Civilization and Beyond
A Metaconscious Mosaic Outline
The good news is of several different kinds. Although Taker culture accounts for "99%" of the world's human population, there are actually two quite different kinds of Takers: a) the "pharoahs," and b) the "pyramid builders."1 The pharoahs account for only a minute "1%" of Taker culture, and consider themselves practically a different species from all other humans, Takers and Leavers alike; and who knows? maybe they are! Maybe they're "Lizards from Outer Space,"2 for all I know. Whatever they are, whoever they are, they are the "drivers" of Taker culture, and everyone else in the chain gang are draft animals, as far as the pharoahs are concerned. (For that matter, in Taker culture, everyone below oneself in the hierarchy is effectively a draft animal – notwithstanding the efforts some Takers make to be conscientious about treating their draft animals well. A pampered slave is made no less a slave by a golden chain, or cage.)
So that's one item of good news: "we" outnumber "them," millions to one. The only thing that gives "their" agenda any viability at all is that "we" support it. "We are the jumping jacks," as John Swinton remarked, "they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." What if "we" decided to stop being "intellectual prostitutes?" Or pimps, or slaves of any kind or description?
This is something any human on Earth can do; for there is nothing – nothing – that is able to compromise the freedom of choice of every individual. The "pact with the devil" is exactly that: a pact; a mutual agreement between and among individuals to cooperate in the exercise of a policy of pre-emptive force on behalf of some pharoah, in exchange for the pharoah's favorable rewards. That's "the deal." No one is compelled to make this deal, with anyone. It is a choice. The American patriot, Patrick Henry (1736-99) opted out of "the deal" when he uttered the fateful words, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" That nameless Chinese student in Tieniman Square opted out of "the deal" when he allowed the tank to crush him, rather than surrender to the overwhelming pre-emptive force of the Chinese Army. It can be done. No one claims it's easy, and no one can make anyone else's choice for them. Yet there is no one on Earth who cannot – and in fact does not – make the choice for him or herself, every day, either to opt in, or opt out, of the "pact with the devil."
Please do not imagine that in saying this, I am taking a "holier than thou" position. Myself, I've been moving gradually away from Taker culture for a good many years now, yet I am not completely "clean." The best I can say for myself is that "I'm chipping away at it," and it's not easy. I opt out of what I can live without; continue my "prostitution" in exchange for what I find indispensible for survival. I have not yet learned how to subsist entirely on "nuts and berries," and I still bear the yoke of "civilization." Still, it can be done, opting entirely out of Taker culture, even if done incrementally; and it must be done, if any living today, or our children, are to survive and flourish. Of this I am convinced.
So here's another item of good news: after ten thousand years of Taker tyranny, we still have the choice, if we so decide, to walk away from the pyramids we've been building for the pharoahs. It has been done in the past,3 and it can be done today – if we so decide. Furthermore, it isn't an "all or nothing" choice. We can walk away incrementally. We are tethered to civilization by many strands. Every strand we sever is a step beyond civilization.
Another item of good news, corollary to the facts that we in the chain gang outnumber the pharoahs "millions to one," and that we ourserves are the forgers of the chains that bind us, is that, contrary to what we have been taught in Taker schools, churches, and temples, there is nothing particularly wrong with us, aside from our somnambulant acquiescence in slavery, which has been our choice by default. We're not "born sinners," or "killer apes," or plagued by "a perverse and contrary nature." We're just people who in good faith have persisted in a course that, to our dismay and alarm, does not lead us to our intended destination of peace and happiness after all, but leads instead to war, suicide, and global catastrophe. This has been an error, and errors exact their toll; yet errors, when perceived, may be corrected. We have made the mistake, as have many before us, of adopting Taker culture from the pharoahs, who have attempted to take the Law of Life out of "the hands of the gods," and have assumed it for themselves.
This cannot be done, for the Law of Life, like the "law of gravity," is not "written" anywhere, or subject to "amendment" to suit the preferences of any living individual or species. It is the accumulating treasury of what works in the dynamic context of "All That Is" – which is ultimately a mystery and so constitutes what we have sometimes called "the hands of the gods," or "the metaconsciousness of 'All That Is'."
And here's another bit of good news: All is not as it seems. Why is this good news? Because, out of the mystery, out of "the hands of the gods," out of "the metaconsciousness of 'All That Is'," anything is possible! Who's to say the asteroid that evidently gave the mammals their liberty 65,000,000 years ago, for instance, was not a deliberate "act of the gods," arranged by the metaconscious intent of "All That Is," or of the Galaxy, or the Solar System? Who's to say the gods might not exercise their prerogatives again – if we, here on the ground, rouse ourselves from our slumbers and do everything we can to remedy our own desperate predicament?
Here's just "one little example" of what I mean by All is not as it seems: Crop Circles.4 They appear in fields of standing grain every season, nobody knows for sure how or why. Some pranksters have come forward and claimed to have made the Crop Circles, by walking on the grain with planks strapped to their feet. Really? All of them? All over the world? For the past 30 years or more? Now that really would be amazing!
Discounting such hoaxes – and there have been at least some hoaxes – here we have literally thousands of instances of a physical phenomenon pressed into fields of growing grain, witnessed, viewed, photographed, investigated by large numbers of people in all parts of the world, over an extended period of time, which have so far eluded all attempts at "rational explanation" – a "rational explanation" being one that fits comfortably with Taker culture and mythology. Different individuals take different "messages" from these phenomena, yet one seems clear enough to anyone with an open mind encountering Crop Circles:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.5
That's the good news. Then too, of course, there's a bit of bad news as well.
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* Source: A Pact With the Devil.
1. After Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure, Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999. See also Beyond Civilization or The Killer Meme.
2. See David Icke, Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster: Why the official story of 9/11 is a monumental lie, Bridge of Love Publications USA, Wildwood MO 63005, ISBN: 0-9538810-2-4, among others of Icke's works. Actually, the pharoahs probably number more like "0.0001%" or less of Taker culture. that "1%" is intended as a metaphore representing a very small fraction.
3. See Daniel Quinn, 1999. See also footnote Beyond Civilization or The Killer Meme.
4. Information on Crop Circles may be found online at the following, among others, in no particular order:
5. Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 5.
Civilization and Beyond copyright 2004, 2005 by J. Harmon Grahn. Copying and redistribution, in whole or in part, are permitted in any medium provided this notice is included.