“It doesn’t matter. The Erratic Retaliator strategy enforced this law: There is no one right way for people to live.”
“Right, I see it now.”
“This is something that is as true today as it was a million years ago. Nothing can render it obsolete. This law is something we can count on, Julie. At least you and I can, speaking as revolutionaries. Opponents of the revolution will insist that there is surely some one right way for people to live, and they’ll generally insist that they know what it is. That’s all right, so long as they don’t try to impose their one right way on us. ‘There is no one right way for people to live’ is where we begin, as ‘I think therefore I am’ was where Descartes began. Both statements must be accepted as self-evident or otherwise simply rejected. Neither is capable of proof. Both can be opposed by other axioms, but neither can be disproved. Are you following me?”
“I think so, Ishmael. At a distance.”
“So we have a motto for our banner: ‘There is no one right way for people to live.’ Shall we have a name for the revolution itself?”
After giving this some thought, I said, “Yeah. We could call it the Tribal Revolution.”
Ishmael nodded. “That’s a good name, but I think we’d better make it the New Tribal Revolution, Julie. Otherwise people will think we’re talking about bows and arrows and living in caves.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Here are some things we can expect of the New Tribal Revolution, based on the experience of the Industrial Revolution. We can call it the Seven-Point Plan.
“One: The revolution won’t take place all at once. It’s not going to be any sort of coup d’état like the French or Russian revolutions.
“Two: It will be achieved incrementally, by people working off each other’s ideas. This is the great driving innovation of the Industrial Revolution.
“Three: It will be led by no one. Like the Industrial Revolution, it will need no shepherd, no organizer, no spearhead, no pacesetter, no mastermind at the top; it will be too much for anyone to lead.
“Four: it will not be the initiative of any political, governmental, or religious body—again, like the Industrial Revolution. Some will doubtless want to claim to be its supporters and protectors; there are always leaders ready to step forward once others have shown the way.
“Five: It has no targeted end point. Why should it have an end point?
“Six: It will proceed according to no plan. How on earth could there be a plan?
“Seven: It will reward those who further the revolution with the coin of the revolution. In the Industrial Revolution, those who contributed much in the way of product wealth received much in the way of product wealth; in the New Tribal Revolution, those who contribute much in the way of support will receive much in the way of support.
“Now here’s a question for you. What do you think will happen to the Takers in this revolution, Julie?”
“What do you mean ‘happen’?”
“I want you to begin thinking like a revolutionary now. Don’t make me do all the work. The first thing people will want to do is outlaw the Taker way. Isn’t that right?”
I stared at him blankly. “I don’t know.”
“Think, Julie.”
“How can they outlaw the Taker way?”
“I suppose the same way they outlaw anything.”
“But I mean … if there’s no one right way for people to live, how can you outlaw the Taker way? Or any way?”
“That’s better. If there’s no one right way for people to live, then of course you can’t outlaw the Taker way. The Taker way is going to continue, and the people who follow it are going to be the people who really like having to work to eat. They really like keeping the food locked up so they can’t get at it.”
“The Takers are going to lose a lot of people in this case, because the rest of us are going to want the food to be out there free for the taking.”
“Then that’s what’ll happen, Julie. You don’t have to outlaw the Taker life to make it disappear. You just have to open the prison door, and people will start pouring out. But there’ll always be some who prefer the Taker way, who really thrive on that lifestyle. Maybe they can all get together on the island of Manhattan. You can declare it a national park and send your kids there to study the inhabitants on field trips.”
“But how will the rest of it work, Ishmael?”
“Under the original system, tribal membership was determined by birth. That is, you were born a Ute or a Penobscot or an Alawa, you couldn’t become one by choice. I suppose it was possible, but it was certainly a rarity. Why would a Hopi want to become a Navajo, or vice versa? But in the New Tribal Revolution, tribal membership will have to be by choice exclusively, at least at first. Imagine a world in which Jeffrey, instead of traveling from one set of Taker friends to another, had been able to travel from one tribe to another—every tribe different, every tribe with its doors open for people to come in or to leave. Do you think he would have ended up walking into that lake?”
“No, I don’t. I think he would have ended up in a tribe where folks like to sit around playing the guitar and writing poetry.”
“They probably wouldn’t get much ‘accomplished,’ would they?”
“Probably not, but who cares? But aren’t there a lot of intentional communities like this out there right now?”
“Yes, more than ever. Unfortunately, they all operate inside the Taker prison. They pretty much have to do that, because the Taker prison has no outside. The Takers long ago claimed the entire planet for themselves, so it’s all inside.”
“What’s this have to do with it?”
“Inside real-life prisons, the inmates form groups for various purposes, some of them sanctioned by the prison authorities and some not. For example, some cliques exist for protection; the members watch each other’s backs. These cliques have no official status. They’re unsanctioned, even outlawed. And if they became sanctioned, they’d actually be worthless, because they wouldn’t be able to take actions that the prison authorities couldn’t condone. To perform the function they exist to perform, they must remain unsanctioned—free to break the rules. Once they become sanctioned, they become like a chess club or a book-discussion group—obedient to the prison rules and so of very marginal importance to the inmates’ real concerns.”
“What’s this got to do with intentional communities?”
“Intentional communities almost always start out with the goal of being sanctioned by Taker law. This keeps them from being hassled by the police, but limits the amount of importance they can achieve in their members’ lives. This is the difference between intentional communities on one hand and cults and gangs on the other. Intentional communities want to be officially sanctioned, whereas cults and gangs never do—and this explains how cults and gangs can come to have tribal importance in their members’ lives.”
“What do you mean by ‘tribal importance’?”
“I mean that belonging to the cult or the gang takes on the same importance as belonging to a Leaver tribe. Basically, I mean that membership becomes worth dying for, Julie. When the followers of Jim Jones realized that Jonestown was doomed, they saw no point in living. Jones told them, ‘If you love me as I love you, then we all must die together or be destroyed from the outside.’ I realize this happened a year or so before you were born, but I thought you might have heard of it.”
I told him I hadn’t.
“Nine hundred people committed suicide with him. Leaver tribes have done the same when they knew there was finally no hope of being allowed to go on as a tribe.”
I shook my head doubtfully, and he asked what was wrong. “I’m not sure. Or maybe I am. I’m used to thinking of gangsters as animals. I’m used to thinking of cultists as lunatics. Putting Leaver tribes in with gangs and cults leaves me feeling distinctly … confused.”
“I understand. As you move out into the world, you’ll find that the intellectually insecure oft
en bolster their confidence by maintaining subjects in solid, impermeable categories of good and evil. The Industrial Revolution is evil, and nothing should be seen in it that might be construed as good. Gangs and cults are evil, and nothing should be seen in them that might be construed as good. Tribes, on the other hand, are good, and no connection must be seen between them and evil things like cults and gangs. It’s permissible to note that Leaver tribes do very well without classes and private property, but you should be careful to emphasize that they haven’t been reading naughty books by Marx and Engels.”
“Yeah, I can believe that. But I’m still not quite sure what this has to do with intentional communities.”
“When government officials began to look into his People’s Temple, Jim Jones took it to Guyana. He did this because he knew it would cease to function if it fell under government oversight. To move to a different example, a recovered alcoholic by the name of Charles Dederich started a drug rehabilitation center in Santa Monica in 1958. It was called Synanon. It wasn’t exactly a community to begin with, because addicts naturally came and went, but as time went on Dederich became dissatisfied with this model. He wanted a community, and before long he was encouraging recovered addicts to stay on as subsistence employees. Next Dederich opened up the community to outsiders—professionals and businessmen who were willing to turn over real estate, cars, bank accounts, and stock holdings to Synanon for the sake of belonging to a unique community and having what they expected to be a home for life. Step-by-step, Synanon gradually went from being a treatment center to being a cult—and an embattled cult, armed not only for defense but offense, engaging in attempted murder and brutal assaults on perceived enemies in the surrounding community. The cults of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the Hare Krishna, and the Alamo Christian Foundation were all embraced by people who were similarly willing to turn over their worldly possessions and to work for nothing in order to belong—to have membership and all that comes with membership—food, lodging, clothing, transportation, health care, and so on. Security, in a word.”
“Again, I’m not quite sure why you’re telling me all this.”
“I’m trying to make you see that these people are not crazy. They desperately want something that humans had here for hundreds of thousands of years and still have wherever the Leaver life survives. They want to be taken care of in the tribal way, Julie. They’re perfectly willing to give to the cult their total support—in return for its total support, which means food, lodging, clothing, transportation, health care, and so on—everything it takes to live as a human. They didn’t seek out these cults because they perceived them as tribal. They sought them out because they perceived them as offering something they desperately wanted—and still do want, I guarantee it, Julie. In the years to come, you’re going to see more and more completely ordinary and intelligent people being drawn into cults, not because they’re crazy but because the cult offers them something they deeply want and can’t get in the Taker world. The support-for-support paradigm is more than just a way of staying alive, it’s a profoundly satisfying human style. People really like living this way.”
“All right, I understand this. Now tell me what I’m supposed to do about it.”
“Right now, Julie, who is permitted to start cults in the sense we’re talking about here?”
“I guess I’d have to say no one is.”
“And since no one is permitted to start cults, who in fact do start cults?”
“Crazy people,” I said. “People with delusions of grandeur. Also con artists.”
“Julie, here’s what I’m trying to make you see. Since no one but lunatics and con artists is allowed to start cults among you, why are you surprised to find that all your cults are started by lunatics and con artists?”
“That’s a helluva good question.”
“Here’s another one for you. What would you do with a cult that wasn’t started by a lunatic or a con artist?”
“What do you mean, what would I do with it?”
“Well, would you suppress it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know who the Amish are?”
“Yeah. A couple years ago Harrison Ford hid out with the Amish in a movie.”
“Don’t you think the Amish should be suppressed?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Because they live just like a cult that isn’t centered on a lunatic or a con man.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Ishmael,” I said, “you’re really confusing me.”
“Good. That’s progress. I must make you stumble over your cultural taboos. I know of no other way to break down the way you’ve been conditioned to respond to words. When you hear the word gang, you’ve been conditioned to think, ‘Bad—must not think about.’ When you hear the word cult, you’ve been conditioned to think, ‘Bad—must not think about.’ When you hear the word tribe, you’ve been conditioned to think, ‘Good—okay to think about.’ ”
“What am I supposed to think about when I hear the words gang and cult?”
“You can start by thinking, ‘The word is not the thing.’ You can start by thinking, ‘The thing does not become bad by being called a bad name.’ You can start by thinking, ‘The fact that this thing has been called a bad name doesn’t mean I can’t think about it.’ ”
“Okay. But what should I think about here?”
“You should think about the fact that there’s no operational difference between a tribe and a cult, Julie. There’s no operational difference between a carburetor built by a church-going Republican and a carburetor built by an atheistic anarchist. Both work the same way. That’s what I mean when I say there’s no operational difference between them.”
“I understand that.”
“The same is true here. Perhaps it will help if I point to another example of tribal life that has survived (and even thrived) in your own culture: the circus. You might call the circus a business run on tribal lines, but of course no circus owner ever sat down and deliberately crafted the business that way. Rather, circuses came into being as tribes and would cease to be circuses if they ceased to be tribes. Their legendary tribal solidarity, so unlike the society through which they move, makes them an irresistible lure, and people of all ages ‘run off to join the circus’ to be part of that solidarity. They’re especially important as models for our revolution, because, unlike aboriginal tribes, they’re seldom exclusive along ethnic lines. The border around them is solid against the general public but will open to any circus person from anywhere. The tribe, the cult (and of course the circus) all operate on this principle: You give us your total support and we’ll give you our total support. Total—both ways. Without reservation—both ways. People have died for that, Julie. People will die for that—not because they’re crazy but because this is something that actually means something to them. They will not exchange this total support for nine-to-five jobs and Social Security checks in their old age.”
(Naturally, I’d remember this conversation three and a half years later when the mighty U.S. government found it necessary to obliterate a tiny sect of cultists outside Waco, Texas. It mattered not that the Branch Davidians had been convicted of no crime—and not even charged with a crime. They were deluded, and this meant they could be destroyed without a trial—evidently on the principle that our delusions are okay, but their delusions are inherently evil and must be expunged from the face of the earth, whatever they might actually turn out to be.)
I said, “It almost sounds like you’re urging me to start a cult.”
He sighed and shook his head. “You’re my message-bearer, Julie, and this is my message: Open the prison gates and people will pour out. Build things people want and they’ll flock to them. And don’t flinch from looking with wide-open eyes at the things people show you they want. Don’t look away from them just because Mother Culture has given them bad names. Instead, understand why she’s given them bad names.”
“I do understand. She??
?s given them bad names because she wants us to recoil from them in horror.”
“Of course.”
As if on cue, a good-looking, compact man sat down in the chair next to me—and I knew instantly that my course of studies with the ape was over.
The Man From Africa
Ishmael said, “Julie, this is Art Owens,” and I gave him a more careful look. Ishmael had said he was forty, but I would have thought he was younger—I’m not great at ages. He was a richer shade of black than I was used to seeing in African-Americans, probably (I later realized) because there were no white folks in his ancestry anywhere at all. He was beautifully dressed, in a fawn-colored suit, olive shirt, and paisley tie. We took some time to look each other over, so that’s why I’m giving you all this here.
He was built like a Tyson-style fighter, short and blunt and powerful, like a heavy wrench. I don’t know what to say about his face. He wasn’t handsome or hideous. He had a face that made you think again about what can be done with faces. It was a face that belonged to someone who, if he said it was going to rain for forty days and forty nights again, starting tomorrow, you’d remember you always sort of wanted to own a boat.
“Hello, Julie,” he said, in a rich, dark voice. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” From anyone else, I would have taken it as nothing more than the usual cliché. I told him I hadn’t heard word one about him, and he repaid me with a modest smile—not a big dazzler, just an acknowledgment. Then he looked at Ishmael, obviously expecting him to tell me what he wanted me to know.
“You have in fact heard word one about Art, Julie. I told you he has a vehicle and is going to help me make my getaway from this place.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
“You offered to help—and now your help is needed.”
I looked at Art Owens, I suppose because I figured he must have slipped up somehow or promised something he couldn’t deliver. He too nodded. “Something fell through that we thought we had figured out.” Then he asked Ishmael how much he’d told me of the plan.