The Invisible Wall

The Invisible Wall
Posted by Mike on July 14, 2002 at 16:30:43: Previous Next

(I post this because I think it relevant to many long-haired men and because of the huge response I got to an earlier post.)

THE INVISIBLE WALL by Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael)

Because my books deal with issues that trouble them deeply, I hear from a lot of young people. They want to know how to avoid becoming wage slaves. They want to know how to live in the world without contributing to its destruction. They often dream of running off to some wolderness where they can "live off the land" or to some utopian commune where they can live as if the rest of the world doesn't exist. In the end, they're all struggling with the same thing: the capitivity that holds all the members of our culture in the place. In the book I'm the best known for, Ishmael tells his pupil:

"You're captives of a civilization system that compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live."

This is where Ishmael starts with his pupil, because understanding and acknowledging our captivity is the beginning of freedom. We actually have ourselves captives. No outsider locked us in. We locked ourselves in--gradually and unwittingly. And we're all locked in together: People like Bill Gates and Donald Trump have luxurious cells, but they're just as much
prisoners as the rest of us. Liberation has to begin with understanding the nature of the wall that surrounds us. It doesn't do any good to scream at it or to curse the hundreds of generations who built it one stone at a time(thinking they were doing something terrific). So this is my recipe for freedom:

Understand how the wall got there and how It works; then start looking for cracks. It's not Indestructible, but it has to be seen before It can be destroyed.



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