I’ve framed many answers to your second question, basically saying that there are bound to be people who are completely resistant to my ideas, and you’ll simply waste your time trying to win them over.

But there are, fortunately, a great many people who are open to what I’m saying, who are eager to embrace something that makes better sense to them than Mother Culture’s traditional teachings (just as you were). If you think of this group as a subculture of Taker culture, then the population of this subculture is growing explosively–much more rapidly than the population of Taker culture–from, let us say, twenty thousand in 1992 (the year Ishmael came out) to two or three million in 2002.

In other words, this population has been doubling almost every year (in comparison with Taker culture in general, which is doubling every fifty or sixty years). This means that our representation within Taker culture is growing rapidly, and if it were to continue to grow at this rate, then it would be complete in less than two decades. That’s a big “if,” of course, but it’s nonetheless true that our representation within Take culture IS growing rapidly, and this should be taken as a definite cause for hope.

As for the most “closed-minded individuals” you speak of, you’ll find their closed-mindedness diminishing as the culture around them changes (a well-observed sociological effect); the need to fit in with the people around them will influence them more strongly than any argument you might make to them.

 

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