If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways (5 page)

Elaine
. I'd assume it's slowest among the wealthier classes.

Daniel
. And where do you suppose it's the fastest?

Elaine
. I'd assume it would be the fastest among the poor.

Daniel
. Among whom are the starving millions.

Elaine
. Yes. But —

Daniel
. Yes?

Elaine
. It's going to be pointed out that we
do
send them food.

Daniel
. And so the starving millions aren't actually starving.

Elaine
thinks about this.

Daniel
. Are the starving millions starving or not?

Elaine
. I guess I have to say that they're starving.

Daniel
. If they weren't, why would we be increasing food production every year in order to feed them?

Elaine
[
after some thought
]. It makes no sense.

Daniel
. What doesn't?

Elaine
. Our rationale for constantly increasing food production.

Daniel
. We're not creating a world without hunger?

Elaine
. No.

Daniel
. Let's be realistic for a moment. Do you honestly believe that the companies spending tens or hundreds of millions a year to develop genetically modified foods are doing so altruistically, motivated
by the thought of ending hunger?

Elaine
. It would seem unlikely. They're motivated by the thought of making more money.

Daniel
. The scientists who do the actual work may imagine that they're working to end world hunger, but I doubt that the top executives have any such notion.

Elaine
. I'm sure you're right.

Daniel
. And what about the farmers who plant higher-yield crops? Are they doing it to help feed the starving millions?

Elaine
. No, realistically, higher yields mean bigger profits, and I have to assume that's what they're thinking about.

Daniel
. In 1960 there were three billion of us. Over the next forty years, while we continuously
increased food production to feed the starving millions, the starving millions just went on starving. So
where was that extra food going?

Elaine
. It was going into growing our population.

Daniel
. In forty years our population doubled to six billion. So have we demolished the idea that we increase food production every year in order to feed the starving millions?

Elaine
. Yes, as far as I'm concerned. What puzzles me is...

Daniel
. Yes?

Elaine
. It seems almost unbelievable that when we talk about increasing food production to feed the starving millions, everyone just nods as if it makes perfect sense.

Daniel
. Didn't it make sense to you?

Elaine
. Yes, I guess I have to say it did.

Daniel
. Then where's the puzzle?

Elaine
. To be honest, I'm not quite sure.

Daniel
. Or perhaps you're not quite ready to articulate it.

Elaine
. Yes, it could be that.

Daniel
. Let's move on to something simpler... In
Ishmael
I distinguished our tribal ancestors and their present-day cultural descendants from ourselves —

Elaine
. You called them Leavers and us Takers.

Daniel
. Yes... If I were doing it again, I wouldn't have used those terms.

Elaine
. Why is that?

Daniel
. Because far too many readers translated these terms into Good People and Bad People. People imagined that if their hearts were in the right place, they had become Leavers. Someone once wrote to
me that Governor Jerry Brown of California was a Leaver and his opponent was a Taker.

Elaine
. I noticed that you don't seem to be using the terms now.

Daniel
. No... In
Ishmael
it was simpler to say "Leavers" than "our tribal ancestors and their present-day cultural descendants," but I wish now that I'd just settled for "tribal peoples."

Elaine
. I see. All the same, it did serve a purpose, at least for me.

Daniel
. Go on.

Elaine
. It distinguished "them" from "us" in a very... fundamental way. Leavers are those who leave their lives in the hands of the gods, and Takers are those who take their lives into their own hands. Leavers didn't worry about where their next meal was coming from, because they knew that the food the
gods left for them was never going to go away. But that wasn't good enough for the Takers. They wanted
to take control of their own food supply and not depend on the generosity of the gods.

Daniel
. Yes, the names themselves were apt enough, but many readers tended to read them as
character
descriptors. The essential difference between "them" and "us" is not in our hearts or in our attitudes but in the way we live.

Elaine
. Yes, I know that.

Daniel
. As I described them, tribal peoples — or Leavers — live in the hands of the gods, meaning that they take what the gods send. In good times they live well and have an easy time of it. In bad times they
live less well and have to put more effort into staying alive. But there was never any necessity to sit in one spot and starve to death. If there wasn't much food right where they were, they went somewhere
else, where was likely to be more, and it was all free for the taking. Famines occur among settled,
agricultural peoples. They're stuck in their own stricken area and can't forage for food in their neighbors'
territories, because the food there is definitely not free for the taking.

Elaine
. Yes, I see.

Daniel
. But we're getting off the track here. I'm not trying to recapitulate what I've already written. I just
needed to lay the basis for one question I received that I wanted you to take a crack at.

Elaine
. Okay.

Daniel
. A woman wrote that, on the basis of what I'd written about living in the hands of the gods, did I justify the practice of medicine and if so, how.

Elaine
. Uh-huh.

Daniel
. So, thinking like a Martian anthropologist, how do you answer this question?

Elaine
[
after some thought
]. It seems like an instance of translating a description into a prescription.

Daniel
. In other words, because Leavers lived their lives in the hands of the gods, so should we.

Elaine
. That's right.

Daniel
. This is a valid reply up to a certain point, but it also suggests that no description should be taken as a prescription. Are you familiar with Jean Liedloff's
Continuum Concept
?

Elaine
. No.

Daniel
. Jean Liedloff, an American writer, spent the early 1970s living with the Yekuana and Sanema tribes of South America, finding them to be the happiest people she'd ever known. This led her to pay
particular attention to the way they reared their children. What she saw, among other things, was that
their children enjoyed constant physical contact with their mothers from birth, slept in their parents' bed until leaving of their own volition, usually after about two years. She saw that they were breast-fed
instantly whenever they were hungry and during infancy were in constant contact with their mothers as
they went about their business. There's a great deal more to it than this, but this gives you the general
idea. As a result — or at least so it seemed to Jean — children matured feeling completely secure,
happy, and unneurotic. This was a description that tens of thousands — or it may be hundreds of
thousands by now — have found to be a very successful prescription for child rearing. I've been around
children raised this way, and I can tell you that the difference between them and children raised the usual way is striking. So you can't automatically dismiss the utility of turning a description into a prescription.

Elaine
. Okay. But living in the hands of the gods...

Daniel
. Keep in mind that this is just an expression. If you were to ask the members of an aboriginal tribe if they were living in the hands of the gods, they wouldn't know what you were talking about it,
and if you explained it to them, they'd probably say, "Well, we never thought about it that way, but I guess you could say so."

Elaine
. I don't think I quite understand.

Daniel
. "Living in the hands of the gods" is just an expression. You could say "casting your fate to the winds" or even "trying your luck." An example will help. Every year tens of thousands of young people dream of becoming successful actors, but only a few of them actually go off to New York or Hollywood
to try their luck. While this handful take acting lessons and go to auditions, they take any kind of work
they can get. I say they're trying their luck, but it would be equally valid to say that they're living in the hands of the gods. Or you could say that what happens to them is up to the fates. Obviously they don't
all make it; only a very few make it. But if these few hadn't put themselves in the hands of the gods —
hadn't left home to scuffle for work and face a lot of hardship and rejection — they wouldn't have made
it at all. No one who stays home and plays it safe becomes a success on the stage or screen.

Elaine
. Yes, I can see that.

Daniel
. Most people in our culture strive for a maximum of control over their destiny — avoid at all costs anything that looks like living in the hands of the gods. This often assures a certain success, but it almost never brings a lightning strike of good fortune. They get along, according to plan, they advance
toward collecting their retirement benefits, but that's it. Lightning strikes only those who are willing to risk living in the hands of the gods.

Elaine
. And — if I may ask — how does this translate into your own life?

Daniel
. You may definitely ask. For the first twenty years of my life I followed the conventional
trajectory, in control as much as possible at every point. I had a career in publishing and over a twenty-
year period moved steadily upward. In my last position I just had to hold on and keep my head down,
and a vice presidency would have been mine almost certainly — and, ultimately, quite possibly the
presidency of the company I was working for. Instead I walked away from it. I won't say I had no plans
at that point, but they were terrible plans, and within a couple of years you could say pretty safely that I had nothing. And having nothing, I started writing a book, and with a little help from the gods or the
fates or the universe, I was able to keep working on that book for twelve years until it became
Ishmael
.

And just at that point, with a little more help from the gods or the fates or the universe, it so happened that Ted Turner decided he wanted to sponsor a competition for a novel presenting "creative and positive solutions to global problems." Winning that competition assured the publication of
Ishmael
— and there was my lightning strike. But back in 1975, if I'd held on and kept my head down and finally made it to
the top in publishing, there would've been no
Ishmael
— or any of the subsequent books. I had to let go of my life for that to happen.

Elaine
. That's quite a story. And quite an example.

Daniel
. I should point out, however, that during this period it would never have occurred to me that I was "living in the hands of the gods." I was, but it wasn't something I consciously set out to do.

Elaine
. I see.

Daniel
. So finally we get to the reader's question. Doesn't the practice of medicine somehow violate the principle of living in the hands of the gods?

Elaine
[
after some thought
]. It would seem to.

Daniel
. So it seemed, at least to this reader. Is that the answer you'd expect me to give her?

Elaine
. No.

Daniel
. Then what?

Elaine
[
laughing
]. I don't know.

Daniel
. You've got to pull back to get a wider perspective on the question. That's the job of the Martian anthropologist: to pull back, never to be restricted to the questioner's assumptions.

Elaine
shakes her head.

Daniel
. This reader was fixated on a detail and not looking at the whole.

Elaine
. The whole
what
?

Daniel
. You know the whole. The difference between you and her is that I'm pressuring you to look at it.

Elaine
[
after a minute
]. Aboriginal peoples practiced — still practice — their own kind of medicine.

Daniel
. That's certainly true. Do you think it's like ours?

Elaine
. I can't claim to know what it is, but... But I suppose I have an impression that it's more like magic than anything we'd consider medicine.

Daniel
. So how does this help answer this woman's question?

Elaine
. I'm not sure it does.

Daniel
. What do you think is troubling this woman about our medicine? Why does she think it doesn't jibe with living in the hands of the gods?

Elaine
[
sighing
]. I guess she's thinking... "Oh well, I've got pneumonia. For someone living in the hands of the gods, that's it."

Daniel
. You live with it — or die with it.