The terms come from the writer Daniel Quinn. Leaver cultures, the animist hunter-gatherers who lived sustainably for most of human history, took what they needed and left the rest; Taker culture, which began with totalitarian agriculture and our own domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this, takes everything and leaves nothing. The Great Forgetting is Taker culture’s erasure of that older way of life, and the Great Remembering is our recovering it, knowing that our destructiveness is cultural, not innate, and so can change.
What are Leaver and Taker cultures? #
Two ways of living with the Earth. The writer Daniel Quinn calls pre-agricultural cultures “‘Leaver’ cultures, in that they took what they needed at any given time, and left the rest.” By contrast, “The Taker culture is wholly orientated towards building up a surplus.”1 In Ishmael and The Story of B, Quinn calls the agriculture that emerged in the Neolithic ‘totalitarian agriculture’, and Taker culture is “people who take more than they need and leave nothing (in other words, us).”2
The Leavers were “the animist and shamanic hunter-gatherer people who took only as much as they needed and left the rest. This is the culture the Takers destroyed and replaced.”3 Taker culture began with domestication, from around 11,000 to 10,000 BC, and once it got going it “spread like wildfire and rapidly overran and eradicated any Leaver cultures in its path.”4
Are all indigenous or animist peoples Leavers? #
No. Agriculture brought with it the hierarchical thinking that marks Taker culture. The line mostly follows how a people get their food, not what they believe: “agricultural tribes, even ones that are still animist, show the characteristic problems of the Taker cult, whereas hunter-gatherer tribes show the characteristic positive qualities of the Leaver culture.”5 There is one exception: settled ‘complex hunter-gatherers’, in places where food was so plentiful that people no longer needed to move, and complex social structures grew up. The same goes for shamanic cultures: if they are agricultural, “then shamanic or not, they are still damaged by the hierarchical thinking of the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer and domestication.”6
Why is the phrase “Taker cult” sometimes used? #
Because “culture” makes it sound normal. To call it a “culture” normalises it and lets it off the hook.7 From that point in Finding Your Deep Soul onwards it is called the Taker cult, though “Taker culture”, “Taker society” and “Fallen culture” all appear in the books for the same thing.
What was the Fall? #
The acceleration of Taker culture into what we call civilisation. “The birth of ‘civilisation’ is in reality ‘The Fall’.”8 It “started around 4,000 BC with the emergence of cities, nations, patriarchy, armies, and so on.”9 The term is the psychologist Steve Taylor‘s, from his book The Fall. The break from animism began earlier, with domestication; the Fall is when it speeded up. See How does animism understand power and hierarchy?
These things are not human nature. Genocide, inequality and environmental destruction “are a recent sickness, and not something innate to being human.”10
What is the Great Forgetting? #
Taker culture’s erasure of the time before it. “Why do we call this period of madness and brutality ‘civilisation’ and refer to hunter-gatherers as being the savages? Because the winners really do write history.” Taker culture has to deny that we lived otherwise for hundreds of thousands of years: “This is what Daniel Quinn calls ‘The Great Forgetting’.”11 It rests on “the myth that Taker society is normal and how things have always been.”12
What is the Great Remembering? #
Recovering the knowledge that we have lived well before, and so can again. “The violence and destructiveness of the modern, Taker culture era is cultural, not innate. And that means that it can be changed. Knowing this is ‘the great remembering’.”13 Taker society is only a few thousand years old, a small percentage of human history.14
There are signs of recovery too, what Steve Taylor calls the ‘post-Fallen’ recovery: the abolition of slavery, equal rights, child protection, environmental and animal welfare laws, and more.15 Facing the truth comes first: “We have to get real about our addiction.”16
What does animism have to do with the climate crisis and Anthropocene extinction? #
Animism goes to the root of it. “We are committing inter-species genocide.” Most people are oblivious to it, and “the very reason that most people are so oblivious to this is because of our turning our back on animism.”17 The cause is “our broken, hierarchical relationship with the other Peoples and the Earth.”18 See What is the myth of human supremacy?
How does domestication cut us off from Soul? #
By taming the wild part of us. “We are a self-domesticated animal.”19 “The Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer is the home of our Soul. This part of us is a wild, untamed, free and undomesticated being.” The dominant culture “needed to subjugate, tame and domesticate not just animals and plants but, most importantly, humans”, and “Our wild and free Lower-World Soul is a threat to this.”20 So recovering our Soul means that “We have to re-wild our own selves.”21 See What is soul loss?
