Ishmael (Ishmael, #1)

by Daniel Quinn

Would it be best to sit down and be still? And if so, why? The answer came readily enough: Because, if you are still, then you will be better able to hear. Yes, I thought, that is undeniably so.

“And yet you do destroy it, each of you. Each of you contributes daily to the destruction of the world.” “Yes, that’s so.” “Why don’t you stop?” I shrugged. “Frankly, we don’t know how.” “You’re captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.” “Yes, that’s the way it seems.”

“What have people been told that keeps them from becoming excited, that keeps them relatively calm when they view the catastrophic damage they’re inflicting on this planet?” “I don’t know.” “They’ve been told an explaining story. They’ve been given an explanation of how things came to be this way, and this stills their alarm. This explanation covers everything, including the deterioration of the ozone layer, the pollution of the oceans, the destruction of the rain forests, and even human extinction—and it satisfies them. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it pacifies them. They put their shoulders to the wheel during the day, stupefy themselves with drugs or television at night, and try not to think too searchingly about the world they’re leaving their children to cope with.”

“But the world didn’t meekly submit to human rule, did it?” “No.” “No, the world defied him. What man built up, the wind and rain tore down. The fields he cleared for his crops and his villages, the jungle fought to reclaim. The seeds he sowed, the birds snatched away. The shoots he nurtured, the insects nibbled. The harvest he stored, the mice plundered. The animals he bred and fed, the wolves and foxes stole away. The mountains, the rivers, and the oceans stood in their places and would not make way for him. The earthquake, the flood, the hurricane, the blizzard, and the drought would not disappear at his command.” “True.” “The world would not meekly submit to man’s rule, so he had to do what to it?” “What do you mean?” “If the king comes to a city that will not submit to his rule, what does he have to do?” “He has to conquer it.”

“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. It’s the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world.”

tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.”

“There’s 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.”

“And when you’re on the brink of extinction and want to live for a while longer, the laws governing life might conceivably become relevant.” “Yes, I suppose they might.”

“Man lived harmlessly on this planet for some three million years, but the Takers have brought the whole thing to the point of collapse in only five hundred generations. And their explanation for this is what?” “I see what you mean. Their explanation is that something is fundamentally wrong with people.” “Not that you Takers may be doing something wrong but rather that there is something fundamentally wrong with human nature itself.” “That’s right.” “How do you like that explanation now?” “I’m beginning to have my doubts about it.”

“So the law promotes what?” “Diversity.” “Of course. And what’s the good of diversity?” “I don’t know. It’s certainly more…interesting.” “What’s wrong with a global community that consists of nothing but grass, gazelles, and lions? Or a global community that consists of nothing but rice and humans?” I gazed into space for a while. “I’d have to think that a community like that would be ecologically fragile. It would be highly vulnerable. Any change at all in existing conditions, and the whole thing would collapse.” Ishmael nodded. “Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself A community of a hundred million species can survive almost anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature drop of twenty degrees—which would be a lot more devastating than it sounds. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature rise of twenty degrees. But a community of a hundred species or a thousand species has almost no survival value at all.” “True. And diversity is exactly what’s under attack here. Every day dozens of species disappear as a direct result of the way the Takers compete outside the law.”

Offhand I can’t think of any species that is an absolute nomad. There’s always a territory, a feeding ground, a spawning ground, a hive, a nest, a roost, a lair, a den, a hole, a burrow. And there are varying degrees of settlement among animals, and among humans as well.

any species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.”

must face the fact that increasing food production doesn’t feed your hungry, it only fuels your population explosion.”

“Let’s be clear about what they will and will not accept. The law itself is beyond argument. It’s there, plainly in place in the community of life. What the Takers will deny is that it applies to mankind.”

“Acceptance has nothing to do with it. You may as well talk about a man stepping off the edge of a cliff not accepting the effects of gravity. The Takers are in the process of eliminating themselves, and when they’ve done so, the stability of the community will be restored and the damage you’ve done can begin to be repaired.”

there are a lot of people out there who know the jig is up and are ready to hear something new—who want to hear something new, just like you.”

‘The world was not made for any one species.’

THE PEOPLE OF YOUR CULTURE cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler’s mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.”

“I see what you’re getting at. It isn’t the tale you tell that counts, it’s the way you actually live.” “That’s correct. The story the Takers have been enacting here for the past ten thousand years is not only disastrous for mankind and for the world, it’s fundamentally unhealthy and unsatisfying. It’s a megalomaniac’s fantasy, and enacting it has given the Takers a culture riddled with greed, cruelty, mental illness, crime, and drug addiction.” “Yes, that seems to be so.” “The story the Leavers have been enacting here for the past three million years isn’t a story of conquest and rule. Enacting it doesn’t give them power. Enacting it gives them lives that are satisfying and meaningful to them. This is what you’ll find if you go among them. They’re not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror of each other, not going crazy because their lives seem empty and pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through the days, not inventing a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make their lives worth living. And—I repeat—this is not because they live close to nature or have no formal government or because they’re innately noble. This is simply because they’re enacting a story that works well for people—a stor...

Ishmael nodded, but then went on: “At the same time, it should be noted that ancientness is a great validator among the people of your culture—so long as it’s restricted to that function. For example, the English want all their institutions—and all the pageantry surrounding those institutions—to be as ancient as possible (even if they’re not). Nevertheless, they themselves don’t live as the ancient Britons lived, and haven’t the slightest inclination to do so. Much the same can be said of the Japanese. They esteem the values and traditions of wiser, nobler ancestors and deplore their disappearance, but they have no interest in living the way those wiser, nobler ancestors lived. In short, ancient customs are nice for institutions, ceremonies, and holidays, but Takers don’t want to adopt them for everyday living.”

“Every one of the Leavers’ ways came into being by evolution, by a process of testing that began even before people had a word for it. No one said, ‘Okay, let’s form a committee to write up a set of laws for us to follow.’ None of these cultures were inventions. But that’s what all our lawgivers gave us—inventions. Contrivances. Not things that had proved out over thousands of generations, but rather arbitrary pronouncements about the one right way to live. And this is still what’s going on. The laws they make in Washington aren’t put on the books because they work well—they’re put on the books because they represent the one right way to live. You may not have an abortion unless the fetus is threatening your life or was put there by a rapist. There are a lot of people who’d like to see the law read that way. Why? Because that’s the one right way to live. You may drink yourself to death, but if we catch you smoking a marijuana cigarette, it’s the slammer for you, baby, because that’s the one right way. No one gives a damn about whether our laws work well. Working well is beside the point….Again,

American legal

Now, you know that the knowledge of what works well for production is what’s valued in your culture. In the same way, the knowledge of what works well for people is what’s valued in Leaver cultures. And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall, just as every time they stamp out a species of life, a life form ultimately tested since the birth of life disappears from the world beyond recall.”