Wrong assumptions

Common culture has always been greedy and power-hungry, traits which will ultimately lead to not only humankind’s extinction, but the planet’s as well. This is because the story being enacted my our civilization is not in accordance with the world, with the law of limited competition, which consists of taking only what is needed to survive. In page 84, Ishmael gave his pupil his culture’s death sentence with the following quotation: “There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act like the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.” And all this because Mother Culture of the Takers claims: “The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.” (pg. 72) Humankind’s ego is and has been causing the exponential acceleration of its destruction ever since Adam took the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This has been in effect because “The knowledge of who shall live and who shall die…” (pg. 160) is only intended for the gods.

By assuming godly rights, mankind took a drastic step into exaggerating his instinct, to expand. By falsely taking a right that’s not theirs, in the first place, our culture becomes obsessive slayers who kill any organism that doesn’t promote their growth. This genocide will lead to the extermination of diversity, the last resort for survival in extreme catastrophes.

If humanity doesn’t regain the lost story they used to enact before Adam, terminal amnesia will cause the crash of man. If Takers were to end up living only on rice, for instance, the life support would become extremely vulnerable to elimination. Takers’ growth impulse will not only lead to their destruction, but to the Leavers’ crash as well, who have hoarded their individual story for generations, perfecting it. The one problem with Takers is that they “… accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. The Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people.” (pg. 206) This is wisdom… the ability to adapt to benefit the environment as well as to the need of the survival of a people.