## Metadata - Author: [[Daniel Quinn]] - Full Title: Beyond Civilization - Category: #books ## Highlights - 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. ([Location 569](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001RLTFIO&location=569)) - The tribal life and no other is the gift of natural selection to humanity. It is to humanity what pack life is to wolves, pod life is to whales, and hive life is to bees. After three or four million years of human evolution, it alone emerged as the social organization that works for people. People like the tribal organization because it works equally well for all members. Wherever civilization emerges, tribalism withers and is replaced by hierarchalism. Hierarchalism works very well for the rulers but much less well for the ruled, who make up the mass of the society. For this reason, the few at the top like it very well and the masses at the bottom like it very much less well. ([Location 863](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001RLTFIO&location=863)) - As everyone knows (especially revolutionaries), hierarchy maintains formidable defenses against attack from the lower orders. It has none, however, against abandonment. This is in part because it can imagine revolution, but it can't imagine abandonment. But even if it could imagine abandonment, it couldn't defend against it, because abandonment isn't an attack, it's just a discontinuance of support. It's almost impossible to prevent people from doing nothing (which is what discontinuing support amounts to). ([Location 986](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001RLTFIO&location=986)) - People often imagine that it would be wonderful if all six billion of us started living a new way tomorrow. It's one of our most deep-rooted and misguided memes, that there absolutely must be some one right way for everyone to live. ([Location 1006](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001RLTFIO&location=1006)) - We can't wait for all members of the world community to do anything, because if we know anything at all, we know that all members of the world community will never, ever do anything as a body. ([Location 1021](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001RLTFIO&location=1021)) - Any move beyond civilization represents a move away from the culture of maximum harm and therefore reduces your harmfulness. Jumping over the wall of the prison won't instantly make you as harmless as a shark, tarantula, or rattlesnake, but it will instantly move you in that direction. Look at it this way: no move beyond civilization will ever result in greater harm. If you want to do harm, you've got to stick to civilization. It's only inside that framework that you can burn up ten thousand gallons of jet fuel just to have lunch at your favorite restaurant in Paris. It's only inside that framework that you can casually dynamite a coral reef just because it inconveniences you. ([Location 1180](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001RLTFIO&location=1180)) - Right now our food race is rapidly converting our planet's biomass into human mass. This is what happens when we clear a piece of land of wildlife and replant it with human crops. This land was supporting a biomass comprising hundreds of thousands of species and tens of millions of individuals. Now all the productivity of that land is being turned into human mass, literally into human flesh. Every day all over the world diversity is disappearing as more and more of our planet's biomass is being turned into human mass. ([Location 1195](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001RLTFIO&location=1195)) - I don't indulge in these speculations in order to lay claim to powers of prophecy. I toss them into the water to show you what part of the pond I'm aiming at … and to let you follow the ripples back to the shore of the present. ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001RLTFIO&location=1234)) - Civilization isn't a geographical territory, it's a social and economic territory where pharaohs reign and pyramids are built by the masses. Similarly, beyond civilization isn't a geographical territory, it's a social and economic territory where people in open tribes pursue goals that may or may not be recognizably “civilized.” You don't have to “go somewhere” to get beyond civilization. You have to make your living a different way. ([Location 1241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001RLTFIO&location=1241))