pai mei

I have just read this book, my way of thinking was similar to what I have read here, but Daniel Quinn knows how to explain it better, so now I can formulate myself better

The book says that we are all enacting a story, and that we would stop if we would be given a different one to enact. German people under Hitler were "enacting" their story.
It also separates people into "leavers" and "takers". The "takers" are us, and the "leavers" are all the other cultures on earth, which we destroy everywhere we find them. "Culture" does not mean some nice dances and costumes. It means everything, and our culture is that of the "rulers and owners of Everything" and this has engulfed the entire world with some small exceptions

Their story always starts with the beginning of the universe, ours starts only 10000 years ago, and "We we born to be farmers and rule the Earth !". What was before that ? We call it "prehistory" , not important

We have our cultural myth that says this world was made for us to conquer and rule, and that is the story we are enacting. Belief in God or not, we do agree that we rule the world and it does not matter if all other species die, our survival is what matters.

Some say : "we were smarter than all the others,it was natural selection !". It is not so, nature promotes diversity, a system with a million species can survive almost anything, a system with only a few is very fragile. And we with all our technology are no immune to this
But it takes an entire book to explain properly

Some quotes :

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snowy

I read the first five pages. I couldn't get into it. I still haven't finished it. I'm not sure I ever will. Perhaps this thread will convince me otherwise.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

pai mei

The book is written as a discussion between a teacher and a student, just read until the character finds the teacher and there the book starts

About what we are doing to the planet Daniel Quinn makes a comparison in the movie "Life at the end of an empire" : it's like we live in a very tall building, and each day we take bricks from the lower floors and add them to the top, to raise the building. Not only we destroy our home, but we destroy human nature itself.

We are not "flawed" as humans, the way religions want us to believe. Is a tiger or a fish, or any other creature flawed ? But they don't get to chose their story. The story that we are enacting is flawed. Nothing is wrong with us. German people under Hitler were "enacting" their story of the "Aryan master race"

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noahfor

I'm currently reading it, and my Dad read it to me when I was younger. It probably had some effect on the way I think, but I can't remember anything about it from when he read it to me. I don't really have anything to say about it at the moment. I do recommend it, and if you've only read the first five pages then you haven't really started it, as was already mentioned.

pai mei

Daniel Quinn in "Beyond Civilization"

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levite

Can I just say that, while I think Quinn sometimes has interesting ways of translating non-Western thought to Western idiom, I find his books extremely problematic.

IMO, his notion of "givers" and "takers" being rooted in an original divide between herders and agrarians is fallacious. There seems little support for such a notion. He misses some key exceptions to his descriptions of the evolving city life in the Ancient Near East, and will inevitably gloss over the social issues of non-Western cultures in order to favor critiques of Western culture.

Quinn is a Romantic in the classical sense of the term: he romanticizes and idealizes the distant past, and presumes a pristine, pastoral existence for early humans. He seems to favor a social devolution away from industry and commerce as a solution to the problems presented by industrial society, rather than a forward movement of seeking solutions in the evolution of what we are. He, who criticizes Western history for taking the short view, and beginning only 10,000 years ago or so, himself takes the short view by assuming that creatures that took hundreds of thousands of years to evolve complex reasoning skills and the innovative abilities to develop beyond mere subsistence, ought to have somehow been able to master territorialism, power dynamics, technology, and philosophy within an increasingly complex understanding of the universe much better in 10,000 years than we have been able to do. That seems unreasonable to me. It also seems unreasonable to me to decide that 10,000 years of social and technical evolution just haven't worked out, and we'd be better off without them.

Societies differ; they decide on different rules, different priorities, and they make different trade-offs. None are fixed: rather, all evolve. But all lasting move forward or they stultify and ossify, at which point they die. For Western society to evolve, it must learn to combine its strengths-- innovation, technology, communication, curiosity-- with the needed strengths of various other cultures-- respect for nature, care for the clan, spiritual awareness. But it must be an evolving combination, not an attempted retrogression into something that may never have been.

In terms of spiritual philosophy, Quinn does seem to be attempting to import the Buddhist and Jainist notions of releasing attachment to things of the world around us; a problematic philosophy, in that it can easily lead to radical asceticism, which I don't believe is healthy; also, I don't believe Quinn is transferring the concepts well. I think he is taking the notion of releasing attachments to an extreme: it's good not to be a materialist, no question. But why should we not embrace our love of disseminating information, for example? Printing technology, computer and net technology all seem difficult to argue against unless you just don't like non-agrarian/pastoral societies. And that's an aesthetic choice.

This is all in addition to the fact that in his critiques of Western religion and philosophy, he does not always appear to have done enough reading. He presents nearly his entire critique of Western religion and philosophy based on Christianity and Christian philosophers. Little thought, if any, is paid to Judaism and Jewish philosophers (and what seems to be mentioned, obliquely and circumlocuitously, is often misquoted or misunderstood), and as far as I could tell, none to Islam and Muslim philosophers. That is a major, major flaw, not only because Western society is not monolithic-- some Western societies have very different ideas and rules than others-- but because much Christian thought is adapted from Jewish and Muslim thought, and if one has paid no heed to the latter, it is hard to believe one has understood the former well enough to critique it so thoroughly. The other problem with this is that his understanding of Western history and society is that of a Christian whose "mind has been opened" by exposure to Asian philosophy. But who is to say that all the problems of Western society come from not embracing enough Asian concepts? Perhaps Quinn's Christian problems could be solved by Jewish or Muslim concepts.

Finally, Quinn suffers from universalizing. Not just universalizing certain perspectives, but from assuming that the problems of the world all have an identical, common root, and thus can be solved by more or less identical, common solutions. Despite the depth and breadth and length of his works, he is, ultimately not complex enough in his thinking to permit multiple causes to many problems, each of which might be solved, ameliorated, or reconciled by perhaps several different approaches.

IMO, one is better off disregarding Quinn and simply educating oneself thoroughly in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

pai mei

From "Ishmael" :

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915
Levite you say things are too complex, and need many solutions ? There is one single solution to all the problems of today. Just that we cannot apply it right now , we need to crash and burn as a civilization first. The story above and in the bible is about Cain the agriculture human killing Abel the hunter gatherer. And it is written from a hunter gatherer perspective who sees the slaves working the fields as cursed. And indeed they are cursed to live a life of hard work chasing shiny stuff, separate themselves from the others, competing among them, and gathering the shiny objects , until they become each a Gollum inside his cave.

http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/16...uddhahood.html

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pai mei

“As the flight begins, all is well. Our would–be airman has been pushed off the edge of the cliff and is pedaling away, and the wings of his craft are flapping like crazy. He’s feeling wonderful, ecstatic. He’s experiencing the freedom of the air. What he doesn’t realize, however, is that this craft is aerodynamically incapable of flight. It simply isn’t in compliance with the laws that make flight possible—but he would laugh if you told him this, He’s never heard of such laws, knows nothing about them. He would point at those flapping wings and say, ‘See? Just like a bird!’ Nevertheless, whatever he thinks, he’s not in flight. He’s an unsupported object falling toward the center of the earth. He’s not in flight, he’s in free fall. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes.”

“Fortunately—or, rather, unfortunately for our airman—he chose a very high cliff to launch his craft from. His disillusionment is a long way off in time and space. There he is in free fall, feeling wonderful and congratulating himself on his triumph. He’s like the man in the joke who jumps out of a ninetieth–floor window on a bet. As he passes the tenth floor, he says to himself, ‘Well, so far so good!’

“There he is in free fall, experiencing the exhilaration of what he takes to be flight. From his great height he can see for miles around, and one thing he sees puzzles him: The floor of the valley is dotted with craft just like his—not crashed, simply abandoned. ‘Why,’ he wonders, ‘aren’t these craft in the air instead of sitting on the ground? What sort of fools would abandon their aircraft when they could be enjoying the freedom of the air?’ Ah well, the behavioral quirks of less talented, earthbound mortals are none of his concern. However, looking down into the valley has brought something else to his attention. He doesn’t seem to be maintaining his altitude. In fact, the earth seems to be rising up toward him. Well, he’s not very worried about that. After all, his flight has been a complete success up to now, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t go on being a success. He just has to pedal a little harder, that’s all.

“So far so good. He thinks with amusement of those who predicted that his flight would end in disaster, broken bones, and death. Here he is, he’s come all this way, and he hasn’t even gotten a bruise, much less a broken bone. But then he looks down again, and what he sees really disturbs him. The law of gravity is catching up to him at the rate of thirty–two feet per second per second—at an accelerating rate. The ground is now rushing up toward him in an alarming way. He’s disturbed but far from desperate. ‘My craft has brought me this far in safety,’ he tells himself. ‘I just have to keep going.’ And so he starts pedaling with all his might. Which of course does him no good at all, because his craft simply isn’t in accord with the laws of aerodynamics. Even if he had the power of a thousand men in his legs—ten thousand, a million—that craft is not going to achieve flight. That craft is doomed—and so is he unless he abandons it.”

“Right. I see what you’re saying, but I don’t see the connection with what we’re talking about here.”

Ishmael nodded. “Here is the connection. Ten thousand years ago, the people of your culture embarked on a similar flight: a civilizational flight. Their craft wasn’t designed according to any theory at all. Like our imaginary airman, they were totally unaware that there is a law that must be complied with in order to achieve civilizational flight. They didn’t even wonder about it. They wanted the freedom of the air, and so they pushed off in the first contraption that came to hand: the Taker Thunderbolt.

“At first all was well. In fact, all was terrific. The Takers were pedaling away and the wings of their craft were flapping beautifully. They felt wonderful, exhilarated. They were experiencing the freedom of the air: freedom from restraints that bind and limit the rest of the biological community. And with that freedom came marvels—all the things you mentioned the other day: urbanization, technology, literacy, mathematics, science.

“Their flight could never end, it could only go on becoming more and more exciting. They couldn’t know, couldn’t even have guessed that, like our hapless airman, they were in the air but not in flight. They were in free fall, because their craft was simply not in compliance with the law that makes flight possible. But their disillusionment is far away in the future, and so they’re pedaling away and having a wonderful time. Like our airman, they see strange sights in the course of their fall. They see the remains of craft very like their own—not destroyed, merely abandoned—by the Maya, by the Hohokam, by the Anasazi, by the peoples of the Hopewell cult, to mention only a few
of those found here in the New World. ‘Why,’ they wonder, ‘are these craft on the ground instead of in the air? Why would any people prefer to be earthbound when they could have the freedom of the air, as we do?’ It’s beyond comprehension, an unfathomable mystery.

“Ah well, the vagaries of such foolish people are nothing to the Takers. They’re pedaling away and having a wonderful time. They’re not going to abandon their craft. They’re going to enjoy the freedom of the air forever. But alas, a law is catching up to them. They don’t know such a law even exists, but this ignorance affords them no protection from its effects. This is a law as unforgiving as the law of gravity, and it’s catching up to them in exactly the same way the law of gravity caught up to our airman: at an accelerating rate.

“Some gloomy nineteenth–century thinkers, like Robert Wallace and Thomas Robert Malthus, look down. A thousand years before, even five hundred years before, they would probably have noticed nothing. But now what they see alarms them. It’s as though the ground is rushing up to meet them—as though they are going to crash. They do some figuring and say, ‘If we go on this way, we’re going to be in big trouble in the not–too–distant future.’ The other Takers shrug their predictions off. ‘We’ve come all this enormous way and haven’t even received so much as a scratch. It’s true the ground seems to be rising up to meet us, but that just means we’ll have to pedal a little harder. Not to worry.’ Nevertheless, just as was predicted, famine soon becomes a routine condition of life in many parts of the Taker Thunderbolt—and the Takers have to pedal even harder and more efficiently than before. But oddly enough, the harder and more efficiently they pedal, the worse conditions become. Very strange. Peter Farb calls it a paradox: ‘Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population.’ ‘Never mind,’ the Takers said. ‘We’ll just have to put some people pedaling away on a reliable method of birth control. Then the Taker Thunderbolt will fly forever.’

“But such simple answers aren’t enough to reassure the people of your culture nowadays. Everyone is looking down, and it’s obvious that the ground is rushing up toward you—and rushing up faster every year. Basic ecological and planetary systems are being impacted by the Taker Thunderbolt, and that impact increases in intensity every year. Basic, irreplaceable resources are being devoured every year—and they’re being devoured more greedily every year. Whole species are disappearing as a result of your encroachment—and they’re disappearing in greater numbers every year. Pessimists—or it may be that they’re realists—look down and say, ‘Well, the crash may be twenty years off or maybe as much as fifty years off. Actually it could happen anytime. There’s no way to be sure.’ But of course there are optimists as well, who say, ‘We must have faith in our craft. After all, it has brought us
this far in safety. What’s ahead isn’t doom, it’s just a little hump that we can clear if we all just pedal a little harder. Then we’ll soar into a glorious, endless future, and the Taker Thunderbolt will take us to the stars and we’ll conquer the universe itself.’ But your craft isn’t going to save you. Quite the contrary, it’s your craft that’s carrying you toward catastrophe. Five billion of you pedaling away—or ten billion or twenty billion—can’t make it fly. It’s been in free fall from the beginning, and that fall is about to end.” At last I had something of my own to add to this.

“The worst part of it is this,” I said, “that the survivors, if there are any, will immediately set about doing it all over again, exactly the same way.”

Daniel Quinn - Ishmael (English) - Fiction, Books, and Daniel

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Mantus

I’m deeply repelled by the ideas this author presents - he doesn’t give human kind enough credit.

I don’t believe in a separation between civilization and nature. Human civilization is part of nature. I find it ironic that people who are out to save this planet often forget this fact. There is no “wholesome” holistic path. The towers of Three Mile Island are natural to this planet as an anthill.

There is also this notion that at some point human beings were pure until (culture, society, religion, language, etc.) corrupted us. We’ll never find such transitions. We are the product of history.

Finally there is much judgment in his work without alternatives. Such mantras are easy to fall prey too because they cater to our insecurities. We hear what we want. This is a prime example of taking a metaphor too far. In the end his attempt to replace one "story" with another is propagating the very thing he initially set out to dispel.

Sadly, I can’t debate opinion. I can only offer my own opinions in return.

levite

Well, needless to say, I agree with Mantus. In addition to my previous critiques of Quinn-- and, by the way, the extensive further quoting of Quinn has not in any way answered those critiques-- I have to note that he offers no practical alternatives save for-- as Pai Mei notes-- essentially the radical dismantling of modern culture; which is not only impractical, it is, in my belief, deeply counterproductive. One does not find solutions to problems by running away from them. Progress is, by definition, always a forward motion, and Quinn's anarchic luddism is nothing but moving backward. The notion that the human race must cease its forward motion and do its best to regress into what we were ten thousand years ago is simply unacceptable.

As for Quinn's interpretation of the Cain/Abel story, that might be his interpretation, but it certainly isn't one of mine. And it is, I might add, a deeply un-Jewish idea that there is such a thing as a "one" correct or right reading of a Bible verse. And as I am Jewish, I resist the idea that Quinn's reading is any better than anyone else's-- I also don't see relevance for me, personally, in the linked quote you attach, since I didn't agree with those sentiments when Jesus said them, the fact that a Zen master likes them, or that Quinn might like them, don't do much for me either.

I am a teacher. I spend my life teaching sacred text and spiritual philosophy to people, mostly high school kids. My wife is a teacher and chaplain, and spends her life teaching people--mostly college and graduate students-- sacred text and compassionate spiritual healing and ministering to the sick. Your depiction of a life spent in "hard work chasing shiny stuff, separating themselves from the others, competing among them, and gathering the shiny objects" bears no resemblance to my life, or my wife's, or the lives of many if not most of our friends. Therefore, it seems patently obvious to me that it is eminently possible to live in modern society without devolving into slavering materialists obsessed with nothing but masturbatory blind acquisition.

That Quinn believes we have exhausted all the possibilities of modern society, and that all Western culture is inherently unsalvageable is, to me, ridiculous and offensive, especially considering that he does not appear to even be an expert in Christian and secular culture, let alone the other cultures that make up Western society.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

pai mei

There is only one culture - capitalism.
Look at a video game. An RPG. There you find some "organizations" you can join. How do they behave ? Like tribes, mafia. Maybe capitalist on the outside but inside once you are one of them, it's like a tribe, a family.

See my other thread, about how I see a new world (order ? ) :
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/general...ilization.html

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Xephani

I'm interested to discuss the implications of Quinn's work. He doesn't in fact suggest that we go back to a hunter gatherer lifestyle - but that we think about the way our lives are running now and innovate new ways based on what worked in old ways, to get our needs met without further distruction of our natural habitat.

MrFriendly

While I hated the writing style of the book I did really enjoy exploring the concepts Quinn was discussing.

His take on the old testament was interesting. And while there is a lot credit to Levite's position, there was one statement in the book that really struck me. Somewhere along the lines we forgot how to live our lives.

Now I know I can be easily disputed on that one, but it was an idea I found particularly applicable to myself, and idea that is particularly applicable to a lot of people I know. Perhaps it's just something specific to antipodean culture at the moment.

Modern society is facing a number of problems that are complex with complex origins and have no silver bullet solution. But one thing we need to do more of in our society is to question if we're really any happier. Mental illness is something that is starting to get much worse where I live. People don't feel good about themselves, we worry too much, and we feel like we have no control over our on lives any more. Perhaps we've always had these problems and the way we are now is no different to the way we've always been. Perhaps there's an industry trying to make us think we feel like shit so we spend money to make ourselves feel better.

As Levite said, rolling back change isn't going to get us anywhere, it's unworkable. We have to progress. But keep in mind, even if near destroy ourselves in the process and learn some very hard lessons and have to move forward from square one again, that's still a progression, it's still part of an evolutionary process.

Human biology isn't going to move forward, we simply don't need to, the new evolution is ideas. The strongest ideas will survive, the weakest ideas will not. But bit by bit, as we continue to advance at such a rapid pace, we'll figure out what will work and what doesn't.

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Leaver

Hello forum! This is my first post here. Hope there will be more to come.

I read Ishmael about 10 years ago and it had a deep impact on my thinking. One of the many struggles for me has been to try to get a handle on the actual worldview that Quinn is talking about in Ishmael. One struggle has been that he has chosen to call it "mother culture" and that kinda deflected a bit from my thinking that this is all a one single culture. But Im considering the possibility that the civilization is not a one single culture, but two or three cultures that are in a headlock with eachother. The main stream of its intellectual foundation comes from the Abrahamic religion that has branched out from Judaism to incorporate and subvert the "heathen" cultures through Christianity and Islam.

The destiny of all these three religions is to have a one world government. Christianity wants a one world government under Jesus son of Jehova, Islam wants a one world government under al'Mahid wich is the Muslim name for the Messiah and the Jews want a one world government under their messiah.

So the argument that is passed around between these three religions is about who is that future one world dictator and who is gonna be his high priests? The Christians, the Jews or the Muslims?

I dont think neither the Christians nor the Muslims understand what this means and what it would imply. For the Jews it has been their mission for a long time. Judaism was formed around the concept of a messiah in the Babylonian era. A future king that would come to save the jews and establish world peace. The Muslims disagree and think that they are the chosen people, and the Christians think that the Jews are the synagoge of satan and that the Christians are the chosen people.

What a mess this is... but there is a logical explanation for all of it.

A fundamental aspect of civilization is that people living in it are prisoners. But what are people prisoners of? Its true they are imprisoned by the mythology of civilization, and its also true that they are imprisoned by the systems that are built on this mythology. So what are these systems that imprison people and force them to play along wether they like it or not? Im gonna get into some nitty gritty stuff here so please bear with me.

The control systems of civilization are the "institutions". The legal institutions, the financial institutions, the religious institutions, the job institutions and the military institutions.

The financial and legal institutions regulate the job and military institutions and the religious institution is what forms the philosophical backbone for them. The amazing feat of religion is that it has managed to brainwash every population into becoming militant about all these institutions and defending them to the death and thereby also defending their own imprisonment - but unwittingly so, as brainwashed serfs.

Let me give a few examples. The ideology of communism was said by some to help people who were at the bottom of society. The problem according to communism was that society had "classes" that oppressed the underdog. And so the "solution" of communism was to give the workers a right to the means of production.

But if we look at this a little closer, in what way would a serf become more free by having a right to the means of production? If we would compare it with the slaves/workers of egypt who built the pyramids. What difference would it be to drag stones up the pyramid knowing that someone else had the right to the means of making the stones, or knowing that you had the legal right to the means to make them? Youre still doing the same job.

The same kind of paradox happends in the ideology of liberalism. According to liberalism people must constantly defend their liberaty and freedom from oppression and the means to liberate people is through law. But what is freedom? What decides what freedom is and what it isnt? The law. Nothing else can say what freedom is because law is what restricts and punishes on the one hand and allows and sets free on the other hand. So when the liberals are talking about how the law sets them free, ofcource it does! But only if you follow it! If you dont follow it then youre put into prison. In other words, people who live under the law are always under someone elses administrative power and MUST obey that power. Anyone who MUST obey someone else IS a slave.

The trick is to make people defend something that is actually putting them into imprisonment and slavery.

Let me take another example. In the Bible we read that Adam and Eve became condemned to die when they got the knowledge of good and evil. What is that knowledge? Lets put it this way? What kind of knowledge decides what is good and what is evil? The answer is the Law. The law says who are good and who are evil. Christianity is based on the idea that the law is a curse. Everyone who is under the law is accursed. Therefore Jesus willingly died on the cross to pay for the curse and through believing that Jesus will be the future world dictator and Jewish messiah, people will be freed from that curse.

But even if Jesus died to save us from the law, the Christian culture does not seem to exactly avoid the court systems. In fact it defends the custom of law with tooth and nail. According to Christendom, people who do wrong must be punished, period! So far from liberating humanity from the curse of the law, Christianity has instead brough the custom of law and the legal tradition to all corners of the world. So how do Christianity achieve this paradox? Because Christianity says that this world is Satans domain and the liberation will come after you die. But while we are here in this world we must fight the evil powers of Satan.

The trickery continues with Islam. A religion that is supposed to be about peace. The religion may be peaceful but the adherents are in no way peaceful. They are warriors and soldiers of Allah.

The trickery that someone, be it mother culture or someone else, is playing on peoples minds is that it turns everybody into defending their own state of slavehood to the system and administration who controls those systems.

The financial system with money wich was long thought to be a tool for freedom and progress has instead turned into a debt slavery to the owners of debt. The religious system wich was thought to be a liberation from the curse of sin has instead insisted upon sin and made every independant human impulse into an act of rebellion. The job institution wich is supposed to bring progress to society is slowly turning into a mandatory place where you must go to get those "tickets to the club" (money). If you dont go to the working place you become a social outcast and you can only continue to be allowed to exist at all thanks to the social institution that exists to give the members of civilization a sense of generosity.

There is a rule about all games that the house always wins. There are no exceptions to that rule because they house sets the rules. Once you participate in a game, then you will have to be prepared to lose. Only players can lose, the house never loses because the house is not playing the game, it is only setting the stage for the game to take place.

And if we look at the civilization, what better metaphore for its institutions could there be but that its made up of a bunch of games? The game is like a religion for people. Sports and athlete metaphores abound in all professions, inculding the school. The professional game of getting a career and getting ahead and advancing. The schooling game of being dutiful and study hard so that you can earn your degree so you can get into the next game of the professional world. The game of law where you have to obey the contract or being a civilian and if you break that contract you have two more chances before youre out for good, out of the game and into the game of the prisonhouse where you have to play another game of being a convict. The house always wins. Leaving the civilization is therefore not so much about what we do for a living, but about avoiding and leaving the game houses. Because we dont need them just to make a living. We have just had the "luck" of having been born into one of these games and are compelled from all sides to participate. But as the saying goes, what comes around goes around, if you play the game you have to be prepared to lose, but the house wont, the house always wins.

What all game houses do is that they convince people that they can win and live a life of luxury. Some, very few, do win and many of those who win spend their winning buying things from the same house that told them they could win. They can live in comfort for a while in the game house, but once they have spent their earnings they are back into the game again. For the house to make any earnings of its own, wich it does in plenty, is to keep all the players busy and under pressure. If you dont win you have no chance to make it in the house because it is carefully guarded. If you cheat and try to get something without following the rules youre punished and put into another form of debt. While playing the game people are demanded to act "perfect" in that they have to be professional about what they do, we call that professionalism to be "civil" or "civilized".