Humanity’s next great adventure. A book by daniel quinn.
There are some interesting aspects connecting this book with WikiCulture in special with CommunityWiki, although I’m just able to name a few:
I don’t quite understand Quinn.
I have a copy of BeyondCivilization here in my bookshelf, somewhere. I just never got read more than a few pages of it.
In all, I find Quinn more distracting than anything else. I’d rather think about X, but now I need to have conversations about Daniel Quinn. Perhaps Ken Wilbur will be next.
I’d like to know the ideas that are insightful to you, that are important to you. But I’m not excited by the whole package.
On a tangential note:
I do not look at the environment in terms of either dominance or co-existence.
The traditional presentation of the dichotomy is this:
…to which the immediate and obvious (and desired) reply is: “why, co-existence, of course!”
But see, I think I’m being tricked: I think that I think something else, when my mind is not clouded by ThePowerOfQuestions.
My unclouded belief is simply that: I do not have a relationship with nature.
Allow me to explain the almost unthinkable.
Likely, you want neither. You do not want to dominate Phil. Nor do you want to live with him, celebrate him, be cautious not to over-extend yourself around him.
Likely, you have nothing to do with Phil, and, in the absence of some compelling information, don’t want to have anything to do with Phil.
Now, there are aspects of both “dominance” and “co-existence” in your remote relationship with him. We all belong to society, after all, and we all pay our dues (or “taxes.”) You benefit, in some small way, from the taxes he pays. Perhaps we can call this: “dominance.” But then there is also co-existence. He’s Lion’s friend, after all, and you like that a friend of Lion makes Lion’s life better, which means that Lion’s less grumpy around you, or something. And it works the other way, in turn, and so we all happily co-exist in one big family.
But basically, you don’t know Phil, and it doesn’t matter, and it’s not a matter of “dominance” or “co-existence,” because Phil’s just this guy, you know?
This is the same way I look at nature.
I think we should make sure that we, as a species, do not destroy our environment. At the same time, I don’t see why we should strive to “co-exist” with it: Can’t it just be a pile of rocks, like some asteroid? I do believe in honoring the universe, and I do believe in honoring nature. But I don’t think I need to worship it, and I don’t think we should somehow try and humble humanity before nature: That makes an error (I believe) of personalizing nature, of turning nature into a person. And I just don’t see it that way.
What does this have to do with Daniel Quinn?
It’s just “guilt by association.” I actually don’t know that Daniel Quinn says anything about nature. I just know a bunch of Green Anarchists who dig Quinn, and I know that a Gorilla is one of the narrators in a Quinn story.