Every one of the Leavers’ ways came into being by evolution, by a process of testing that began even before people had a word for it. No one said, ‘Okay, let’s form a committee to write up a set of laws for us to follow.’ None of these cultures were inventions. But that’s what all our lawgivers give us – inventions. Contrivances. Not things that have proved out over thousands of generations, but rather arbitrary pronouncements about the one right way to live.

As the Takers see it, the gods gave man the same choice they gave Achilles: a brief life of glory, or a long, uneventful life in obscurity. And the Takers chose a brief life of glory.

Making food a commodity to be owned was one of the great innovations of our culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key – and putting it there is the cornerstone of our economy, for if the food wasn’t under lock and key, who would work?

The revolt hadn’t been put down, it had just dwindled away into a fashion statement.

We are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as poor because they don’t have anything; perhaps better to think of them for that reason as free. MARSHALL SAHLINS.

Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, ‘Have no care for tomorrow. Don’t worry about whether you’re going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect care of them. Don’t you think he’ll do the same for you?’ In our culture the overwhelming answer to that question is, ‘Hell no!’ Even the most dedicated monastics saw to their sowing and reaping and gathering into barns.

You’re captives of a civilization system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.

They made an ingenuous and disorganized effort to escape from captivity but ultimately failed, because they were unable to find the bars of the cage. If you can’t discover what’s keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual.

The civilized want people to make their living individually, and they want them to live separately, behind locked doors – one family to a house, each house fully stocked with refrigerators, television sets, washing machines, and so on.

I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world.