling had to reflect who we were now, not what we had been. We were determined not to make the same mistakes we had made before.
After much trial and error, we settled upon the following approach. It is less an organized system than a loose system of methods and practices, based on rather more-solid principles. You would probably be bewildered by our schools. “Where are the bells, the tests, the worksheets? Where are the principals, the school boards? For that matter, where are the classrooms?”
They are gone, torn down like all the other concrete and steel prisons we had grown tired of cowering in. We have kept some science labs and libraries, but that is all. We also have no need for the gladiatorial arenas, the tracks and gyms that used to hold hostage the days and dreams of our teenagers. With all the walking and manual labor they do, our youth, like all of us, are a hundred times more fit than people in your world.
Our children spend almost all day outside. We took the hint from schools in the developing world and built simple, cottage-like structures open to the land and sky. There, surrounded by trees and gardens, our children come together in joy and companionship to learn, to play, to grow. The constant, terrible pressure to maintain that GPA to enter that university in order to get a ‘good’ job so you don’t starve on the street—that pressure is gone. (Oh humanity, how could you have been so callous to your own children for so long?)
Now we can relax, take our time, and focus on developing each child’s potential… surely the real mission of education. No longer addicted to the siren calls of the TV and the computer, our young are literature and numerate. To what end?
To learn stories, important ones. You see, the mistake we made before was to lose sight of who we were, where we were, and how we had gotten there. In short, we had forgotten our story. Those who ran and profited from the prevailing system urged new narratives upon us. They were easy to understand; so simple, in fact, that they could be summarized in one-sentence maxims:
“Work hard and believe in yourself and you will always succeed.”
“Honesty is the best policy.”
“Humanity is naturally divided into distinct ethnic and racial groups.”
“Our nation is special.”
“Science and logic will allow us to figure everything out.”
“The earth, the whole universe, was created for us to do with as we please.”
But however straightforward these cultural, national, and species myths were, no matter how tirelessly they were promulgated, they suffered from one fatal flaw: they were demonstrably untrue. There were too many poor people for them to be true. Corruption, inequality, and injustice were too prevalent for them to be true. The fact that we were all brothers and sisters under the skin was too obvious (despite the manipulators’ feverish attempts to divide us) for them to be true. And the glorious, diamond-hard certainty of the dragon’s existence shattered once and for all the twin myths of comprehensibility and human superiority. In the end, perhaps that has been their greatest gift to us: the restoration of mystery, and consequently, of humility.
So, no more hand-me-down lies. No more quizzes, no more grades; we have even dispensed with grade levels. The teenagers help teach the little ones. The lessons are almost all oral. “In the beginning was the Word….” We live by this creed. We are slowly reclaiming the ancient lore from our past—the tales, chronicles, fables, songs, and myths—and braiding them into a single oral epic. Centuries ago, Thomas Aquinas acknowledged the power inherent in this fabulist’s approach to life when he wrote, “I fear the man of one book.” A magnificent synthesis, our civilizational song will include everything that humans have thought and done, their ideas about the universe and God, their glorious achievements and terrible mistakes. And it will end as it must: with the coming of the dragons, and the new civilization that they, through the Presence, have helped us to build.
Conceived in the language of old belief, it will be the story of our time, for all time. And our laws and customs shall flow from it, as a river does from a spring. This is what our children are learning in school.
21
A thoughtful woman I know said the single most insightful thing I have ever heard about the influence the dragons have had on human society. She remarked that they have given us time and taken away money. On the subject of money, the less said the better. It was an unmitigated evil for whose abolition we daily thank the Eye.
Ah, but time, time, that fire in which we all were burning, that precious golden gift, that daily lengthening shadow….We had trapped ourselves in a lightless cell from which there was no escape. The bars were made of work, pressure, fear, conformity, envy, greed: all the evils of our soul-crushing age.
For perhaps the first time in its existence, humanity has time. Time to rest, time to love, time to master a skill, to think. Time to live. We have thrown away the clock, that devil’s tool, and the calendar too. We have gone back to the natural rhythms of the day, the lunar month, and the growing season. We don’t even distinguish between the days of the week any longer. Why should we, when
All days wear the same bright face
And the mountain does not change its shape
One bit
In a thousand human lives.
There are no more business meetings to attend, no appointments to keep, no production goals to reach. Humanity is no longer on a deadline.
Sit in the sun by the river and
Think, just think about
The darting flight of the birds
Her eyes
The green smell of summer…
Your hand idly tasting the waters
While the universe streams tranquilly by.
You, the hapless servant of an unrelenting minute and hour, can scarcely imagine the calm, leisurely pace of our days. Ours is now a profoundly local civilization; we rarely venture far from our community, so we don’t need to move very quickly. We have mercifully outgrown that frantic, twentieth-century compulsion to be somewhere else than where we are at the moment. Most travel occurs on foot, or using bicycles, public transportation 100% powered by renewables, and horses. That’s right: horses. In southern climes, we have heard, communities have begun breeding camels and even elephants for transportation and labor.
Large cities exist in name only on fading maps and sunbleached billboards. They have been broken up into numberless communities, each striving for maximum self-sufficiency, and separated from the others by bands of verdant forest and farmland that grow thicker and more established by the year.
22
And what do we do with all of the hours we have clawed back from the industrialists, marketers, and media mannequins. Why, we learn basket weaving, embroidering and woodcarving; we attempt to master the tea ceremony; and we spend hours watching the clouds change shape as they drift by. Really!
No longer distracted by an obsession with churning out products or increasing profits, we have been able to reclaim our birthright: a life lived in freedom, security, and quiet dignity. There is hard work to be done in our homes, the fields, small factories, and workshops, but when it is accomplished we are absolutely at liberty to pursue our own private interests. And what aren’t we interested in!
But that is a weak, twentieth century term: “interested”. It’s the word of a cubicle drone who has at most 4 or 5 hours on a weekend to cram in a few good memories before he or she has to clock back in on Monday.
“I’m interested in photogr
aphy.”
“I’m interested in motorcycles.”
“Gardening is my hobby!”
These are the words of a time-parched slave whose life is not his or her own, who is allowed only a few scanty drops of sustenance when a vast sea lies before us all.
We don’t have hobbies; we have avocations. We aren’t interested in things; we are absorbed, intrigued, and enchanted by them. We cultivate ourselves in our own good time as the nurturing soil does crops.
Bloom, sun—trace your golden path.
One day’s journey and I’ve forged a knife for my man.
Swell, moon—from a crescent to a pale dish.
This month I’ve fashioned silver earrings for my girl.
Grow, tree—straight up to the sky.
One day when you’re tall enough
You’ll make a fine boat for my little boy.
Like the fabled smithies of the emperor, the people are fashioning their own Byzantium,. We have entered a new age of craftsmanship, of artisanry, of slow and patient apprenticeship of hand, eye, and heart. Some of us learn to carve in wood, others stone; still others work in metal, pottery, glass or fabric. Our clothes are handmade, as are our shoes, furniture and tools—each piece unique and made with care and scrupulous attention to detail. Gift-giving has flourished as a social art, as has a fairly efficient barter system. “Efficient” in the sense of “satisfying the basic needs of commerce while not