New Way of Thinking

There is no way that mankind would ever go back to the classical tribal way of living... "Beyond Civilization" challenges us to think outside the box. To create a way to live that involves today's technologies with our ancestors way of living. What I don't understand is why things still haven't changed. Daniel Quinn has layed out the answer to our problem yet most of us still don't respond. Everyone knows that there is a problem yet the majority of us are sitting back and waiting for someone else to change the world for us. We can't just hope that someone else will step in and save us because that might never happen. If everyone actively came together and left all the old programs behind, the results would be drastic..... I think that part of the problem is that most people don't think that it is that big of a deal and I'm afraid that if people don't start to contribute to saving the world it may be too late. So maybe our challenge is to point out how big of a deal it is and maybe we would get more people to contribute to saving the world?

A parable about sustainability

On page 170 in Beyond Civiliation Daniel Quinn uses a parable to describe how using a flawed plan with the best pieces will always fail and using a viable plan and ordinary materials will succeed. What I took from this is that it is foolish to keep on tring to rebuild something to make it better when it doesnt work! Instead we should think of something compelty new that does work. That can apply to almost everything involved in our society... Like he said earlier in the book, we put so much money into schools trying to make them "better" and into trying to improve the laws to make them "better"... Why do we do that year after year? Do we feel obilagted to because we are provided the money? Or are we just to lazy to think of a new method?