Daniel Quinn Interview, Part 2 of 2

DT: We were starting to touch on the impact of what population growth and the extension that agriculture might have on the rest of the community of life and you've had an interesting insight about the exchange of pounds of human flesh for the biomass of many forms of wildlife. Can you try and explain what you mean by that?

DQ: Yeah, to begin with the-the biomass of-of the planet is more or less a constant in any brief period of time like a hundred years or a thousand years even. And we-we cannot increase the biomass of the planet because there's only so much sunlight that falls on it and we can't increase that.

We can decrease the biomass of the planet, however, it's called desertification. When we-when we create a desert when-where there was no desert then, of course, we lose biomass.

This is-people don't-this is a new and startling idea to people as well because they think-they like to think of the earth as being unlimited, having no limits, but there is only so much biomass. And when we go into a jungle and burn it down to put it to growing potatoes or lima beans or something like that we destroy the biomass of all of the species that were living there.

It's-it's gone and by planting our food in it-in the place of all of those creatures what we've done is trade their biomass for our bio-biomass. That is we have put their biomass into-into food for us and so in affect we are taking-we are converting the biomass of the world into human biomass. We're at a period of mass extinction and this is the cause of it.

I-I should have this at the tip of my tongue, but I-I know that there is such thing as background extinction which goes on all the time. There are always species that are going out of existence and-and species coming into existence, but right now the extinction rate is thousands of times higher than the background rate.

In other words, we're in a period of mass extinctions. What this means is that we are attacking the biodiversity of the living community itself and not realizing or not being willing to admit that it is upon this diversity that our lives depend as well.

And at-I-s-give this example, it's as though we were living at the top story of a hundred story building and every day we go down to the lower floors and knock bricks out of the wall to take up and use on the top story. And obviously we can do that for a long time, but eventually it can't be done forever.

Eventually, there's going to be a collapse, which will lead to other collapses, which will lead to other-very rapidly to other collapses. And so the end, if we continue this way, is not going to be a gradual decline, it's going to be sudden and catastrophic and very likely we will be victims of our own madness as well.

If such a thing happens, all large mammals will probably disappear. We'll be left to the cockroaches I would guess.

DT: I think I understand the analogy of bricks in a skyscraper. But maybe you can give us an example of beetles and a living ecosystem and how taking out a species of beetles might affect "higher" orders?

DQ: That would be something Alan Thornhill could do for you very nicely. I'm not-I'm not-I've never really tried to-to encompass the detail on that-on that level and I think that's pretty well understood.

I think by, you know, a kid that's in-in kindergarten understand that-that there is a web of life and that if you continue that there-of course there are key species that are recognized-that ecologists recognize.

The Spotted Owl was one and an ecologist could explain to you why the Spotted Owl was so important. I-I can't but I know I take their word for it, that they're-they're the experts in that and I'm not.

DT: Interesting. You mention that a kindergardner could tell you that. And our conversation started with your early career in the educational realm. To what would you attribute this success that 40 or 30 years after you attempted to make that foray in the field, it's now being accepted, and to what do you attribute the success to?

DQ: Oh well, greater awareness certainly, oh, people ask me, you know, what-whether I have any hope for the future and I say this is-this is the hope, is that awareness of all this has grown tremendously in the last ten years.

In-in Ishmaelyou-you will not find the word sustainable. I myself was not conversant for the word when I wrote that book.

Now everybody knows the word and these are-are relatively easy concepts to teach and I was do-I did a program on ecology of-for middle school kids when I was at SVE and ev-even then it was-it was being understood that this was something that had to be added to the curriculum.

And at-at one university it was made a policy that every course had to include an aspect of ecology and literature, whatever, that it could not be ignored anymore. And so this-this is the-the hope for the future, hope for the planet really is changing peoples minds, changing the peoples vision of our place in the world, our understanding of the world, and getting a true picture of how the world actually works as opposed to the way we wish it worked.

DT: Can you give an example of how minds can be changed throughout our whole culture, maybe use the Renaissance as an example of a previous major shift?

DQ: Yeah, well that was-that was the biggest shift that's ever occurred in-in our culture I would have to say. A few key ideas came under attack.

The idea that informed our culture-European culture before that was that the way to certain knowledge was through reason and authority. You'd be able to reason it out and-and find an authority to back you up so that, you know, it-you could see very quickly that-that heavy objects fall faster than light objects and Aristotle said so himself.

But in-in the-in the renaissance it came to be seen that observation and experimentation was a more sure guide to certain knowledge and that was the beginning of the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, everything.

The ability to traverse the world came into being at that time and so the age of exploration began. A revolution in astronomy made it clear to us that in-in the Middle Ages it was pretty well settled that we knew everything that was going to be known and nothing more needed-needed to be known.

It was all there and in the renaissance it came to be seen that there was no end to what could be known and so it-it created a tremendous mind shift in every front.

It-the Renas-part of the renaissance was of course the-the Protestant Reformation, which took-refocused our view away from the church as a necessary intermediate-intermediary between us and God and rather to the individual.

The individual could do his own negotiating. We didn't need the church to do the nego-negotiating with God and so individual-individuality was born in the renaissance and the notion of rights and people having rights was born in the-in-from the same-from that same root and the idea that each human-human was valuable came from that same root.

And a r-a similar Renaissance must take place now if there's going to be any hupe-hope for the future as far as I'm concerned and it was ironical c-considering that I was trying to smuggle ideas into the-into the textbooks 20 years ago.

It never once occurred to me that any of my books would ever be used in the classroom. And it was-I was astounded when Ishmaelbegan to be used all over the country in classrooms. Very shortly after it came out soon as-as soon as it came out in soft cover is-it just knocked me over.

It never occurred to me that anybody would ever use Ishmaelin a classroom. So I have to take some credit for-for changing minds in that way and I've-I've heard from thousands of-of young people saying that they, you know, that I had overturned everything they'd ever thought and that-that it was the most important book they've ever read.

DT: There seems to be an intellectual and spiritual bent heading in the direction of reform. But it seems to be running headlong against a political reality that is inflexible to these enlightened ideas.

And if we're trying to do it peacefully but they're standing at the gate with machine guns, how-or do you see it as an evolutionary process of what will it take to overcome the political reality with what should be the spiritual force?

They-I-I'm-I'm afraid that the-the truth is that the politicians will be the last to come around, but eventually the politicians will be us. The young people of today are eventually going to get there and so will the rest of the population.

Right now you couldn't elect someone with a changed mind, but as people-peoples minds continue to change and continue to see that we really are in dire need here of change there will eventually be a population big enough to elect people with changed minds. And-and that's-and then important changes will-will begin to be made.

DT: Can you give us some examples in very recent times of revolutions or evolutions that have happened? The children's revolt in the 60s and the early 70s, the velvet revolution in Eastern Europe, the fall of the Iron Curtain . . .are there any analogies to what you had in mind?

DQ: Well I-I have made-made an analogy with the break up of the Soviet Union. That wasn't something that-what's his name?

DT: Gorbachev?

DQ: Gorbachev. Gorbachev didn't do that. I mean he-he didn't get there by saying I'm going to destroy the Soviet Union. It was the people who forced him to do that. The people were fed up with living the way they were living.

Now may-one would have maybe questioned the-the wisdom of the bargain now. I don't know how they're living now.

But I personally and would have to-I don't know whether any sociologist has ever tackled this or not but I think that the children's revolution started-was-was the first domino that changed so much of-of the way people saw things, saw their lives in the rest of the world. I think an argue-argument could be made that rock and roll destroyed the Soviet Union.

DT: Is rock and roll the sort of cultural mean that you sometimes talk about?

DQ: Yeah, I mean it's-it spread all over the world. It went out there.

DT: Like a virus.

DQ: Yeah, like a virus. I once said at a-at a public s-talk that I hoped my ideas would spread like a virus and they said oh, no, no, no, don't say that. Yes, I say that, yes.

DT: Could you talk about some of the tools that you've used to spread your ideas? I know there's a website, and there's a video outreach, new tribal ventures . . .

DQ: Oh yeah, yeah I-at one time a group of people, a high level of business consultants who were great admirers of my work, they have an annual get together and I was invited to-to come there.

And after two days they finally said, you know, what you've got to do is start an organization and we can help you do that.

And I let myself be talked into that, but I am not an organizer and they-the organization was-was a complete flop and because I'm not an organizer and that's just not one of the things that I do.

What I do-what I can do is to write and to create materials and that's what I do. And when people ask me what they should do I say, you know, you've got to use whatever resources you have because there is no twelve step program.

Is everybody doing what they can do? And-and people with changed minds are needed everywhere and they're needed in worse places. You know there's peop-people who write to me and say, you know, I think I'll go and live on a mountaintop. Now leave the mountaintop alone, you know, do what-or-or they say, you know, I'll become an ecologist.

No,you must become what you're good at because that's where you're going to have the greatest impact.

One-one young man said he was-we were doing another television interview and he said I-I work in the film industry and you may not be aware of it but the film industry is really a terrible polluter and destroyer of-of natural resources.

That every time they make a set they-they-they cut down trees and-and sets are all thrown away. It's just tremendously wasteful and I said well no, I didn't know that.

He said well my question is, should I be in this industry? I said well of course. Now you're-you're in the pos-position to do something, you know, that's where you belong, you know, why leave? Don't leave it to the bad guys, you know, and-and we need-we need people with changed minds in the industry.

One of the most important changes that-that I know of that was from my work has been with the-in the-in the commercial carpet industry.

Ray Anderson, head of the Interface Corporation, one of the biggest global makers of industrial commercial carpeting to airports, hospitals and so on, read first Paul Hawken's book The Ecology of Commerceand then Ishmaeland reading those two books he realized that he-he'd always been in compliance with regulations, of course, but he realized that really being in compliance with government regulations not nearly enough.

He really had to go-he really had to shift the entire focus of his company and he made up his mind that he would as soon as-as quickly as he possibly could cease producing petroleum-based carpet. He would-he would go to-to natural fibers.

Secondly, he would aim to produce as quickly as possible carpeting made 100 percent from recycled materials that were 100 percent recyclable and he would go for the-the green lease as is called and say, you know, we will keep your floors covered and, you know, the way you want them and when you-you're tired of this carpeting or it's worn out we'll come and get it. We'll take it up and take it back and recycle it.

Okay, that's-one man changed the entire industry because everybody else had to do the same because he was the leader. They had to compete with him. And that's the sort of thing. One mind made a tremendous difference. All of his suppliers, Dupont, they now had to start coming up with new ideas for him and that's how it happens.

DT: So in a sense, it's part economic and part technological, the changes that you might be envisioning. But I understand you've also talked about different kinds of social structures, that the hierarchical setup that many taker cultures-or the taker culture-uses is not as sustainable as a more tribal arrangement that you've sometimes described. Can you explain that?

DQ: Yeah, its always been my position here that this is not about giving up things. We are not rich people giving up things that we really want. It's not about that.

It's about poor people, needy people, desperate people getting things that they need more. In my lifetime I've seen the most amazing changes in the way we live.

In the growing up in the 50's despite, you know, the-the expectation of any day a hydrogen bomb was going to go off and start the Third World War, we thought there was a future, an unlimited future and we were lighthearted.

We felt good about it. We felt good about ourselves and there wasn't-we didn't go to school armed and never-I mean the idea that someone would come in with a sub machine gun and start shooting down their classmates. It would have been laughed at.

The idea of drive by shootings, of people massacring their families, you know, massive parts of the population in a state of-of depression, suicides going up all the time. It's becoming a nightmare here.

And it's not because-nobody-nobody ever commits suicide because they don't have a widescreen television. It is because they're not getting the things that they need as human beings.

I've said that we have a hea-heaven here, but it's a heaven for products because every year the products get better and better and better and better. If you were a product you would think life was beautiful, but it's getting worse and worse and worse for people and it needs to start getting better for people.

I was reading an undergraduate thesis about my work and she said that I had progressed from talking about saving the world in Ishmaelto saving people, saving the takers, in Beyond Civilization,the last of these four books.

Why? Because if we don't save the people we're going to lose the earth. We need-we need to find a better way for people to live.

We-they-there are things they lack that they must have and the tribal-the tribal life is-is not about hunting and gathering. The tribe is a social organization. Pure and simple.

It's a group of people working together to make a living, period. It's no more than that. One of the things, to give you a small example, in a tribe no one is ever alone with his or her problems.

If you have a sick child people aren't going to say well that's your problem, just stay in your tent there and deal with it. If you have an ailing parent or a parent who is becoming senile, this is a tribal problem.

Every-everyone takes care of everyone and so you are never left with this terrible burden of my wife is ill. I have no money. I have no friends. Where is my gun? I'm going to kill her and I'm going to kill myself.

And so I began to think, you know, is the tribal model something that we-we can't have and if so why? Now this was really the inspiration for Beyond Civilization.

My wife and I have twice started tribal businesses without ever remotely thinking about it. It was just something that we-we felt would suit us. The second one was-was much more s-successful than the first.

This was a newspaper in Mex-New Mexico-in New Mexico called The East Mountain Newsand we started it literally on $27.00. Our last $27.00 and we put out an issue and fortunately Rennie's family has been in the newspaper business for a long time and her brother brought us a lot of equipment; computers and headliners and stuff like that.

And by the third issue we had a call from an old newspaper man, now unemployable, nobody want-wants him, too old, who had done everything, who c-who could do anything and he did the-the one thing we badly needed was to have a sports writer and so he covered all the-all the games in an area the size of Rhode Island. That was-that was how much area we-we covered.

And then we got a c-call from a young woman who wanted to do a column for us. Of course the question for both of them is-was, can you sell advertising? And they said-CJ said sure I can sell anything.

So-so she became the ad salesman for a certain area and-and half of the other. He was a great photographer as well, of course, and so he sold advertising. That's what kept us going and-but they were not employees really.

They were just-I-I was the make up man and-and headline writer. Rennie-Rennie really did the newspaper and we-the four of us we didn't live together, but if Hap needed a tire-new tire for his vehicle. We, you know, we said well give him an ad or, you know, we would come up with the money somehow or other and the money always, you know, we were-we were just giving out-if you need something let us know we'll-we'll get it to you somehow or other.

And so that for us was-was very tribal and so I use that as my chief model in the-in Beyond Civilizationand it wasn't that-God knows we didn't get rich, but we made a living, which we were not doing before.

None of the four of us were making a living before, but by get-and if we had started out to-to do a traditional newspaper we would have had to, you know, some huge loan from a bank, which we could not have gotten in any way in the world. So by starting small we all had very low scales of living . . .

DT: Standards? DQ: Pardon?

DT: Standards of living?

DQ: Standards of living, yeah, we-we were all comfortable. CJ was living-living in a well house if you know what a well house is. It's just a little building over a well and H-Hap was living in a-in a trailer and we were living in a miner's shack in-in Madrid, New Mexico.

We were all content and we had something that made us feel good. I was working on-on the sixth and seventh versions of the book that became Ishmael at the time.

And I talked there of other tribal groups-tribal-the Neofuturist Theater Company in Chicago, which-which everyone-there's one permanent member who is the founder of it and usually a transient group of 13 but they stay for year or two and then move on to something else, who do all the work themselves and basically just share all the money that comes in in revenue.

They were able to build their own theater they were so successful. And but all of the-all of the members except for him had other jobs-had part time jobs, and so it worked out so well for them and none of them were getting rich.

It wasn't about getting rich. It was about doing something that they loved and being able to do it and make-make a little money, make a living. And I-I have to say that these ideas have not-not-not caught on. At least I haven't heard of it yet.

Most people say something like I-they'll stop us. Who is going to stop us? You know who's going to stop you from-from having a business like that?

They think the government, the FBI is going to come and close you down or something like that. No one-no one knew how we ran The East Mountain News.

No one knew or cared and-but it's also-you-you can't convert an existing business into a tribal business. I don't think. Maybe you can. I-I wouldn't know, but it was real-really written mostly for young people and many of them have made attempts, but I don't know-I haven't heard how successful they are.

DT: You said the idea hasn't caught on yet, but my understanding is that in a sense, it's returning to an idea that was tested over two or three million years. Can you talk about the historical roots to a tribal organization?

DQ: I have to assume-I had a historian friend, when he read Ishmaelhe said how do you know that people were still living tribally ten thousand years ago? And I wrote back; I said, how do you know that geese were still flying in flocks ten thousand years ago?

These things-the-the social organization that you see today in any species is going to be the social organization that they grew up with because species don't pop up individually. They always come into being in some social organization.

They evolve with the social organization. Primates have social organizations of their own, a band, for example, but that-the tribal organization at the time suited intelligent beings from the beginning as intelligence emerged.

The tribe became-maybe there were other things that were tried but the tribe fit. A way to basically make a living and-and-and be protected and have stability and c-cradle to grave security. You can't-you can't get fired from a tribe.

And so it-its always worked for us and still works just as well today as it ever did. I point out that the homeless spontaneously form tribes, not because they're thinking oh, maybe this will work but because it just-it-they literally fall into it.

Because it's much better if you're out on the street-it's much better not to be alone. It you're alone you're really in trouble.

So you-you want to have a little group around you covering your back and it makes-it-it works best if in that little group if you suddenly have a windfall.

It works best to share it with them, not because you're a nice guy, not because you have high moral standards or anything, but it-because that-because when they get a windfall then they are going to share it with you.

And this is exactly the way it works in-in-in the aboriginal tribes when the only time an individual is hungry-starving, is when they're all starving and when times are goodthen they're good for all of them equally.

DT: I seemed to notice that, when I was in the Philippines, that that was the problem. There were religious medical missionaries going there to help them.

And they would decide that someone had malaria, and they'd hand them a package of antibiotics in little foil things. "So you take two of these, one in the morning and one at night . . . " Or they'd give them times, at three and twelve, but these people didn't have watches.

They'd say, take these, and you'll get well. Well, what they found out people were doing was, no, they'd go home and take the entire blister pack and give one to everyone in the tribe, because that was what they were doing, and that was why it wasn't going to be effective.

But when we took this film back, we were accused of being quaint, being nostalgic, wanting to lock these people in amber, like laboratory specimens and treated as some archaic thing.

And what they really needed was the Asian Development Bank to come in and put a dam in the area, and somehow sanitize their electric power.

How have you responded to those people who have said that this look at aboriginal or indigenous peoples is somehow quaint and nostalgic, but we wouldn't really have wanted to live like that, or it somehow glosses over the details of what that life might have been like in reality?

DQ: One of the things I was-been careful to do in all of my books is stress the fact that tribal peoples are no better than we are, definitely not. They're not more charming or more her-heroic or sweeter or-or anything like that.

But I-I've still had anthropologists say, oh you're romanticizing them and I've done everything in my power to say that there's nothing romantic about them at all.

And some of them s-you-you probably wouldn't care to be a Gaboose, say, for example. Most of us wouldn't, but they have a way of life that suits them. They're happy with it, but you-you might not like to live that way.

I wouldn't, you know, I-I wouldn't like to be an-an ancient Iroquois, for example, who were, you know, very peculiar people but it suited them, you know, and that's really all I've said.

And th-they all have different styles and some of them look very nice to us. New Age people made great romantic fantasies about a number of Native American tribes. I-and I felt doing them a disadvantage by doing that; drawing-drawing tourists to them and having them become like carnival side shows for them. That's just my opinion.

DT: Well, in terms of that, we've seen for example, when we filmed, when someone in the village was sick, the shaman, a woman, came, and she went around to him.

It was Baratz, actually, one of the guys working with us, had the cold. But on the way out, he stopped, and asked me if I had one of those allergy pills that I had with me.

And the next morning, we asked him how he was feeling, and got a thumbs up. And later someone told me that I had been accorded half credit, along with the spirit Magneto, for having cured him.

I'm wondering how these two societies can continue to coexist with each other. Maybe our doctors are no better than shaman. It might as well be a magical incantation. "Here, take this, and see what happens!" Really, in the end, we've seemed to have so many failures.

DQ: Yeah, yeah, I-I've-I have a great admiration for-you say shaman I say shaman. Illness in-in tribal groups is-is really like everything else. It's sort of a community thing and when somebody gets sick everybody including the shaman is there for them.

And I would be willing to venture to say that they-they're-they have a definite success considering the-the depth of-of attention that they get when they're sick.

I would,believe me, I would much prefer to go in to a tribal group and have the shaman work on me than-than going to a hospital, which scares me to death. Hospitals are dangerous places, but I, you know, most people would-would disagree with me about that very much.

But of course they don't have the idea that they should live forever or that they can live forever and-and, you know, I'm sure the shamans fail just as our own doctors do.

DT: Also, when looking at these cultures-do you find that it makes a difference whether things tend to be patriarchal or matriarchal in a civilization? And we've heard many number of people that we've interviewed say, well, we need the woman president, we need the women to actually get in power. Somehow, there may be a greater saving grace of estrogen rather than testosterone rule as a factor. Have you noticed that as a trend?

DQ: Yes, I don't know whether that's a trend or not. I would be inclined to-to-to agree with that, yes I-I think that a-a woman president probably would have reacted to Iraq differently than Mr. Bush has done.

DT: That's interesting. I wonder if Margaret Thatcher would have been different than Tony Blair in that respect?

DQ: I don't know.

DT: Speaking of war, is there a territorial imperative that you see shifts over from agriculture and this sort of taker philosophy that we need this additional land and the resources that come with it and maybe not just corn but also oil. Is that fair to say?

DQ: Yes.

DT: A bit more general question. It has to do with your attitude and philosophy.

On the one hand,you seem pessimistic or certainly sober when you look at the race between agriculture and population and what it means for our own viability and sustainability of the community of life.

On the other hand, you seem quite positive and optimistic when you see the alternative cultures that we've had in the past and that actually coexists now.

Is that fair, and how would you balance this optimism and pessimism?

DQ: No, this way that-my pessimism comes in this way, you know, if we continue to live this way then we have only a few decades left. But if that new renaissance kicks in then we'll all be different.

If-if there are still people here in 200 years they will not be living the way we do and I'm-I make that prediction with complete confidence because if we go on living the way we are we-there will be no people here in 200 years.

So if there are people here in 200 years they're going to be living a different way, and they're going to be living a different way because they think a different way.

They are going to know, I can predict-predict this as well, they are going to know absolutely that humanity is not separate from the rest of the living community. It is as much a part of the living community as any other species. If we go on thinking-seeing the world as us and it then I think we're doomed.

That's why I don't accept the-the title of environmentalist. I think it was a bad-a bad concept to begin with. I-that's what I mean by old minds. They were . . .

DT: How would you distinguish yourself from an environmentalist?

DQ: Because I don't see it as us and it. We're all-we're all in it together. It's one community. All those other species out there are not our environment.

DT: So man in a sense is part of the landscape. Humans are part of the community of life and we're not so much stewards as cotenants.

DQ: We're-we're dependent. Yeah, we-to me it's unthinkable to speak of stewardship. The world-the-the community of life got a long billions of years without our stewardship and it-it can get a long perfectly well without our stewardship.

And we are-are-the things that we've done that we imagined were going to be helpful have very generally turned out to be disastrous.

Al-although-although usually they're thought of as being beneficial to us but ev-even so-I mean the-the ecologists and-and ecological engineers are-are doing their damnedest to make good choices and I-I wish them all the best and I-I hope they-I hope they get better and better and better.

But to think of them as stewards of the-of the earth I think is too much because it's a chaotic system and we'll always be a chaotic system. So no one can say if we do this then this is going to happen because if you do this thousands of other things are going to happen that you have no control over.

DT: So you have skepticism about programs and their effect?

DQ: Yes. Yeah, I-I-I give this example. The-the Industrial Revolution, and I'm not praising the Industrial Revolution and I'm not saying it was a good thing or anything like that, but it is-was the most successful movement ever seen in the world.

Look-look at it-what is-is-has accomplished. And it did not have the benefit of a single program.

No one ever passed a law helping it along saying, you know, let's have more of this revolution. No one ever had to protect it with-with a program. No one ever had to dole out money to it.

It was self starting, self perpetuating. It was all driven by vision. So I contrast vision and-and programs and vision of-that drove the industrial revolution was oh that's-that's good. I like that camera, but I bet I could make a better one. I like that watch, but I bet I could make a better one.

And starting at every point people took everything that they saw, every-every product and-and said how can I make that better? And they did make it better, which is why it's heaven for products.

DT: Is it your recommendation that when we look at the world around us, do we not try to improve on products but improve on the culture and improve on what mother culture has been telling us?

DQ: Well, just as like the-the first renaissance in the 14th century. On-there are key ideas that once they get out there, it's also a chaos out there, it's intellectual chaos as well, you-you never know what's going to happen.

I couldn't have in any way have predicted that my book was going to have a part in changing the-the commercial carpeting industry. That's an example of the chaos I'm talking about.

The key idea is, one is that the-the-and number them, we are not separate from the rest of the living community. When we . . .

DQ: . . .yeah, yeah the key idea is-one of them is that we are not separate from the rest of the living community and never will be separate-separate from it.

This is-lies partly at the root of our notion that we can do things like destroy part of the rainforest because that's them. It's not us, but it is.

People-I illustrated a story about a-about a hunter in-in a nar-first person narrative from a professional hunter in-in Africa who spoke of a species that-that he'd like to take hunters to to hunt. And over the years he found that they were just farther and farther away and then of course in the end there were none, but he didn't realize that he-he and other hunters were driving them into extinction.

And-and we think much the same thing with-because we s-we-we see them as, in a sense, as protected. What we do then doesn't really hurt, but un-unfortunately it does because all of the biomass that we take from the living community to sustain the six billion of us comes from the rest of the living community. It is not separate from us.

People talk forever about the fact that we are separate from nature and isn't that too bad. No, what's too bad is that we're not separate from nature and we never will be. And so everything we take, it-it doesn't stay there. It-actually we take it and it's gone. That's-that's one key idea.

The idea that-that we live on a limited planet;many people still don't see that and really don't deeply see that, but if there are people-people living here in 200 years they will know it.

I've heard people say well, we can just start sending people off to other planets. Oh man now that-that is the goofiest idea that-as a solution to-to our problems. That-that's just not going to happen. That's not-that is not going to save us. What's the other key idea?

What-when-when these very fundamental ideas are accepted finally then they are going-these ideas are going to have repercussions all across the board and I-I don't know what they are. I don't know how they're-I don't know how they're going to work to change things that I know that if you don't have changed people you're not going to have changed behavior.

And what so many people think they can do now is leave the people alone but institute new programs and that's not going to work. I've said that the vision is like a river and you put sticks in the river if you want to-to slow it down, impede the flow, but you can't.

I mean we can put in millions of regulations and that's not going to do it. You've got to start with the people who write the regulations, change their minds, then you'll see s-things start to change.

So I'm hopeful because I see so much change. I see-I see a great deal of change in the way people think compared to the way that they thought 15 or 20 years ago and that's the hope of the future.

I'm only pessimistic if-if we go on living the way we do. If we go on living the way we do then we're not going to be living here much longer.

DT: Is it like the dinosaur's hope? Lord, give me me more time.

DQ: Yeah, yes, L-Lord more time.

DT: Mr. Quinn, you've been kind to talk to us sort of off-the-cuff about some of your thoughts and insights. And I was wondering if you could now read from some of the passages that you've written?

DQ: Yeah, I'll-I'll read a couple of passages from a book that is part-was part of a book that I s-wrote in-about 1983 from which now The Tales of Adamwill be extracted and published. They'll be published in-in April and what I'm going to read is the opening and the ending.

When the gods set out to make the universe they said to themselves, let us make of it a manifestation of our unending abundance and a sign to be read by those who shall have eyes to read.

Let us lavish care without stint on everything, no less upon the most fragile blade of grass, than upon the mightiest of stars, no less upon the gnat that sings for an hour than upon the mountains that stand for a millennium, no less upon a flake of mica than upon a river of gold.

Let us make no two leaves the same from one branch to the next, no two branches the same from one tree to the next, no two trees the same from one land to the next, no two lands the same from one world to the next.

In this way the law of life will be plain to all who shall have eyes to read; the rabbit that creeps out to feed, the fox that lies in wait, the-the eagle that circles above, and the man who bends his bow to the sky.

And this was how it was done from first to last. No two things alike in all the mighty universe. No single thing made with less care than any other thing throughout generations of species more numerous than the stars. And those who had eyes to see read the sign and followed the law of life.

This-this is the end. Adam is addressing his son Abel at-probably on his deathbed.

At last Adam said, you are beginning to know the law of life. I too am beginning to know the law of life. If you ask me on my last day as I close my eyes for the last time whether I know the law of life, I'll tell you I'm beginning to know it.

If any man tells you he knows the whole of the law of life or that he can encompass it in words, that man is a fool or a liar, because the law of life is written in the universe and no man can know the whole of it.

If ever you're in doubt about the law consult the caterpillar or the gull or the jackal. No man will ever know it better or follow it more steadfastly than they. Then in con-concluding Adam said, wisdom is the gift I give to you, nothing else.

This is my legacy to you. It's a legacy I received from my father and he received from his father. It is the legacy of generations from one to the next for all time.

Your tools will-will grow blunt. Your spears will shatter. Your tents will crumble. Your twine will fray, but this knowledge I've given you will not wear out. In a thousand generations, it will still be as strong as it was a thousand generations ago.

DT: Thanks for giving us that. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

DQ: I tend to get emotional about this. Oh I-I don't-I have nothing particularly on the tip of my tongue to add except to thank you for the opportunity. I certainly appreciate it very much.

DT: Well thank you.