Has anyone here read the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn? And if so I just want to know what you thought about it.
Hi Zak,
Ishmael. I have been wanting to read that book for many years now. I have heard it is excellent. Am I correct in thinking that it is about a modern day prophet? I understand one day he just starts talking. Even though I have not read the book, I already feel affinity towards it. How often has wine made me into a bar-room preacher (ha, ha, ha)!
I have, and I also read Beyond Civ. It was part of a buisness ethics class I took.
Good stuff, I agree with his point about humans being fairly tribal people.
Jason i think your talking about the The Story Of B. i havent read that one yet but it is apart of the ishmael series. You Should Read Ishmael first and then either My Ishmael or The Story of B.
Hello I read Ishmael a few years back its basically about a man being taught the history of the world by a gorilla. Thought it was fantastic at first until I realised that Daniel Quinn’s idea of curing the worlds problems is to put mankind back into the food chain and and to stop evolving more or less.
It’s an excellent book. Everyone should read it. I was quite amazed at his theories towards the true origins of tribal beliefs that eventually became the Jewish book of Genesis. He draws an incredible scenario concerning the Fall of Man and the Cain and Abel fiasco, but brings up much more.
You probably won’t agree with everything he says, and neither do I. But I think every person should read it at least to get themselves in the mindset that there is a problem, and to think for themselves on how to solve it.
Anyone else read it and wanna discuss it?
I loved the book Ishmael. I thought it was well written and raised some important points.
I think it is interesting in pointing out: the major Anthro-centric bias in the way we live, the danger of totalitarian agriculture and the sheer arrogance of our culture.
I have also read his sequels The Story of B and My Ishmael. They expand and refine his points and argument. Beyond Civilization is also good, but it lacks the narrative framework of the previous works.
I love his separation of the evil of human nature vs. the evil of one particular human culture. I got into so many wonderful arguments when I tried to defend the view that human nature is not flawed, broken nor evil. People became very animated and defensive.
One point I want to address. Quinn does not suggest that we should take ourselves out of the food-chain, more that we already have taken ourselves out of the food-chain and halted our potential evolution.
the book was based on the anthropomorphic fallacy and was a moralistic work of fiction… it made no sound arguments; it merely played on the emotions… I thought it was garbage…
TAKERS RULE…
-Imp
What is this anthropomorphic fallacy you speak of?
Attributing human thoughts, feelings, or motives to animals, especially as a way of explaining their behavior.
-Imp
The book presents it in an eloquent way. Basically the anthro-centrism that the book criticizes is the belief that the whole point of evolution and the planet earth was to eventually create humans. The human is the pinnacle of evolution. Evolution stopped once human beings were created. This is the secret myth of our culture. We think we are the best lifeform. We act as if no other form of life matters. We transform as much of the biomass of the earth into human beings.
Our culture wages a war against nature, and we are winning. Eventually nature will be dead at our feet. We don’t just compete in the food-chain we systematical eliminate anything that might compete with us. Then we seek to eliminate everything that might attack our food supply.
Also if any other life form acted as we do then it would be highly damaging to the environment.
Then in The Story of B Quinn talks more about food and populations.
Usually food supply determines the limits of a population. Our culture of totalitarian agriculture continually increases our food supply. So our population continues to increase. We have the mistaken idea that we can potentially eliminate starvation. Our culture teaches us that we are above this natural biofeedback mechanism in the environment. Every other lifeform can only expand it population to the limits of its food supply. Starvation is the feedback from the environment that the population is too big. Instead or responding to starvation by decreasing our population we try to out distance this feedback by producing more food. Human beings, liked every other lifeform will experience starvation if our population is too big. We can never get outside of this pattern.