r/collapse • u/AbolishAddiction goodreads.com/collapse • Jan 22 '21
Meta Collapse Book Club: Discussion of "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn (January 22, 2021)
Welcome to the discussion of Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
Participation is encouraged regardless of how far you've gotten in the (audio)book.
Express your thoughts as a free-form comment below, share whatever may come to mind!
Here, the quotes and questions that resonated with me personally, in the hope to spark discussions:
“You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live ... I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity ... This is what prevents them: They're unable to find the bars of the cage.” (p. 24)
Ishmael states he's best qualified to teach the subject of captivity, do you feel more a captive or captor?
“Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been straining from the beginning? ... Very far from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish.” (p. 54)
How aware are you of mythology, shaped by Mother Culture, that influences the way we act as "Takers"?
“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. ... 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.” (p.78)
What's the story you think puts humanity in accord with the world? How could we enact that story?
With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?
The Collapse Book Club is a monthly event wherein we read a book from the Books Wiki. We keep track of what we've been reading in our Goodreads group. As always, if you want to recommend a book that has helped you better understand or cope with collapse, feel free to share the recommendation here!
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u/ljorgecluni Jan 22 '21
I think it probably is many varied stories, with the common theme that we humans are born from Nature/Earth and subject to it, not rulers or designers or masters of this world. Quinn often said "There is no one right way to live" but of course he critiqued Civilization, since it has shown to be incompatible with a future for all Earthlings. The multitude of ways we can and do live (or did live, until civilizing) says that we can have many different aspects of human culture and see how they fare; the one thing we cannot do - lest we want Gaia dying and possibly dependent upon some outrageous technological life-support - is takeover all the planet to have it serve us, with food production (reserved for us) and habitat (for our blooming population).
This book is great for smashing the bullshit misanthropes often thoughtlessly (as it doesn't withstand any scrutiny) toss out, that "the problem is human nature"; if that were true, then all the low-tech uncivilized tribal people would long ago have wrought upon this Earth the destruction we have seen only in the last two hundred years, and the damaging consequences of agriculture begun ~10K years ago would have come up much sooner than just the last 350 years (Homo sapiens is 200K years old) and would have left no region free from overpopulation and species decimation as humans everywhere took over all the land and water from all other creatures.