The Story of B (Ishmael Series Book 2)

Totalitarian agriculture is based on the premise that all the food in the world belongs to us, and there is no limit whatever to what we may take for ourselves and deny to all others.

Vision is the river, and we who have been changed are the flood. I supposed people will ask you to summarize what it’s all about. I offer you this, knowing how inadequate it is: The world will not be saved by old minds with new programs. If the world is saved, it will be saved by new minds—with no programs. They won’t like the sound of that, especi

“Okay,” I said. “I see what you mean. I remember once, in five-card draw, being dealt the card I needed to fill an inside straight flush. Getting that card was definitely a religious experience. It was like a transfiguration. I expected everyone at the table to be blinded by the divine effulgence that was radiating from me.” “When you call it a rel

“Excuse me,” I said, “and again I hope this won’t sound inquisitorial. It seems to me I’ve read about archaeological finds of vast kills of bison that apparently were mostly left to rot by human hunters. They killed them, picked out the parts they wanted, and abandoned the rest.” “Improbable as it seems on the basis of the facts you’ve just mention

“Nothing in the community lives in isolation from the rest, not even the queens of the social insects. Nothing lives only in itself, needing nothing from the community. Nothing lives only for itself, owing nothing to the community. Nothing is untouchable or untouched. Every life is on loan from the community from birth and without fail is paid back

It’s not MAN who is the scourge of the world, it’s a single culture. One culture out of hundreds of thousands of cultures. OUR culture. And here is the best of the news I have to bring: We don’t have to change HUMANKIND in order to survive. We only have to change a single culture.

According to totalitarian agriculture, cows may live but wolves must die. According to totalitarian agriculture, chickens may live but foxes must die. According to totalitarian agriculture, wheat may live but chinch bugs must die. Anything we eat may live, but anything that eats our food must die—and not merely on an ad hoc basis. Our posture is no

Programs are invariably responses to something bad, which means they must wait for bad things to happen. (Again, this doesn’t make them wicked, it just forever makes them play catch-up.) By contrast, vision doesn’t wait for something bad to happen, it pursues something desirable. Vision doesn’t oppose, it proposes. It doesn’t stave off defeat, it o

“What I said was this: If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with old minds and new programs. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but a new program.”