Pushing the Limits Interview with Daniel Quinn

“My perception is that we…are not a wildly happy people. Depression is pandemic…Childhood suicide is always climbing. My feeling is that this malaise is never caused by a scarcity of products. I don’t think people commit suicide because they can’t have a flat-screen high-definition television…I think people need to reevaluate their lives and say “What can I do that would make me happier?” as opposed to “How can I get more stuff?”

Daniel Quinn, author of ten books, is best known for his 1992 novel Ishmael. The book has been credited with helping to change the multi-billion-dollar corporation Interface Inc., as well as providing inspiration for Pearl Jam’s Yield album and the movie Instinct. Ishmael was awarded the 1991 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, a $500,000 prize created by Ted Turner to encourage authors to produce works of fiction offering creative solutions to global problems—not bad for a book about a half-ton silverback gorilla leading a single pupil down a path to save the planet. Quinn’s books have changed the way thousands see the world. Now lets find out how he sees the limits we push.

JG:
Do you have a picture in mind of what a sustainable economy would look like?

DQ:
No, I’m afraid I don’t. To me, this is rather like asking someone in the Middle Ages what a representational government would look like. One paradigm can’t predict what the next is going to be like in any detail or with any authority. What I’ve said in Ishmael is that we’re captives of a civilization that is devouring the world. The reason we’re captives is that we must all make a living and, at this point, there is no way to make a living except by belonging to this world-devouring economic system. That is what makes us prisoners. There are people who run off to the hills and get themselves a few acres of land to live off, growing their own food, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t work for six billion people. In Beyond Civilization I try to describe a crack in the walls of the prison that would enable people to make a living in a slightly different way that makes us less a prisoner of this civilization; I called it the New Tribal Revolution. I gave several examples of businesses that were organized tribally as opposed to conventionally.

JG:
How do you define the tribally based workplace?

DQ:
There is nothing mysterious about a tribe. A tribe is a group of people working together to make a living. It has nothing to do with hunting and gathering. I am currently conferring with a group of people trying to start a tribal brewery, of all things. You can do anything if you do it in a tribal way. The main difference is that it is not something you do just to make money. Virtually the only reason that people take jobs is that they need the money. Eighty per cent of the people who take jobs get no particular joy from the work they do. They just do it for a pay cheque. A tribal business is not organized hierarchically. People are in it because they want to do the work, as opposed to just getting a pay cheque.

JG:
What is the biggest criticism you have faced discussing these tribally-based ideas?

DQ:
The most common is “It cannot be done.” In Beyond Civilization I give the example of Ben & Jerry’s. The pair started their famous ice cream company in a completely tribal way. For the first few years it was a tribal business, and it was only after they really got rolling that they turned it into a hierarchical conventional business. But, in the beginning, the two of them opened the store, swept the floor, cleaned the tables, made the ice cream, served the ice cream and sat at the cashier’s desk. And that’s the image of a tribal business.
   
The second thing that people say is that they won’t let us do it: The government will come in and say, “You can’t run your business that way.” Of course, this is nonsense because the government doesn’t care how you run your business. They want taxes. So they don’t care if it’s a Christian business or a tribal business—it makes utterly no difference. And a tribal business has to do all the same things that ordinary businesses do. They have to pay taxes, they have to pay for insurance—all the usual things.

JG:
Could this economic change happen without political change?

DQ:
If there were that many people living in a different way then the shape of the government would change as well, because different people would be elected.

JG:
Is the tribal economy the silver bullet?

DQ:
Almost a requirement for starting a tribal business is that you have a relatively low standard of living. This is why it’s difficult for most people to contemplate. If you have a mortgage on a $300,000 house, it will be very hard to start a tribal business. If you’re putting two or three kids through college, it is going to be very difficult to start a tribal business. It’s something that young people can consider.

JG:
Do we need to see a shift in priorities?

DQ:
My perception is that we—I am speaking specifically of Americans because I know them best—are not a wildly happy people. Depression is pandemic, children are depressed. Childhood suicide is always climbing. My feeling is that this malaise is never caused by a scarcity of products. I don’t think people commit suicide because they can’t have a flat-screen high-definition television. I don’t think they commit suicide because they cannot afford a BMW. I think the causes of our general unhappiness go deeper than that, and that by continually upping our level of consumption we are not becoming any happier. I think people need to reevaluate their lives and say “What can I do that would make me happier?” as opposed to “How can I get more stuff?”

JG:
What is the greatest environmental threat to the world over the next 25 years?

DQ:
I’m afraid I have to say that the human population is the greatest environmental threat. There is no cause for the mass extinctions we are experiencing other than the tremendous impact we’re having on the planet, and there is nothing more dangerous than what we are doing. Not deliberately, but simply to sustain the six billion of us, the growing population that is having a stupendous impact on the planet, and I think that this will kill us before anything else.

JG:
What have been the greatest successes of the environmental movement during the past 20 to 30 years?

DQ:
I think the biggest victory is the change in global consciousness about the fact that our environment is vulnerable and cannot withstand every assault we make on it. That was what was so shocking about [environmental pioneer] Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring—everyone thought that we could dump as much poison as we liked into the planet, and the planet would take care of it one way or another. But that has changed now.

JG:
Do you feel capitalism in its current form will be sustainable over the long term?

DQ:
If there are still people living on this planet in 200 years, it will be because they are not living the way we are today. Now, 200 years is an outside limit—I don’t think we have anything like that amount of time. Capitalism is only one element of the problem. We’re in the midst of a food race. In the arms race of the Cold War each side would make an advance that would be answered by an advance on the other side; it continually escalated. In our food war we make an advance in food production that is answered by an increase in population growth, which must then be answered by another increase in food production. This cannot go on. If we’re going to survive we’re going to have to stop growing. We can’t get to 10 billion or 12 billion.

JG:
What will it take before we have a sustainable economy?

DQ:
You pick up the attitudes and the worldview of the people around you, even if they’re not particularly trying to convert you. Because you see things differently, the people around you begin to see things differently. Right now the people who have changed minds are in a great minority. But if they change the minds of a few people around them then of course the minority gets larger. When it gets to be that half of the people in the world see what our predicament is then the next day everyone in the world will see it. That’s the tipping point. It will happen overnight.

Jordy Gold is a sustainability expert and columnist for Corporate Knights. You will find his work online at www.jordygold.com