Many, many people misunderstand parts of Quinn's ideas. I constantly hear perfectly intelligent people who've read his books say, "I'm so ashamed of what the human race has done!" and "But how are we going to give up all our technology?" and "But I don't want to become a hunter-gatherer!" and "We need to take better care of the Earth." I believe all these things represent significant misunderstanding of what Quinn is trying to say. I also believe there's a good reason for these misunderstandings. People in our culture stumble upon certain ideas again and again, and whether we believe them or not, we grow accustomed to hearing them and expect them even where they are nowhere to be found. For instance, when Quinn says, "Our culture is destroying the world," people hear, "Humanity is destroying the world," simply because this is what they have always been told. When a cultural cliché like this one corresponds with a misconception, I've added it in parentheses.

• We will probably never destroy either the physical planet or all life that lives on it. What we will destroy, by attacking all life on earth, is ourselves.
  ("Save the planet! All life on earth is in danger.")

• The problem is not just that we are doing something morally wrong to the world, but that we are threatening our own survival.
  ("Humans are clumsy, short-sighted, greedy, and destructive, and we are destroying Mother Earth.")

• Humans are not the problem. Civilization, a single culture that is trying to take over the world, is the problem.
  ("We are humanity. Anyone unlike us is some sort of irrelevancy or fossil, not really human. Our society doesn't work very well and is destroying the world. Therefore, humanity must be deeply flawed. Humans are clumsy, short-sighted, greedy, and destructive.")

• Technology is not the problem. All humans have technology, even if it's sticks and stones. ("Technology is the problem! We have too much technology and too little understanding of it and too little wisdom to know what to do with it. Technology is corrupting our lives, invading our homes, and alienating us from the world. And it's making us more and more clumsy, short-sighted, greedy, and destructive." Or, alternatively: "The progress of technology is the progress of our society, and therefore of humanity. Anyone who questions the progress of our society and the value of some of its technology must be some sort of perverse Luddite longing for the nonexistent good old days.")

• Advanced technology is not the root problem. The root problem is that our culture is trying to take over the world.

• We don't have to give up technology. We do have to change the way we live in order to survive.
  ("Humans are clumsy, short-sighted, greedy, and destructive. We have to become better. We have to deny our human nature in order to become better. We need to give up our luxuries and our precious technologies for the sake of the world.")

• Agriculture is not the problem. Totalitarian agriculture is the kind our civilization uses to take over the world, and it is a problem.

• You don't necessarily have to be a genius, a politician, a famous person, or an environmentalist to help save the world.
  ("What can you do? You're only one person." "What can I do? I'm only one person, out of six billion and counting." "Young people are often idealistic and enthusiastic, but they'll grow out of it after they've had a taste of the real world.")

• Leavers, or indigenous peoples, are not better than us or fundamentally different from us. They simply leave the rule of the world to the gods, instead of taking it in their own hands.
  ("Ordinary humans are ... well, you know -- flawed. As we know all too well, they don't normally have any way of living that works for them -- let alone one that isn't harmful to the world. People who have a way of living that is both must be saintlike: wise, thoughtful, generous, and peaceful.")

• Leavers are not necessarily hunter-gatherers. Some of them farm or garden. The distinction between Takers and Leavers is not a distinction between agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers. It is a distinction (in part) between people who use agriculture as one of their tools to conquer and rule the world, and people who use agriculture and other methods of obtaining food to make a living.

• Leavers are not just things of the past. A few indigenous cultures, like the Bushmen, still exist today. Many more were destroyed or assimilated recently, like many of the American Indians, and left records behind.
  ("We are humanity. The indigenous cultures of the world are just vestiges, relics of another age, oddities to be viewed in museums of natural history or read about in National Geographic. They merely represent the first chapter in the book of which we are chapter two.")

• Programs and laws to protect the environment, control the population, and protect indigenous peoples are not unnecessary or wrong; they just aren't enough. But if enough people have a new worldview that does not involve taking over the world, it might work.