books/beyond_civilization

BEYOND CIVILIZATION

HUMANITY'S NEXT GREAT ADVENTURE

by DANIEL QUINN

What would happen if we
intentionally forged our social solutions
in the fires of creative chaos?

John Briggs and F. David Peat

Contents

• PART ONE
  • Closing In on the Problem
  • A fable to start with
  • A Manual of Change
  • Who are the people of "our culture"?
  • Old minds with new programs
  • New minds with no programs
  • No programs at all?
  • If not programs, then what?
  • The invisibility of success
  • The invisibility of tribal success
  • Conspicuous success, invisible source
  • Vision is like gravity
  • The spread of vision
  • Vision: success without programs
  • When the vision turns ugly
  • Programs aren't wicked, just inadequate
  • But how could we get along without programs?
  • But how will we live then?
  • How can we achieve a vision we can't imagine?
  • The leaping of genes and memes
  • Small percentages, big differences
  • Which memes do we need to change?
  • Lethal memes
• PART TWO
  • Closing In on the Process
  • Survival machines for genes
  • Survival machines for memes
  • The fidelity of copying
  • Genetic and memetic replication
  • The best way to live
  • Maybe they just sort of fell into it?
  • Maybe they were just hungry?
  • New World adopters of the meme
  • The Maya
  • The Olmec and Teotihuacán
  • The Hohokam and the Anasazi
  • Looking for the actors
  • "Those Who Vanished"
  • Why none will EVER be satisfactory
  • What a difference a ____ makes!
  • For want of a meme, a civilization was lost
  • When the underclass becomes restless
  • What about all the others?
  • The Cultural Fallacy
  • The other mystery of "Lost Civilizations"
  • The missing meme
  • Holy work
  • Pyramid builders
  • Pharaohs
  • The Mayan Solution
  • Beyond the pyramid
• PART THREE
  • Walking Away from the Pyramid
  • Social organization and natural selection
  • Definitions and examples
  • The mysterious persistence
  • Some DO want more than adequacy
  • Tribalism the workable
  • What would you expect?
  • What people like about tribal societies
  • Circus people are tribal people
  • "I beg to differ!"
  • Tribal tales
  • The turn away from tribalism
  • From tribalism to hierarchalism
  • What folks dislike about hierarchies
  • But aren't tribes actually hierarchical?
  • Dreaming away the hierarchy
  • The first rationale: justifying it
  • The second rationale: transcending it
  • The third rationale: overthrowing it
  • Opium is the opium of the people
  • My own life at the pyramid
  • Am I building my own pyramid?
  • What does "civilization" mean?
  • Putting the pieces together
  • Another experiment in hierarchalism
  • A systemic problem
  • Beyond hierarchalism
  • A wrong direction: "giving up" things
  • Standards of living
  • Standards of living: Madrid-Houston
  • A lover of civilization
  • Searching for an alternative
• PART FOUR
  • Toward the New Tribalism
  • Revolution without upheaval
  • Revolution without overthrow
  • No one right way
  • No heavenly choir
  • Those who would wait
  • Fighters of the good fight
  • Goliath with a new mind
  • The incremental revolution
  • Ethnic tribalism won't work for us
  • Jeffrey
  • The open tribe
  • The limits of openness
  • Nontribal businesses
  • But how does it render us harmless?
  • "The culture of maximum harm"
  • But how can we contain their expansion?
  • Something better to hope for
  • An intermediate goal: less harmful
  • But is "less harmful" enough?
  • Ending the food race
  • 100 years beyond civilization
  • 200 years beyond civilization
  • But where exactly is "beyond"?
• PART FIVE
  • The Tribe of Crow
  • Reluctant pioneers
  • Making the homeless disappear
  • If it didn't work last year ...
  • A new rule for new minds
  • Listening to the homeless
  • Is homelessness an earthquake?
  • What would acceding look like?
  • Letting them house themselves
  • Letting them feed themselves
  • Letting them make a living
  • Let my people go!
  • "I like the way my life is now."
  • What would come of it?
  • I'm not ENTIRELY alone!
  • Objections
  • The most telling objection of all
• PART SIX
  • The New Tribal Revolution
  • The Tribe of Crow--and others
  • The East Mountain News
  • Why it worked
  • The East Mountain News as circus
  • The success and failure of the paper
  • The tribal benefit
  • Tribal business: the ingredients
  • What ventures lend themselves to it?
  • A new tribal venture
  • Tribal tasks and organizational patterns
  • Cradle-to-grave security?
  • What about care for the elderly?
  • Tribes of the mind
  • The tribe IS its members
  • Why make a living at all?
  • Another tribal example
  • Scuffling in the usual way
  • But can't an X be a tribe?
  • Communities and tribes: origins
  • Communities and tribes: membership
  • Can't a tribe be a commune?
  • Can't a commune be a tribe?
  • "Let's do the show right here in the barn!"
  • Aren't the Amish a farming tribe?
  • Noble savages?
  • An intermittent tribal business
  • My next tribal enterprise
  • To distinguish is to know
  • The civilized hate and fear tribal people
  • Tribes and communities
  • A parable about sustainability
  • Why what we've got is unsustainable
  • Let's bail out and go over the wall!
  • A systemic change
  • But why "humanity's" next great adventure?
• PART SEVEN
  • Beyond Civilization
  • Liberation
  • Listening to the children
  • The Littleton bloodbath
  • Listening to the monsters
  • A cultural space of our own
  • Why things didn't end up a-changin'
  • Another story to be in
  • No one right way
  • Gotcha this way!
  • Gotcha that way!
  • The beginning is not the end
  • What, no miracles?
  • 140 words of advice
  • A dynamite ending
  • Bibliography