From Ishmael to They Could Be Saviors: Exposing the Billionaire Myth
How Ishmael Shaped My Writing
When I first read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, I didn’t expect it to unsettle my entire view of the world. The book begins with a man answering an ad from a teacher looking for a student. The teacher turns out to be a gorilla. What follows is a long conversation about human history, culture, and the way we live on this planet.
At first, I was caught by the oddity of the setup. But as the dialogue unfolded, Quinn asked me to believe that civilizations are built on stories. The story we are told every day is that humans are the masters of the earth, entitled to take as much as we want. Ishmael showed me that this story is not a law of nature. It is something we invented, and something we could choose to replace.
Fiction as a Different Kind of Teacher
Quinn could have written a nonfiction book about philosophy or anthropology. Instead, he placed the ideas inside a story. That decision matters. Fiction works differently than an argument or an essay. You can tune out a lecture, but a story lingers. It draws you in emotionally and only later do you realize your perspective has shifted.
While reading Ishmael I understood that fiction could be more than entertainment. A novel can also function as a thought experiment. It can carry difficult truths in a way that slide past resistance. That realization shaped how I approached my own book. I wanted to tell a story that pulls readers forward, while also planting questions that refuse to go away once the last page is turned.
Questioning the Myths We Live By
What Ishmael did for me was make the invisible visible. It exposed the cultural myths that run quietly in the background of our lives. Quinn described modern, industrial civilization as the “Takers.” Their belief system rests on a few assumptions: that human beings stand apart from nature, that we have the right to consume without restraint, and that progress is measured by how much we dominate. Once you recognize those assumptions, you start seeing them everywhere—in advertising, in politics, in the way corporations justify endless growth.
One of the most powerful ideas in the book is Quinn’s argument that the Taker consciousness began when humans started locking up food. Once food was hoarded, power followed. Those who controlled the supply decided who ate and who starved. That shift created hierarchy, inequality, and eventually the myth that scarcity is natural.
This insight connects directly to the world of billionaires. Today there is still abundance on this planet, enough for everyone, yet suffering continues because resources are locked away. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while billions live with too little. The same logic that once justified hoarding grain now justifies hoarding capital.
My novel takes aim at this myth directly. We are told that billionaires represent progress, the embodiment of ambition and intelligence rewarded. That is the story. But what if hoarding vast amounts of money while the planet burns and people suffer is not a sign of achievement but a form of sickness?
From Ishmael to They Could Be Saviors
At the end of Ishmael, the student has to decide how to carry the lesson forward. There are no easy answers, only the weight of responsibility. That stayed with me.
They Could Be Saviors carries that same urgency. It tells a story where concentrated wealth is exposed as the root of ecological collapse, and possibly humanity’s extinction, and where transformation begins only when those with the most power are forced to confront the damage they’ve done.
This is where fiction can matter most. A story can open a space for readers to imagine change in ways policy papers or statistics rarely can. By showing powerful figures broken down, humbled, and challenged to act differently, I wanted to invite readers to imagine that transformation is possible, even for those we think are beyond reach.
Stories matter because they shape what we believe is possible. Ishmael showed me that the future is not fixed. They Could Be Saviors is my attempt to take that lesson forward, and to write a story that refuses to let us accept the myths destroying us.
When I first read Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, I didn’t expect it to unsettle my entire view of the world. The book begins with a man answering an ad from a teacher looking for a student. The teacher turns out to be a gorilla. What follows is a long conversation about human history, culture, and the way we live on this planet.
At first, I was caught by the oddity of the setup. But as the dialogue unfolded, Quinn asked me to believe that civilizations are built on stories. The story we are told every day is that humans are the masters of the earth, entitled to take as much as we want. Ishmael showed me that this story is not a law of nature. It is something we invented, and something we could choose to replace.
Fiction as a Different Kind of Teacher
Quinn could have written a nonfiction book about philosophy or anthropology. Instead, he placed the ideas inside a story. That decision matters. Fiction works differently than an argument or an essay. You can tune out a lecture, but a story lingers. It draws you in emotionally and only later do you realize your perspective has shifted.
While reading Ishmael I understood that fiction could be more than entertainment. A novel can also function as a thought experiment. It can carry difficult truths in a way that slide past resistance. That realization shaped how I approached my own book. I wanted to tell a story that pulls readers forward, while also planting questions that refuse to go away once the last page is turned.
Questioning the Myths We Live By
What Ishmael did for me was make the invisible visible. It exposed the cultural myths that run quietly in the background of our lives. Quinn described modern, industrial civilization as the “Takers.” Their belief system rests on a few assumptions: that human beings stand apart from nature, that we have the right to consume without restraint, and that progress is measured by how much we dominate. Once you recognize those assumptions, you start seeing them everywhere—in advertising, in politics, in the way corporations justify endless growth.
One of the most powerful ideas in the book is Quinn’s argument that the Taker consciousness began when humans started locking up food. Once food was hoarded, power followed. Those who controlled the supply decided who ate and who starved. That shift created hierarchy, inequality, and eventually the myth that scarcity is natural.
This insight connects directly to the world of billionaires. Today there is still abundance on this planet, enough for everyone, yet suffering continues because resources are locked away. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while billions live with too little. The same logic that once justified hoarding grain now justifies hoarding capital.
My novel takes aim at this myth directly. We are told that billionaires represent progress, the embodiment of ambition and intelligence rewarded. That is the story. But what if hoarding vast amounts of money while the planet burns and people suffer is not a sign of achievement but a form of sickness?
From Ishmael to They Could Be Saviors
At the end of Ishmael, the student has to decide how to carry the lesson forward. There are no easy answers, only the weight of responsibility. That stayed with me.
They Could Be Saviors carries that same urgency. It tells a story where concentrated wealth is exposed as the root of ecological collapse, and possibly humanity’s extinction, and where transformation begins only when those with the most power are forced to confront the damage they’ve done.
This is where fiction can matter most. A story can open a space for readers to imagine change in ways policy papers or statistics rarely can. By showing powerful figures broken down, humbled, and challenged to act differently, I wanted to invite readers to imagine that transformation is possible, even for those we think are beyond reach.
Stories matter because they shape what we believe is possible. Ishmael showed me that the future is not fixed. They Could Be Saviors is my attempt to take that lesson forward, and to write a story that refuses to let us accept the myths destroying us.
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