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