Customer Reviews

Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Daniel Quinn is an excellent author with wonderful ideas and a powerful writing style. However, this book is incredibly awful and you shouldn't waste your time or energy reading it. DQ attempts to go "Beyond Civilization" and help readers get to that place. He fails at this, miserably. I can't believe his publishers and editors unleashed this base work on the public. Read "Ishmael", "My Ishmael", even "The Story of B". DQ is a great writer and this is just one of his mistakes.

I never used to be *that* concerned about the condition of the Earth and our civilization; I knew we had some great problems, but I figured they would be solved sooner or later and that humanity was in no real threat of going extinct. My God, what a naive view that was. Reading the Ishmael trilogy and Beyond Civilization has totally changed me. I used to be more or less apathetic about these issues, but after reading these books, I absolutely couldn't stay that way. We are in real trouble if we continue this way of life, and nothing less than a world with changed minds will save us. Everyone has to read Quinn's books, including this one. I'm not exaggerating when I say that. We all have to change our vision from the current one, or we'll end up stabbing ourselves to death (that's what we're doing now). Quinn makes these important facts very clear in this book, and his reasoning is so sound. These ideas were totally unknown to me before reading Ishmael. Now I can't believe how I got along without them. I know so many people who feel the same way after reading Quinn's books. They say their lives are changed. Some of these people were the most apathetic I knew towards environmental issues. It's *amazing* what effect these books have on people. I've never experienced anything like it. More than anything, this book is a tremendous inspiration, especially to those who have read Ishmael (they can appreciate the ideas more - so you read Ishmael too! :). It's straightforward, clear, and incredibly powerful. Please read this book.

It is a wonderfully written book. Literary genius of Quinns book is only outdown by its content. Meaningful,hopeful & brilliant!!! Vive Daniel

After reading Ishmael, one could only have high hopes for anything by Daniel Quinn. Beyond Civilization does not measure up to expectation. Quinn does a good job describing how we arrived at our current condition but fails utterly to paint a way out. Perhaps that is asking a bit much, but that is what "Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure" promises but does not deliver. If anything, Quinn's "new tribalism" looks a lot like cooperatives from the 60s and 70s. The best examples he provides of a hopeful future is a traveling circus and embracing homelessness. I can hardly wait to explain to my children how the best hope is to run away and join the circus. Somehow I don't think this is the stuff the inspires revolution, or even evolution. Sorry, this one is a loser.

After reading "Ishmael" and "Story of B" and viewing the "Food Production and Population Growth" video, I had high hopes for "Beyond Civilization". Unfortunately, I was very dissapointed. I don't think tribes will catch on or provide a solution to our current path of ecological suicide. In my opinion, Daniel Quinn is best at describing the ramifications of current issues/problems in a way that is easily understood. He is not as suited to providing solutions to those the problems. I believe that Paul Hawken's book, "The Ecology of Commerce" is a great solutions book.

This book consists largely of brief reiterations of the ideas Quinn has presented in his first books. It is also designed as a "practical handbook", unlike his previous philosophical journeys. Beyond Civilization thus doesn't inspire the sense of profound and shocking revelation that Ishmael and the other books do in many of their readers. This in itself is a big disappointment to many.

Quinn writes in the first pages that the most common response he got to his first books was a feeling of, "I understand the problem we are facing now and its urgency, but I have NO idea what I can do." He wrote Beyond Civilization in response, as an attempt to take readers from an abstract thought level to a realistic approach. The book works very well as that response but doesn't stand on its own.

Quinn also, more than any author I've read, simplifies his ideas to no end and constantly uses the most basic analogies to communicate them. The apparent intent and result is to make the concepts widely and easily available to understand - to make them "obvious." Quinn is peerless in achieving this, and it it is the defining characteristic of his writing. In B.C., a common side-effect is frustration, when minds made hungry by the earlier books and expecting more of the same are instead offered further simplified reiterations. People new to Quinn's ideas see only the simplest premises with no explanation at all, leading to label the ideas and the book as tripe.

Upon rereading Ishmael I noticed that the unique ecological ideas in it about agriculture had taken precedence in my memory, and that the book was actually about human cultural philosophies, or "the story we are enacting." Quinn's ideas for practical solutions in Beyond Civilization are therefor not about ecology but about how to enact a different story within civilization. The proposed actions are definitely unlike widely accepted "environmental" solutions. Anyone expecting ideas that are similar to or advancements of already existing approaches could be disappointed. In reality the tribal business idea is quite revolutionary in it's effect on how people would live and think; certainly much more so than recycling is.

The most common thing that is done with Quinn's ideas is restating them inaccurately (and in the case of objections, then going on explain why he is wrong.) In almost all cases this is because some point Quinn made is forgotten and left out, which is probably a result of his writing style, since it is so common. I think it is necessary to reread the books and read the others to get all the ideas down before proposing a flaw in thinking or declaring some lack in realization. It might be something as simple as when Quinn states that third world population explosions can only be created by first world increases in food production. He repeatedly says that he doesn't propose reverting to hunter-gathering and primitive technology, which he says is impossible at thie point, but that the only way to save anything is to surpass the invention of civilization, to invent a better and more advanced social organization (not more complicated; further evolved). The Q and A section on his website is really useful for clarifying as well. As usual Quinn tries to anticipate the readers' questions and respond, clarifying differences between communes and tribal businesses and defining partial agriculture.

The other feature of most Quinn readers, that's noticed in supporters and dissenters alike, is their reluctance to be creative in applying his ideas. Maybe this is because almost no ecological thinkers demand this in their proposed solutions. Quinn has few examples of tribal businesses because few people in the world have consciously and actually ventured Beyond Civilization at this point. Quinn is also very careful never to suggest any "Programs" - doing would make him very popular, but would also mean failure in what he is working to achieve. Instead he only gives principles which can be applied in an endless possible number of ways.

Daniel Quinn certainly deserves praise as a progressive thinker, and even as a visionary. But that doesn't automatically mean that his ideas are successful or plausible, as you can see in this book. Like some of Quinn's other works, this is just a collection of vignettes, each taking up one page or less in rather large print, and becomes merely a list of fragmented ideas with little substance. Granted, he does have some great observations on homelessness and people who can't fit into the system. Quinn's overall philosophy is indeed a necessary one, in that there are better alternatives to the current human civilization. But this idea has been presented much more strongly by other authors in the so-called "Post-Civilization" movement, such as John Zerzan.

In this book Quinn tends to make grand generalizations into historical episodes that he evidently has not researched fully, such as Mesoamerican cultures "choosing" to abandon civilized living. He often uses his previous fictional works as evidence for his theories, and is irritatingly prone to the "strawman" method - creating fictitious quotes or arguments that he can then shoot down with his thesis. When it comes to the grand concept of improvements to modern structured civilization, the only examples he can come up with are traveling circuses and his own community newspaper. The problem here is, neither of these were made up of people who were forced to make a modern living in a system from which they could not extricate themselves. This flimsy, unsubstantial book has some good ideas, but for better solutions (make that any solutions) to the problems it complains about, you are advised to look elsewhere.

Quinn's book was great until the last portion. He carefully crafted an opposing analysis of what civilization does for homo sapiens, presented his argument effectiviely, and then ended the book with a joke. And the punchline wasn't even funny. Although thought provoking, the book is a waste of time. There is nothing good in here that was not in Ishmael.

For a guy that did such a great job with Ishmael, I get the feeling he has nothing more to say. Beyond Civilization is more like a "cheat sheet" rather than a book. Authors that have hits, again like Ishmael, will always have a hard time following it up. At least he's trying.

Beyond Civilization
Alexandria Kebede

Daniel Quinn is a good writer. He's book was reader friendly so I enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed his teaching. The book was about civilization. He talked about the life we live and the life humans used to live in. There's a big deference between the city life and the life lived by bushmen in Africa.
Although a lot of people might not want to accept it. Daniel stresses that we were all bushmen at one point and we have to accept it, whether we like it or not. Although I don't have a problem with It others might. (Just the same as some people have problems with evolution).
Daniel named the book beyond civilization, because he wants humans to erase civilization. When a lot of people hear that argument they think the person saying it is implying we should live in caves and feed via spears.
Actually Daniel is implying that people should open their minds. Meaning that people should think on their own and think of way to live without civilization. Of course that is unfathomable because we live in only cities. What is naked to the human eyes is that memes are engraved into our heads at birth. A meme is a theme, kind of like a motivational phrase that keeps you in line. For example, "up your game" meaning practice and do better in your game. If you are told this at an early age, and it is used in ever aspect of your life "upping your game" would be an instinct in everything you do. You would be precisely a perfect person always to the best of your abilities.
To keep a civilization in line, people have to stay in line. To keep people in line you need a meme like, "civilization is essential for life". If this is drummed into the heads of people, of course we would think there is no escaping civilization.
If we began to accept civilization as one way of living; and not the only way of living we can make living better. Or as so the book explains. People who object to this are people afraid, and completly brain washed by societies memes.
Like Marx explains, a man is not truly free minded until civilization is destroyed. Daniel explains that a man is not truly free minded until memes are destroyed. Some might say, "why live without society it brings us the luxuries we have". But in reading the book you might think twice about your luxuries and for the first time glance at the hungry man next to you. Is a civilization worth the thirst of thousands of children. I would think not. Of course you can juggle both, right? Time after time we tell ourselves this, and time after time what answer do we get, no. To get a different answer we need to run in a different mind set. Daniel Quinn explains, the mind set that we are given is the river that we flow in. to flow down a different stream we need to erase memes that are crucial for an obedient river that stays in one flowing path.
Reading the book won't get you out of the continuous river, but it will acknowledge its ways. Making it knowledgeable to you might help you avoid it, and stop you from teaching it to your children. Therefore your children we'll be free minded and will make their own decisions.
A world with nature and no society is hard to comprehend for us. To other cultures who decided to try societies it wasn't that deep, infact it was right across the street. They had a clear view on what life outside civilization was like. The decision between civilization and freedom was a clear one to make without memes getting in the way. And most rookie civilizations chose the free life. Of course they "vanished", but they did live outside of chains.
That's what I got from the book. When you read it you might have a completely different perspective on life afterwards. You might completely disagree with him. At least you have the right away; and don't have to live a life in ignorance of what could have been or what could be.