ou an explanation of how things came to be this way. And this explanation wasn't given to you all at once. You assembled it as a mosaic: from a million bits of information presented to you in various ways by others who share that explanation. Once you know this story, you'll hear it everywhere in your culture, and you'll be astonished that the people around you don't hear it as well but merely take it in. The reason you have the impression of being captive is because there is enormous pressure on you to take place in the story your culture is enacting on the world. This pressure is exerted in all sorts of ways but the message is the same: Those who refuse to take a place do not get fed. Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you'll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you'll be tempted to say to the people around you, 'How can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?' And if you do this, people will look at you oddly and wonder what the devil you're talking about. s- That I can stand. I- If I were to make up two groups of people, the Takers and the Leavers, would it seem like I were setting up one group to the be the bad guys and the other good? s- No, they sound pretty neutral to me. Good, so I will call the people of your culture Takers and the people of other cultures Leavers. Hmm, I have a problem with that. I don't see how you can lump people into groups like that. But that is what you have done in your culture except that you have used a pair of heavily loaded terms instead of these relatively neutral terms. You call yourselves civilized and all the rest primitive. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------s- I still don't know what the story is. I- You will. Don't fret about it. For the moment all you have to know is that t...
