[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

[Bill Totten]

Book Review

by Harold W Wood, Jr

www.pantheist.net

We seek renewed reverence for the biosphere as the ultimate context for
human existence ...


Pantheists have found a new prophet, and he is a Gorilla.

No ordinary Gorilla, Ishmael is uncommonly intelligent, with an ability
to not merely understand human speech but to recognize the fundamental
flaw of contemporary western culture and, what's more, to point the way
toward a solution.

Who better than a Gorilla that has been held in captivity for decades to
describe the human condition as a form of captivity? Ishmael points out
that modern humans, for the most part, are "captives of a civilization
system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in
order to live".

The frustration that Pantheists share with environmentalists - the
increasingly rapid loss of the natural world - is one that a few
environmental laws, a few scientific studies, and a few people recycling
their newspapers seem to do little to allay. One thing that Pantheists
recognize - as only a few environmentalists seem to do - as the root of
the environmental crisis is the intellectual disease of
anthropocentrism. What Daniel Quinn has done in this novel is provide us
with not only a thorough analysis of anthropocentrism in a sort of
ecological My Dinner with Andre (1981), but to point us in the direction
of how we can change from a "Taker" society to a "Leaver" society.

Fiction often has served as a motivator for change. Just as Uncle Tom's
Cabin (1852) helped inspire the effort to free the slaves, so Ishmael
will help inspire Pantheists to oppose the arrogant world-view of
anthropocentrism and replace it with a view of reverence for the earth.
The winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship in 1992, the author of the
book, Daniel Quinn, has received enthusiastic letters from readers in
every corner of the world: the Near East, the Far East, Africa,
Australia, South America, Europe, and Canada. It is being used in an
astounding variety of classroom courses, from midschool to graduate
school (from animal behavior to zoology and everything in between,
including anthropology, ethics, geography, and history). The book is now
available in German, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean,
and Japanese as well as English.

Ishmael eloquently achieves the purpose of the Turner award to encourage
authors to write fiction that produces creative and positive solutions
to global problems. For a novel, it doesn't have much of a plot, but
that's not the point. The exposition of ideas occurs through the medium
of a hyper-intelligent Gorilla conversing with a human who seeks nothing
less than simply "how to save the world". This turns out to be an
excellent device for expressing ideas that many people, as captives of
our culture, have difficulty in understanding or accepting. And rather
than simply asserting a conclusion - as most writers railing against
anthropocentrism have done in the past - Ishmael takes us step-by-step
through the fundamental mythology of our culture to explain how things
got the way they are, and how they could be different. This entails a
re-analysis of the Genesis stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel
that sets standard theology on its ear, but it is an analysis utterly
compelling in its logic and its painstaking accuracy with the
discoveries of anthropology.

The trick is to get outside the cultural mind-set of Western culture,
the Taker culture, which permeates "civilized" societies all over the
world, of whatever race, religion, language, or other idiosyncrasies.
The Taker culture, as expressed in Ishmael, is based upon the
fundamental premise that the world was made for man. If you accept that
premise, which our culture most certainly does, than it follows that the
Earth "belongs to us and we can do what we damn well please with it".
This, of course, is the mythology of our culture, so embedded that we
don't even perceive it as a "myth" but perceive rather as an inherent
truth that never even needs to be mentioned, much less defended. The
dominant myth of anthropocentrism is expressed in the tacit assumption
of Western culture that the end of man is to grow "forever" and dominate
the Earth with his technological marvels and sheer numbers. "You hear
this fifty times a day ... Man is conquering the deserts, man is
conquering the oceans, man is conquering the atom, man is conquering the
elements, man is conquering outer space", Ishmael tells us. "The
mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one
pays the slightest bit of attention to it". As a result, mankind is
trying to live in a way that is plainly not sustainable over the long run.

What Ishmael successfully points out is that this viewpoint is not the
only possible one to take in human life and culture, and that in fact
there are cultures - dubbed by Ishmael as Leaver cultures - which have
enacted a different story. The dominant mythology of anthropocentrism
isn't necessary to be human, it is only happens to be ingrained in a
culture "which casts mankind as the enemy of the world".

Ishmael tells us, "The 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".

Of course, part of the Taker mythology is that the Leavers are just
primitive people, and that acting as if the world was made for man and
only for man is a necessary part of an advanced civilization. But
Ishmael identifies the fallacy of that myth as well, pointing out that
it is the idea or myth upon which the culture is based that determines
our affect on the world, not merely the level of technology. Ancient
"Taker" cultures could destroy the environment with minimal technology;
just as any modern culture can do with use of modern technology. But the
difference is that the Taker's mythology has adopted a process of
destruction of the Earth that has become almost routine, whereas
"Leaver" societies have found ways to not only live sustainably with the
earth, but to live in a way that provides for the welfare of all the
members of the community..

Ishmael argues that it is possible for us today to convert modern
culture from a "Taker" culture to a "Leaver" culture, which allows for
the survival of other creatures than ourselves, and would also provide
for our own physical and psychological needs that are not always
provided in "Taker" culture. .

The premise of a Leaver culture is the opposite of the Taker Culture. It
is simply that Man belongs to the world. This doesn't mean that man is
merely an animal; in fact quite the contrary: because man belonged to
the world, it was Nature's forces of evolution that made him bright and
dexterous. If we would adopt the Leaver premise, , but instead the
preservation of creation.

To save the world, according to Ishmael, "people need more than to be
scolded, more than to be made to feel stupid and guilty. They need more
than a vision of doom. They need a vision of the world and of themselves
that inspires them."

"Stopping pollution is not inspiring. Sorting your trash is not
inspiring. Cutting down on fluorocarbons is not inspiring." But thinking
of ourselves in a new way is inspiring.

Some of these new ways of thinking may relate only to some small
questions. Ishmael asks us, "Does being civilized make you incapable of
giving the creatures around you a little space in which to live?"

In fact, Ishmael explores the biological laws that other creatures live
that ensures not only their survival, but the survival of the entire
ecological community of which they are a part. There is no reason that
modern culture cannot follow these same laws. After all, human life and
settlement isn't against the law, it's subject to the law.

"And if being civilized means anything at all, it should mean that
you're leaders of the club [of the community of life], not its only
criminals and destroyers".

Ishmael describes eloquently the fundamental importance of changing the
way we think about the world and the place of humanity within it. To
make the necessary changes, Ishmael asserts, "You can't change these
things with laws. You must change people's minds."

Importantly, Ishmael further teaches us that "you can't just root out a
harmful complex of ideas and leave a void behind; you have to give
people something that is as meaningful as what they've lost - something
that makes better sense than the hold horror of Man Supreme, wiping out
everything on this planet that doesn't serve his needs directly or
indirectly".
	
And the solution proposed by Ishmael is not necessarily an easy one, but
it is at least an inspiring one. We must "break out" of the prison of
western culture, stop fighting over the redistribution of power and
wealth within the prison itself, to re-formulate the end of man itself.

Ishmael's re-formulation does not deny that man's place is the first of
evolution to possess self-awareness, but that man's place is "to be the
first, without being the last ... Man's place is to figure out how it's
possible to do that - and then to make some room for all the rest who
are capable of becoming what he's become".

Ishmael never uses the terms biocentrism or pantheism, but these are the
concepts that Ishmael points toward for our adoption of a new mythology,
for recognizing ourselves as belonging to the world instead of the world
belonging to us.

I urge you to read this book, and to get your friends to read it too.
This book is indeed more than a book. It's ideas are not entirely new,
but as a work of fiction it is launching a movement, not a mere
political movement, but a revolution of ideas. You will find the gospel
according to Ishmael to be not only compelling, but of immense help in
transforming the world-views of those who remain prisoners of the Taker
culture. Let's take this book and help them break out of prison!

Editor's Note:

I think that Ishmael is the most important book we've ever reviewed in
Pantheist Vision.
For more information about Pantheism, or questions about this website
please contact Harold Wood at ups at pantheist.net

Pantheism \Pan"the*ism\, n. [Pan- + theism.]

Any doctrine, philosophy, or religious practice that holds universe
[cosmos], taken or conceived of as the totality of forces and/or matter,
is synonymous with the theological principle of God.

Copyright is held by the indicated organization and/ or author.  All
rights are reserved.
All other material, Copyright (c) 1998, 1999, 2000 Universal Pantheist
Society.  All rights are reserved.

http://www.pantheist.net/society/ishmael_book_review.html


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