Image Via flickr User zzzack

Daniel Quinn, author of ten books, is best known for his 1992 novel Ishmael. The book has been credited with helping to change the multi-billion-dollar corporation Interface Inc., as well as providing inspiration for Pearl Jam’s Yield album and the movie Instinct. Ishmael was awarded the 1991 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, a $500,000 prize created by Ted Turner to encourage authors to produce works of fiction offering creative solutions to global problems—not bad for a book about a half-ton silverback gorilla leading a single pupil down a path to save the planet. Quinn’s books have changed the way thousands see the world. Now lets find out how he sees the limits we push.

JG:
Do you have a picture in mind of what a sustainable economy would look like?

DQ:
No, I’m afraid I don’t. To me, this is rather like asking someone in the Middle Ages what a representational government would look like. One paradigm can’t predict what the next is going to be like in any detail or with any authority. What I’ve said in Ishmael is that we’re captives of a civilization that is devouring the world. The reason we’re captives is that we must all make a living and, at this point, there is no way to make a living except by belonging to this world-devouring economic system. That is what makes us prisoners. There are people who run off to the hills and get themselves a few acres of land to live off, growing their own food, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t work for six billion people. In Beyond Civilization I try to describe a crack in the walls of the prison that would enable people to make a living in a slightly different way that makes us less a prisoner of this civilization; I called it the New Tribal Revolution. I gave several examples of businesses that were organized tribally as opposed to conventionally.

JG:
How do you define the tribally based workplace?