Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

by Neal Stephenson

“If you’re going to try to get people to change the way they think, you have to offer some kind of value proposition, and that’s hard with these people.” “Why these people in particular?” “Well, you know, let’s say, for example, you’re trying to sell a tribe of Bronze Age shepherds on monotheism . . . you begin with, ‘Okay, chaps, there’s lots of different gods, but if you go all in with this one particular god, you’re signing on to a winning squad, you’re going to defeat the other tribes and control more grazing land.’ Which works, because they have an orderly sheep-based economy in which the rules of the game are clear and everyone can agree on basic ideas such as ‘If our animals eat more grass we have a better time of it.’ But those people, the people across the river, are in a very unsettled state and nothing really makes sense to them, and so trying to get them to buy into a coherent worldview of any sort is a mug’s game.” Julian translated: “Bronze Age shepherds may have been just one step above cavemen, but at least they were reality based.” “Very much so,” Enoch agreed.