Daniel Quinn: Yes. I think the only way to get people to start saying "No" is to show them how they are saying "Yes," see what they are saying "Yes" to. It's only then they can say "No." It's like the recent general realization that there is really something fundamentally wrong with our economic system, and something that needs to be said "No" to. But before that, it was always "Yes! What's wrong? Everything's cool." But now, in recent decades, people have begun to say "What, no. Maybe not. Maybe this is really corrupt. Maybe it's working for that one percent [1%], but what about the rest of us?" People are now ready to say "No" to that, because they've been made aware of what they've been saying "Yes" to for so long. I've added a paragraph to this essay. (laughs)
Rob Kall: Go ahead. Read it.
Daniel Quinn: No, I mean I just said it.
Rob Kall: Oh. OK, OK. Yes, well, this essay - who knows, maybe it'll turn into your next book. What are you going to do with it?
Daniel Quinn: I am thinking of collecting all of my essays and making this the title essay, making this the title of the book. I'm going to propose it to my agent and see what she thinks, and if she doesn't think it will fly, I'll publish it myself.
Rob Kall: OK. Do you think there's a future for humanity beyond civilization?
Daniel Quinn: I think there is, yes - if we can get beyond civilization. Of course, I wrote a whole book called Beyond Civilization trying to point with a wavering hand toward the possibility of there being something beyond civilization. The people of the Middle Ages couldn't imagine anything beyond what they had. It was the final state of humanity. And then came the Renaissance. They couldn't have predicted the Renaissance, and we can't predict anything beyond us; but there better be something beyond us, or we're finished on this planet.
Rob Kall: Do you think there's a possibility that the next stage beyond civilization could be a spiraling evolution up towards another bottom up way of being?
