The Little Engine That Couldn’t: How We’re Preparing Ourselves and Our Children for Extinction

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In a recent semi-documentary film called Garbage, a toxic waste disposal engineer was asked how we can stop engulfing the world in our poisons. His answer was, “We’d have to remove everybody from the face of the earth, because humans GENERATE toxic waste, whether it be pathogenic organisms that we excrete from our bodies or whatever. We are toxic to the face of the earth.”

What is your gut reaction to this assessment? Please raise your hands if you agree that humans are inherently toxic.

I understand that many representatives of the First Peoples are attending this conference. I hope there are many in this audience. Please raise your hand if you belong to an aboriginal people. Thank you. Now I’d like to ask you the same question I asked the whole group a moment ago. If you consult your traditional teachings, do you agree that humans are inherently toxic to the life of this planet?

Those who know my work will know that you’ve just demonstrated one of my basic theses, that the people of my culture, whom I call Takers, have a fundamentally different mythology from the First Peoples, whom I call Leavers. In Taker mythology, humans are indeed viewed as inherently toxic to the world, as alien beings who were born to rule—and ultimately destroy—the world. As WE are currently ruling and destroying the world. In Leaver mythology, by contrast, the world is a sacred place, and humans are not perceived as alien to that sacred place but rather as belonging to it. In other words, in the Leaver worldview, people are no less a part of the sacred framework of the universe than scorpions or eagles or salmon or bears or daffodils. . . .

When I first proposed to speak here about how we’re preparing ourselves and our children for extinction, the organizer of the conference wondered if this topic wasn’t directed too exclusively to members of “our” culture—the culture I call Taker culture in my books—the dominant culture of the world, found wherever the food is under lock and key and people have to work to get it. I think it’s important that you hear my answer to this question.

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