"TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person."

Expulsion

The Wilderness

Credo

"Yesterday you told me you have the impression of being a captive. You have this impression because there is enormous pressure on you to take a place in the story your culture is enacting in the world--any place at all. This pressure is exerted in all sorts of ways , on all sorts of levels, but it's exerted most basically this way: Those who refuse to take a place do not get fed(36)."

"They've been told an explaining story. They've been given an explanation of how things came to be this way, and this stills their alarm. This explanation covers everything, including the deterioration of the ozone layer, the pollution of the oceans, the destruction of the rain forests, and even human extinction--and it satisfies them. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it pacifies them. They put their shoulders to the wheel during the day, stupefy themselves with drugs or television at night, and try not to think too searchingly about the world they're leaving their children to cope with(44-45)."

"So now we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it(74)."

"I'm saying that the price you've paid is not the price of becoming human. It's not even the price of having the things you just mentioned. It's the price of enacting a story that cast mankind as the enemy of the world(77)."

"Yes. I no longer think of what we're doing as a blunder . We're not destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it(132)."

"Giving it up would mean . . . It would mean that all along they'd been wrong. It would mean that they'd never known how to rule the world. It would mean . . . relinquishing their pretensions to godhood(170)."

~Ishmael Daniel Quinn Bantam/Turner: 1992