The theory I'm putting forward here is that storytelling is a genetic characteristic in the sense that early human hunters who were able to organize events into stories were more successful than hunters who weren'tโand this success translated directly into reproductive success. In other words, hunters who were storytellers tended to be better represented in the gene pool than hunters who weren't, which (incidentally) accounts for the fact that storytelling isn't just found here and there among human cultures, it's found universally.
Daniel QuinnIn effect, you're saying that if you knew how you oughtt to live, then the flaw is man could be controlled. If you knew how you ought to live, you wouldn't be forever screwing up the world. perhaps in fact the two things are actually one thing. Perhaps the flaw in man is exactly this: that he doesn't know how he ought to live.
Daniel QuinnKarl Marx recognized that workers without a choice are workers in chains. But his idea of breaking chains was for us to depose the pharaohs and then build the pyramids for ourselves, as if building pyramids is something we just can't stop doing, we love it so much.
Daniel QuinnDiversity is a survival factor for the community itself. A community of a hundred million species can survive anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature drop of twenty degreesโwhich would be a lot more devastating than it sounds. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature rise of twenty degrees. But a community of a hundred species or a thousand species has almost no survival value at all.
Daniel QuinnWe'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.
Daniel Quinn