·         ”The world is not going to survive for very much longer as humanity's captive,"

·         "I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity."

·         "This is what prevents them: They're unable to find the bars of the cage."

·         The bars to our cage lie in our own minds that have become colonized by the sheer dominance of  huge corporations over our lives and our communities.

·         To make matters worse, following the homely wisdom that fish discover water last, there is strikingly little awareness of the extent to which our institutions and values are dominated by a cultural paradigm essentially defined by large corporations.

In Daniel Quinn's extraordinary book, Ishmael, which every Green should read, the narrator of the story answers an unusual ad: Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person. 
 
To his surprise, his teacher turns out to be a gorilla named Ishmael. Thus ensues an extended dialogue filled with insights about the human predicament and our assault on the biosphere that only a non-human could have. 
 
In a memorable exchange, Ishmael observes of the young people who were in the vanguard of the struggles of the sixties, many of whom are active Greens today: "They made an ingenuous and disorganized effort to escape from captivity but ultimately failed, because they were unable to find the bars of the cage. If you can't discover what's keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual." 
  
"The world is not going to survive for very much longer as humanity's captive," continues Ishmael. Yet "I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity." 
 
"I agree," responds his pupil. 
 
"What prevents them from doing this?," asks Ishmael. 
 
"I don't know." 

"This is what prevents them: They're unable to find the bars of the cage." The bars to our cage are not the harms corporations do to people and the environment, although they are very great and must be stopped. Nor are the bars to our cage the structures of power created by giant, globe-encircling corporations now larger than most nation states, although those structures must ultimately be replaced by institutions that disperse rather than concentrate wealth and power. 
 
The bars to our cage lie in our own minds that have become colonized by the sheer dominance of huge corporations over our lives and our communities. These corporations increasingly determine not only who will do what kind of work and what we eat and wear but what we think as well. One result of the corporate domination of our culture is the TINA phenomenon: There Is No Alternative. 
 
To make matters worse, following the homely wisdom that fish discover water last, there is strikingly little awareness of the extent to which our institutions and values are dominated by a cultural paradigm essentially defined by large corporations.