Everyone talks about how difficult it is to become a Leaver, but isn’t it just a matter of adopting a Leaver attitude?

Taker and Leaver are words that refer to lifestyles, not to attitudes. It isn’t an attitude that is responsible for the extinction of dozens of species over day, it’s a lifestyle.

Takers aren’t people with a bad attitude, they’re people who (to use Ishmael’s words) are captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels them to destroy the world. Leavers lived harmlessly in the world (as harmlessly as sharks or rattlesnakes or butterflies) for three million years, but this was because they had a harmless lifestyle not because they had a good attitude.

ID: 17
posted: 1997