The greatest discovery any alien anthropologist could make about our culture is our overriding response to failure:
Daniel Quinn
The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitlers mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.
culture mythology man people rest live human creation world tenacity army end extraordinary enemy europe alienation lonely superiority territory
culture progress failure change discovery alien
There is a difference between the inmates of your criminal prisons and the inmates of your cultural prison: The former understand that the distribution of wealth and power inside the prison had nothing to do with justice.
culture prison wealth power justice difference understand inside criminal prisons
To you, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism look very different, but to me they look the same. Many of you would say that something like Buddhism doesn't even belong on the list, since it doesn't link salvation to divine worship, but to me this is just a quibble. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism all perceive human beings as flawed, wounded creatures in need of salvation, and all rely fundamentally on revelations that spell out how salvation is to be attained, either by departing from this life or rising above it.
culture philosophy life christianity religion human judaism islam buddhism divine hinduism salvation worship creatures rising
But we're not humanity, we're just one culture - one culture out of hundreds of thousands that have lived their vision on this planet and sung their song. If it were humanity that needed changing, then we'd be out of luck. But it isn't humanity that needs changing, it's just.. Us.
vision culture philosophy luck religion humanity song changing planet
You must log in to post a comment.
There are no comments yet.