Three Kinds of People
Rick Knight (rknight@platinum.com)
Wed, 16 Jul 97 10:22:55 CST
Evmick wrote:
Haven't read Daniel Quinn...have to look him up...but I think that he
may be refering to something else..from your context..
A shepard would be a maker...as he produces (makes) a legitimate
service or product...
EvMick
Rick Knight further elaborates:
Daniel Quinn has three books by my counting, the first "Providence" is
an autobiographical tale of how the author attempted to become a
Trappist monk.
The second, and most popular, is "Ishmael" about a telepathic,
super-intelligent gorilla who is the mentor for a disillusioned man in
his mid-life crisis. The characters and plot are a springboard for
Quinn's beliefs on human history which I don't mean to trivialize at
all. They are fascinating and worthy of consideration.
The latest, "The Story of B" is about a young American Catholic priest
who is sent on a mission to investigate a man called "B" who, by his
speaking, is stirring up a lot of controversy and gathering a hefty
following around Europe. Again, the same notions of the author are
conveyed using a narrative plot convention.
Quinn has a web page (www.bnetwork.com) I think. He seems to be
pretty well read on history and anthropology. He has divided the
people of the world into leavers (environmentally passive) and takers
(environmentally exploitive). He's an advocate of balance for the
sake of long term human sustainability.
I would regard a third world shepherd as a leaver, a western world
rancher as a taker. The distinction being on their overall impact on
the world at large. The shepherd's flock might eat up the grass in a
meadow which locally may locally impact the population but a modern
cattle facility can spoil groundwater and produce over abundant
amounts of methane, not to mention how much grain it takes to feed the
cattle that one doesn't get back nutritionally or substantively in the
resultant meat or dairy consumption for which the cattle are raised.