Page 31 of The Story of B (Ishmael 2)

“But it gave them some other things besides a hard life.”

“Exactly. Now you’re running with me, Jared! Now you’re beginning to see why I say that these people represent changed minds. They didn’t think like the Gebusi or the Cheyenne or the Alawa or the Ihalmiut or the Micmac or the Bushmen—or any other of thousands of peoples I could name. What they were doing didn’t make sense to their neighbors, but it didn’t have to. What they were doing wouldn’t have made sense to their great-great-great-grandparents, but again it didn’t have to. What they were doing made perfect sense to them, the way that what the Gebusi do makes perfect sense to them. What they were doing made perfect sense to them, because they saw things differently—differently from the way their ancestors saw them and differently from the way their neighbors saw them. Do you see now why I say that these people represent changed minds?”

“I think so.”

“Because we share that mind change, we look at what they did and say, ‘Well, of course. This makes sense. What could be more obvious? This was bound to happen. Humans were meant to live as Takers.’ Because we share their mind-set, their revolution makes perfect sense to us. To us, it looks logical and inevitable, the way eating sorcerers seems logical and inevitable to the Gebusi.”

“Yes, I see.”

“We know what ethnic group these people belonged to—evidently they were Caucasians—but there’s no reason at all to suppose that every Caucasian people took part in this revolution. The Gebusi and their neighbors the Kubor, the Bedamini, the Oybae, the Honibo, and the Samo all belong to the same ethnic group, but they certainly don’t have a common culture. Are you following me?”

“I think so.”

“We’ll never know what the people of the revolution called themselves, but let’s make up a name for them. Let’s call them the Tak. This will link them to the way I’ve called the Taker way.”

“Okay.”

“The Tak didn’t become agriculturalists because they were hungry or because they liked hard work better than loafing. Quite on your own, you grasped the key fact that they got something out of their toilsome life that compensated them for it. Why did they become agriculturalists? What did totalitarian agriculture give them that foraging didn’t give their neighbors and their ancestors?”

“You already showed me this. Totalitarian agriculture gave them power.”

“That’s right. Their revolution wasn’t about food, it was about power. That’s still what it’s about.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“Someone once asked me how I could go on maintaining that the human race isn’t flawed if it’s so enamored of power. ‘The Tak succumbed to a lust for power,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that a flaw? All their cultural descendants succumbed to a lust for power. Isn’t that a flaw?’ I told him about a famous psychological experiment of the late 1950s. An electrode was implanted in the pleasure center of a monkey’s brain. Pushing a button on a small control box delivered an electric pulse to the electrode, giving the monkey a tremendous jolt of sheer, whole-body pleasure. They gave the box to the monkey, who of course had no idea what it was but by accident eventually pushed the button, giving itself this tremendous jolt of pleasure. It didn’t take many more repetitions for the monkey to catch on to the connection between the button and the pleasure, and once this happened it just sat there hour after hour pushing the button and giving itself jolts of pleasure. It passed up food, it passed up sex. If they hadn’t eventually taken the box away, the monkey would have sat there and literally pleasured itself to death. Here is the question I asked back to my questioner: ‘Was there something wrong with this monkey? Was the monkey flawed?’ What do you think, Jared?”

“I would say no, the monkey wasn’t flawed.”

“I’d say the same. Nor were the Tak flawed. Pushing the button of totalitarian agriculture gave them a tremendous jolt of power. It gave the same jolt of power to the people of China and to the people of Europe. It gives us the same jolt of power today. And just like the monkey, no one wants to quit pushing that button, and we’re in serious danger of pleasuring ourselves to death with unending jolts of power.”

I nodded. “I guess this is what you mean when you say that if the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds. People with unchanged minds will say, ‘Let’s minimize the effects of pushing the button.’ People with changed minds will say, ‘Let’s throw the box away!’ ”

B nodded. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to say it that way, but of course you’re right. As soon as the people of our culture decide to throw the box away, things will begin to change dramatically. And when you start saying things better than I could have said them myself, this is a clear sign that you’re on your way to becoming the message.”

The Tak

Our food came at this point, and we both fell silent to give it our attention. Finally B said, “There’s one connection I’ve tried to put off making for you, thinking I could avoid it or skip it, but I’d better go ahead and make it.”

I asked him why he’d been avoiding it.

; “I’ve been avoiding it because I feel under some pressure to be economical of time here.” He shook his head, dissatisfied with this statement. “That’s not quite direct enough. I want to be rid of the hovering specter of Bernard Lulfre as soon as possible. I want to satisfy his curiosity and get him out of here.”

“I understand. What’s the connection you’ve been avoiding?”

“I’ve told you the Tak seemed like lunatics to their neighbors, just as the Gebusi seem like lunatics to us. Do you find that hard to believe?”

“Yes, I do, but I suppose the Gebusi find it equally hard to believe that they seem like lunatics to us.”

“Just so,” B said. “The Tak seem perfectly reasonable and ordinary to us, because we’re their cultural descendants. We have the same worldview they had.”

“I understand. But even so, we can’t actually know what the Tak’s neighbors thought of them.”

“In this case, by a great fluke of history, we can know what at least one of their neighbors thought of them. Or rather, we do know, because we have their version of what happened. Again, we know what ethnic group these neighbors belonged to, but not what they called themselves. Let’s call them the Zeugen—in other words, the witnesses. In terms of lifestyle, the Zeugen were rather like the Masai of East Africa. Do you know the Masai?”

“I’ve heard of them. They’re nomadic herders, aren’t they?”