Soil from Stone

In his book Ishmael, Daniel Quinn posited two competing stories which are being enacted by all the civilizations of the world: the Takers and the Leavers. The human race began by telling only one story in which mankind was but one species among millions competing for finite resources. They did not see themselves as masters of the world, but one element of it on a par with every other creature. Mankind was no better or worse, no more or less deserving of food and space than wolves or sparrows or sea bass. They lived at the mercy of seasons and solar cycles, happy to accept life or death as the world decreed. Around 8000 years ago something changed dramatically. One tribe among the thousands that then lived on earth decided that they would no longer live by the benevolence of nature, but by their own power to manipulate their conditions to better suit their own desires. They beat back the forest and plowed the land under, planting what they wanted to eat right where they lived rather than having to search it out. They stored the excess of the years of plenty to stave off starvation in the years of famine. As a result, they circumvented the historic cycles of population expansion and contraction, and their numbers grew. So did their need for resources. They pushed back the forest a little further, plowed under a little more earth, and grew a little more food than they needed to feed their greater numbers and thereby enabling yet more growth.

The revolutionary new story that upset the age old pattern told of how mankind was something more than his natural competitors. It told him that he must not continue behaving as the property of the world, but as its owner instead. So he began to treat all resources around him—animal, plant, mineral, and often even people—as his property to use however suited him. To protect his food supply he waged war on his neighbors, hunted down predators, burned down forests, and eventually poisoned his own crops to kill anything that might take them from him. This agricultural revolution spread around the globe, across every continent, and eventually nearly wiping out all traces of the hunter-gatherer peoples who came before. Quinn called the tribes who adopted this new story “the Takers” and those who remained in the older story “the Leavers.”

The Takers’ story must eventually lead to the consumption of so many resources that they will be unable to continue telling it. It relies on unrelenting expansion at the expense of the rest of the world, and there is no possible ending but catastrophe. The Takers cannot see this, of course, and rush ever faster to their own doom, trying to save their future by continually undermining it.

The Leavers, on the other hand, live in such a way that their impact on the rest of the world is minimal. The cost, however, is high. Despite Quinn’s assertions in Ishmael, the lives of stone-age tribes are every bit as miserable as those of their city-dwelling counterparts. The causes of their miseries are simply different. They still wage war against neighboring tribes and predators. They frequently hunt their prey to extinction as far as they are able. They suffer injury and disease with little or no recourse. They might be happy much of the time, perhaps more than the Takers, but their lives are far from Edenic.

Quinn contended that the solution to the Takers’ dilemma is to find a way to lead our civilization into the Leavers’ story, to invent a code of living that allows computer users to become hunter-gatherers over time. His arguments are compelling. Quinn frequently anticipated my objections to many of his points, asking and answering the very same questions I had in mind. Many of his observations were profound, but I frequently felt frustrated that he came so close to the truth on so many points, but still fell short.

In the end I found his proposed solution unsatisfactory. I see no reason at all why I should abandon one hopeless way of life only to adopt another. Yet it still seems that we must abandon many of our current ways. If we do not make some fundamental changes we might find ourselves becoming Leavers whether we want to or not as the world rebels against our perennial abuses. The gods will eventually put a stop to our Tower of Babel and scatter us back to the stone age without power tools or insecticides or cell phones.

Fortunately, there are other alternatives. There are at least four stories that could be told by mankind. The Takers’ story is one of ownership, in which mankind owns the world outright and may do with it whatever he pleases. The Takers live in a state of self-focused materialism. The Leavers’ story is also one of ownership, but in reverse so that mankind is owned by the world and must submit to whatever it decrees. It is a backwards looking fatalism. Many environmentalists would have us tell a third story of transience, in which mankind is a guest on the earth and should seek to have as little impact as possible.

The Torah tells a different kind of story, one of stewardship, in which mankind is God’s gardener set in the Garden of Earth not to conquer and pillage, but to govern on behalf of the King. We are neither the owners of the earth nor its property, but we are very definitely meant to live here. Everything we have, weather it be real estate, animals, tools, or family, is only delegated to us, and God will someday hold each of us responsible for how we used his possessions. We may derive our sustenance from our charge, but we may never abuse it.