If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways Read Online Free PDF Page B

yields mean bigger profits, and I have to assume that's what they're thinking about.
    Daniel . In 1960 there were three billion of us. Over the next forty years, while we continuously increased food production to feed the starving millions, the starving millions just went on starving. So where was that extra food going?
    Elaine . It was going into growing our population.
    Daniel . In forty years our population doubled to six billion. So have we demolished the idea that we increase food production every year in order to feed the starving millions?
    Elaine . Yes, as far as I'm concerned. What puzzles me is...
    Daniel . Yes?
    Elaine . It seems almost unbelievable that when we talk about increasing food production to feed the starving millions, everyone just nods as if it makes perfect sense.
    Daniel . Didn't it make sense to you?
    Elaine . Yes, I guess I have to say it did.
    Daniel . Then where's the puzzle?
    Elaine . To be honest, I'm not quite sure.
    Daniel . Or perhaps you're not quite ready to articulate it.
    Elaine . Yes, it could be that.
    Daniel . Let's move on to something simpler... In Ishmael I distinguished our tribal ancestors and their present-day cultural descendants from ourselves —
    Elaine . You called them Leavers and us Takers.
    Daniel . Yes... If I were doing it again, I wouldn't have used those terms.
    Elaine . Why is that?
    Daniel . Because far too many readers translated these terms into Good People and Bad People. People imagined that if their hearts were in the right place, they had become Leavers. Someone once wrote to me that Governor Jerry Brown of California was a Leaver and his opponent was a Taker.
    Elaine . I noticed that you don't seem to be using the terms now.
    Daniel . No... In Ishmael it was simpler to say "Leavers" than "our tribal ancestors and their present-day cultural descendants," but I wish now that I'd just settled for "tribal peoples."
    Elaine . I see. All the same, it did serve a purpose, at least for me.
    Daniel . Go on.
    Elaine . It distinguished "them" from "us" in a very... fundamental way. Leavers are those who leave their lives in the hands of the gods, and Takers are those who take their lives into their own hands. Leavers didn't worry about where their next meal was coming from, because they knew that the food the gods left for them was never going to go away. But that wasn't good enough for the Takers. They wanted to take control of their own food supply and not depend on the generosity of the gods.
    Daniel . Yes, the names themselves were apt enough, but many readers tended to read them as character descriptors. The essential difference between "them" and "us" is not in our hearts or in our attitudes but in the way we live.
    Elaine . Yes, I know that.
    Daniel . As I described them, tribal peoples — or Leavers — live in the hands of the gods, meaning that they take what the gods send. In good times they live well and have an easy time of it. In bad times they live less well and have to put more effort into staying alive. But there was never any necessity to sit in one spot and starve to death. If there wasn't much food right where they were, they went somewhere else, where was likely to be more, and it was all free for the taking. Famines occur among settled, agricultural peoples. They're stuck in their own stricken area and can't forage for food in their neighbors' territories, because the food there is definitely not free for the taking.
    Elaine . Yes, I see.
    Daniel . But we're getting off the track here. I'm not trying to recapitulate what I've already written. I just needed to lay the basis for one question I received that I wanted you to take a crack at.
    Elaine . Okay.
    Daniel . A woman wrote that, on the basis of what I'd written about living in the hands of the gods, did I justify the practice of medicine and if so, how.
    Elaine . Uh-huh.
    Daniel . So, thinking like a Martian anthropologist, how do you answer this question?
    Elaine [ after some thought ]. It