This is part of a series of posts representing ideas from the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I view the ideas explored in Ishmael to be so important to the world that it seems everyone should have a chance to be exposed. I hope this treatment inspires you to read the original.

Chapter ELEVEN contains my favorite section (#4) of the book, exposing Taker biases on Leaver life: a huge hurdle in knocking loose Taker mythology. This chapter is presented in six numbered subsections, beginning on page 209 of the original printing and page 225 of the 25th anniversary printing. The sections below mirror this arrangement in the book. Section 4 is packed with incredible content, so receives a bit more attention. See the launch post for notes on conventions I have adopted for this series.

1. A Nearly Final Rejection

Offering blankets to a cold Ishmael on a rainy afternoon, Alan receives little in the way of gratitude, and instead is challenged by Ishmael as to why he wishes to learn the story enacted by the Leavers. Alan repeatedly offers lame reasons that offer insufficient motivation to Ishmael: why should he bother?

Ishmael has finally had enough, and asks Alan to go away—to come back only if he can produce a compelling-enough reason to go on. Alan stubbornly declines, finally suggesting that the “children’s revolution” of the sixties failed because it was not enough to reject the story enacted by one’s culture. Without another story to be in, the protest is aimless. We need to know the Leaver story so that we know at least something exists beyond the invisible bars of our cage.

Ishmael is finally satisfied enough to continue.

2. To Become Human…

Just as the Taker mythology is about human destiny and place in the world, the Leaver mythology operates on similar turf. Ishmael repeats a previous point that humans became humans while enacting the Leaver story. But Ishmael stumps Alan with a seemingly identical question: “How did man become man?” They stick a pin in that question while Ishmael devises a new approach.

3. Nasty, Brutish, and Short

Ishmael asks how Takers might characterize the agricultural revolution: what sort of event was it? Alan reports that Mother Culture classifies it as a technological event, rather than a change in cosmology or cultural attitudes. [Takers unimaginatively assume that the only alternative to their own cosmology amounts to nihilism.]

Modernity’s cultural attitude is that life before the revolution:

…was devoid of meaning, was stupid, empty, and worthless. Pre-revolutionary life was ugly. Detestable.

Indeed, Alan remains under this impression. Asked who in our culture might have a different view, Alan hazards that anthropologists might. Right: the ones “who actually have some knowledge of that life.” Yet, “Mother Culture teaches that that life was unspeakably miserable.”

Asked if he could fathom trading modern life for a pre-agricultural lifestyle, Alan admits that he cannot. Meanwhile, Leavers exposed to modernity have consistently tried to return to their Leaver lifestyles—often rendered impossible by the destructive acts of Takers.

When Alan tries the standard line that Leavers just didn’t know any better, Ishmael counters that Indigenous people who practiced agriculture abandoned it when conditions allowed (using Plains tribes as an example). Mother Culture would claim, patronizingly, that they didn’t really understand the benefits of agricultural life, as returning to misery is unthinkable for one who truly understands.

Ishmael suggests that this cultural “fear and loathing of the Leaver life” is at the heart of our kamikaze quest that risks destroying the world before allowing that “dumb” Leavers might possess wisdom worth absorbing. Ishmael’s goal is to define what revulsion the agricultural revolution was revolting against. Gaining this insight will make it easier to come up with the premise to the Leaver story.

4. The Misery Misconception

Finally, we arrive at my favorite section, loaded with key insights (I especially love the role-play part).

After shrinking into his blankets with shuddering sigh, Ishmael rallied to ask what necessitated the revolution. Alan said that it was a prerequisite for “getting somewhere,” by which he meant securing all the trappings (comforts, conveniences) of modernity.

But, it goes deeper than this, because even the hundreds of millions of Taker people living in deplorable conditions and for whom these luxuries are unattainable would still express a preference for Taker life over what they understand to be Leaver life.

They all believe profoundly that, however bad things are now, they’re still infinitely preferable to what came before.

What Ishmael seeks from Alan is a deep dive into the whisperings of Mother Culture, to dredge up what our culture says about the horrors of life before agriculture. After a superficial response, Ishmael prompts Alan to think hard. A few minutes later, Alan shares an image that floated to the fore [which I also described in Desperate Odds].

A scrawny man labors along a ridge in dim lighting, as if in perpetual dusk. His burning hunger drives him in pursuit of prey, bent-over in search of tracks as night closes in. Compounding the danger of starvation is a menace from behind, in the form of ravenous beasts closing in with sharp claws and bare fangs. The scene has a never-ending “treadmill” quality to it, where the man remains:

…forever one step behind his prey and one step ahead of his enemies.

I tried to capture this moving imagery in the graphic at the top of this piece. The alliterative title, “Hungry Hunter, Himself Hunted” could just as well have been “Famished Forager, Fearing Fangs.”

The sharp ridge conjures the knife-edge limbo-land of survival in which this desperate creature lives. The treadmill aspect is important, too: never getting anywhere, but having to keep moving lest he starve, get eaten, or just fall off. Ishmael sums up this vision as “a very grim life.” [I feel that this metaphor perfectly reflects our cultural impression.]

Ishmael dispels this fabrication as pure fiction:

Hunter-gatherers live no more on the knife-edge of survival than wolves or lions or sparrows or rabbits. Man was as well adapted to life on this planet as any other species…

In fact, the flexible adaptability of humans—being omnivorous, intelligent, and handy—favors human survival in conditions that would “do in” other species. Plenty of studies reveal that hunter-gatherers remain well-nourished spending only a few hours of average daily effort on the securing of food—even in lands we might characterize as “hardscrabble.” Their lives contain far more leisure than do our own. Moreover, humans are not a preferred prey of any other animal on Earth: we’re lucky that way. The vision of horror is flat-out wrong on both counts. It’s not at all how an actual hunter-gatherer would describe their life. [I have a post examining life expectancy data for hunter-gatherers that puts daily risk of copping it at 0.005% chance for prehistoric adolescents: low enough to feel just as invincible as do today’s adolescents.]

Alan’s repulsion for the Leaver lifestyle stubbornly persists. To probe further, Ishmael presents a hypothetical box with a button that, if pressed, sends you (and your family) back to prehistoric times, integrated into a community and privy to both the language and skills. Would a completely destitute person of modernity with no prospects elect to press the button? Probably not, Alan believes. So, Mother Culture must fill our heads with horrific notions of the distant past.

Ishmael sets up a role play exercise between Alan as a Taker missionary and Ishmael as a hunter-gatherer. The awesome demeanor of the hunter-gather is so chill that I will take the liberty of naming the hunter-gatherer Xóchitl—a name of Aztec origin. I don’t think Ishmael would object to playing a female role, do you? The situation is that a Taker culture wants to make use of Leaver-occupied land, and the missionary is to explain to the hunter-gatherer the sense in abandoning their lifestyle to join the superior Taker way. The sales-pitch begins:

This life of yours is not only wretched, it’s wrong. Man was not meant to live this way. So don’t fight us. Join our revolution and help us turn the world into a paradise for man.

In other words: become a human supremacist like us. Join the Human Reich. Do we get arm bands?

So, Ishmael (as Xóchitl) challenges Alan to “Explain to me why the life that I and my people have found satisfying for thousands of years is grim and revolting and repulsive.” To help Alan out, he (she) begins the dialog in this vein, using an endearing (teasing?) moniker for the missionary (meaning “boss” in Swahili):

Bwana, you tell us that the way we live is wretched and wrong and shameful. … This puzzles us, Bwana… But if you, who ride to the stars […] tell us that [this is so], then we must in all prudence listen to what you have to say.

I love the starting position of openness and respect. Even when Alan’s answer insults the Leavers as “ignorant and uneducated and stupid,” Xóchitl responds with tremendous poise: “Exactly so, Bwana. We await your enlightenment.”

What ensues is a series of complete bafflement as neither seems to understand the other’s point, often represented below as a back-and forth within a paragraph (context sorts out who says what, well enough). I can’t do it justice here, so encourage you to read the original.

Telling Xóchitl that she and her people live like animals is simply confusing to her: they live as all others live. Do all animals, then, also lead shameful lives?

The conversation moves to control: lack of control over food. Xóchitl is again confused, because hunger is easily satisfied by finding something to eat. It sure seems to be in their control when to eat. But more control could be had by planting. Why is it relevant who plants the seeds that will be planted regardless? If you took control, you’d be assured of its growing. But we are already assured of its growing. Xóchitl goes on to explain that they live in a world filled with food that isn’t going to suddenly abscond. And here is a crucial point: if the food were not reliably available, we would not still be here to have this conversation. Deny that!

Alan continues to promote the virtues of control: providing the ability to decide on the abundance of various crops. Xóchitl again can’t see the point when their food is already in sufficient abundance. Why toil so hard for no reason?

But what about when something is not available? Now I’ve got you: what do you do then? Well, eat something else, I suppose. Doesn’t the same thing happen to you masters of space, since seasons apply to all of us? No: that’s exactly it. We can eat anything we want all year-round, thanks to the technology of canning.

Xochitl is intrigued, having heard of this method. When asked how much effort goes into the process, Alan proudly speaks of the hundreds of people involved in the mining for metal, securing fossil fuels for mechanized agriculture, assembling huge tractors and combines in factories, building trucks, paving roads, packaging, maintaining retail spaces, facilitating transactions via financial institutions, and on and on [I made up my own list here; differs in the book]. Xóchitl can’t help but to think this is insane. All this colossal effort to banish minor disappointment over the lack of a yam! When Xóchitl can’t get a yam, she is happy to get something else.

A frustrated Alan says that Xóchitl is “missing the point,” to which Xóchitl readily agrees. Alan tries a higher-altitude perspective. If not in control of your own food, then “you live at the mercy of the world.” It’s irrelevant that you’ve always had enough. Lack of control is no way for a human to live. “Why is that, Bwana?”

Alan tries again, this time on the hunting front. Maybe you bag a deer, but maybe you don’t. Then you’re stuck. If we fail to get a deer, we just “snare a couple of rabbits.” Alan decries the fact that they are forced to settle.

And this is why we lead shameful lives, Bwana? This is why we should set aside the life we love and go to work in one of your factories?

My translation: all this so you can live in a perpetual state of toddler-dom—to avert a tantrum when a deer is not to be had? Being sentenced to a factory job seems like such a harsh atonement for the wretched sin of settling for rabbits.

Alan doggedly persists. What if you get no rabbits? “Then we eat something else, Bwana. The world is full of food.” Alan presses on. What if there’s not? Nothing is guaranteed. What about drought: don’t you have those? Xóchitl is quite familiar with droughts, explaining the dwindling grasses, fruit, game, and predators. “If the drought is very bad, then we too dwindle.”

Aha! Check mate! You die!

Is it shameful to die, Bwana?

Alan explains that the major error is trusting the gods to take care of you. They don’t always come through [what I call: fairness, fairly distributed]. To be human is to only trust ourselves with our lives—not the unreliable gods. Xóchitl is very disheartened to hear this. It seems to her that living in the hands of the gods for millennia has worked out well enough, providing satisfying lives. The gods can see to the planting of the garden, allowing for Xóchitl a life of leisure. And again here’s the real kicker: if the world did not provide adequate sustenance all through deep time, we would not be here today!

This does not satisfy Alan. Yes, they are here. But they lack clothes, an air-conditioned house, a car, and a job—all because of the lamentable choice to live in the hands of the gods. Alan is onto something. The gods do not deign to differentiate between humans and animals, treating all essentially the same way [they don’t for a second subscribe to human-supremacist ugliness]. Refining the thought, Alan admits that the gods provide enough for humans-as-animals, but will not provide the extra it takes to be fully human.

Xóchitl is dismayed to learn that the gods would deprive humans of anything essential:

But how can that be, Bwana? … that the gods are wise enough to shape the universe and the world and the life of the world but lack the wisdom to give humans what they need to be human?

Well, that’s what you get for ceding yourselves to “incompetent gods” [gods too dumb to appreciate human supremacy]. Those gods only provide the bare minimum of necessity. By taking control of planting your own food, you can obtain “more than you need.” Xóchitl is unclear of why we need more than we need.

Alan finally puts his finger on it: securing more than is needed through our own labor allows us to “thumb our noses at [the gods].” Because, when the gods send drought, you can access your stores of food and laugh at the gods, saying to them: you can’t squash me because I am no longer in your hands!

5. Almost Gods, But Not Quite

The role-play delivered greater clarity about whose hands Takers live in. Ishmael probes further: by living in your own hands, you presumably have the control necessary to prevent your own extinction.

Alan admits that we are not yet in total control. We could not, in all likelihood, survive the sixth mass extinction we unwittingly spawned. We will only be safe when we have managed to pry the entire planet out of the hands of the gods. Complete freedom from the power of the gods awaits, once we control everything, in absolute [totalitarian] rule. [Cue maniacal laugh.]

6. Divergent Worldviews

Ishmael and Alan have a brief discussion about Christian attitudes toward distrusting God to provide, even though one passage in the bible has Jesus advocating exactly this sort of faith. Actions betray the true belief.

Undeterred by the persuasiveness of the role-play, Alan firmly expresses the side he’s on: “I can only think that hunter-gatherers live in a state of utter and unending anxiety over what tomorrow’s going to bring.” Ishmael counters that any anthropologist (who might actually know something) will refute this notion. Hunter-gatherers tend to be, in fact, less stressed than the average member of modernity. No one can withhold their food for lack of money, job, or papers.

The exercise has clarified that the revolution is meant to put us beyond the hands of the gods. The Takers are therefore “those who [believe they] know good and evil,” while ” the Leavers are those who live in the hands of the gods.”

Next Time

In the next installment, Chapter 12 rounds out the lessons between Ishmael and Alan.

I thank Alex Leff for looking over a draft of this post and offering valuable comments and suggestions.

Views: 129