Ishmael (Ishmael, #1)

by Daniel Quinn

“I’m telling you this because the people of your culture are in much the same situation. Like the people of Nazi Germany, they are the captives of a story.” I sat there blinking for a while. “I know of no such story,” I told him at last. “You mean you’ve never heard of it?” “That’s right.” Ishmael nodded. “That’s because there’s no need to hear of it. There’s no need to name it or discuss it. Every one of you knows it by heart by the time you’re six or seven. Black and white, male and female, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, American and Russian, Norwegian and Chinese, you all hear it. And you hear it incessantly, because every medium of propaganda, every medium of education pours it out incessantly. And hearing it incessantly, you don’t listen to it. There’s no need to listen to it. It’s always there humming away in the background, so there’s no need to attend to it at all. In fact, you’ll find—at least initially—that it’s hard to attend to it. It’s like the humming of a distant motor that never stops; it becomes a sound that’s no longer heard at all.” “This is very interesting,” I told him. “But it’s also a little hard to believe.” Ishmael’s eyes closed gently in an indulgent smile. “Belief is not required. 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.”