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# 2019-11-20 - Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
I no longer recall who recommended this book to me, but i enjoyed it
very much. I like that from the very beginning it challenges the
notion of human supremacy. I like that it covers the notion of
cultural blind spots, and gives a step-by-step process to unpack
them. I like that it acknowledges the power of mythological stories,
and the idea that we could critically examine our own mythos.
I disagree that this book advocates returning to a nomadic lifestyle.
What this book advocates is taking responsibility for what we are
doing, and giving some scrutiny to the consequences of the stories
that we enact.
My notes follow below.
# Chapter 3
"When man finally appeared, creation came to an end, because its
objective had been reached. There was nothing left to create."
This brings to mind John Muir's Travels In Alaska. He watched
natural forces at work and expressed the thought that the world is
still in the process of being created. This contradicts the mostly
unspoken belief that we've already discovered the major things that
need to be discovered and that we mostly have the world all figured
out.
"Standing here, with facts so fresh and telling and held up so
vividly before us, every seeing observer, not to say geologist, must
readily apprehend the earth-sculpturing, landscape-making action of
flowing ice. And here, too, one learns that the world, though made,
is yet being made; and that this is still the morning of creation..."
--John Muir
# Chapter 4
He wrinkled his forehead thoughtfully for a moment, before saying:
"What's WRONG with you then?"
He seemed so genuinely concerned that i had to smile.
"All frozen inside," i told him. "An iceberg."
He shook his head, sorry for me.
[This sounds judgmental to me. The judgment is that the protagonist
is morally flawed because his way of being is inferior. Presumably,
the right way to be is unguarded and to demonstrate emotion.]
I'm saying that the price you've paid is not the price of becoming
human. It's not even the price of having the things you just
mentioned. [Modern technological conveniences.] It's the price of
enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world.
"The world was made for man to conquer and rule, and under human rule
it was meant to become a paradise, but tragically, man was born
flawed, and so his paradise has always been spoiled by his
shortcomings. Man might have been able to do something about his
flaws if he knew how he ought to live, but he doesn't--and he never
will, because no knowledge about that is obtainable."
This is a story of helplessness and futility, in which there is
literally nothing to be done. [IOW, we learned to give up our power.]
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to
enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in
accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at
odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the
world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the
world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to
enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer
it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding
to death at their feet, as the world is now.
In the wild, animals ... never hunt their competitors down just to
make them dead. What they hunt, they eat.
[I've seen otherwise.]
In the community of life, you may compete but you may not wage war.
This law promotes diversity. Diversity is a survival factor for the
community itself.
[In chapter 9, Ishmael asserts that the agricultural revolution that
began ten thousand years ago is still happening and it is not done
yet.]
The knowledge of good and evil is fundamentally the knowledge the
rulers of the world must exercise, because every single thing they do
is good for some but evil for others.
The disaster occurred when, ten thousand years ago, people of your
culture said, "We're as wise as the gods and can rule the world as
well as they." When they took into their own hands the power of life
and death over the world, their doom was assured.
I pointed to my own fair or maggot-colored face. [No self-loathing
at all there! (sarcasm)]
Man was as well adapted for life on this planet as any other species,
and the idea that he lived on the knife-edge of survival is simply
biological nonsense. As an omnivore, his dietary range is immense.
Thousands of species will go hungry before he does. His intellect
and dexterity enable him to live comfortably in conditions that would
utterly defeat any other primate.
Far from scrabbling endlessly and desperately for food, [primitive
cultures] are among the best-fed people on earth, and they manage
this with only two or three hours a day of what you would call
work--which makes them among the most leisured people on earth as
well.
[The book includes a fun role-playing exercise where Ishmael pretends
to be a person from a primitive culture who is asking a modern person
to explain the way people are meant to live.]
"You should trust YOURSELVES with your lives. [Not the gods.] That's
the human way to live."
"You have nothing. [living as a primitive person] You live without
security, without comfort, without opportunity.
* * *
"What happens to people--to creatures in general--who live in the
hands of the gods?"
"... They evolve." ... because evolution takes place in the general
community of life.
[People] need more than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the
world and of themselves that inspires them.
[People from primitive cultures] are the endangered species most
critical to the world--not because they're humans, but because they
alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is no one right
way to live. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea
that you know who should live and who should die on this planet.
It's not about hunting and gathering, it's about letting the rest of
the community [of life] live--and agriculturalists can do that as
well as hunter-gatherers.
... what is crucial to your survival as a race [species] is not the
redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the
destruction of the prison itself.
author: Quinn, Daniel
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel)
LOC: PS3567.U338 I8
tags: book,fiction,philosophy
title: Ishmael
# Tags
book
fiction
philosophy
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