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.

In Chapter SEVEN, Alan continues to have difficulty identifying the Law of Life. This short chapter is presented in four numbered subsections, beginning on page 111 of the original printing and page 117 of the 25th anniversary printing. The sections below mirror this arrangement in the book. See the launch post for notes on conventions I have adopted for this series.

1. The ABCs of the Law

Ishmael offers a tale of a lone traveler in distant, unfamiliar lands encountering a fantastically friendly, thriving, and peace-loving people. On the first night, he finds the meat they serve to be tasty but unfamiliar. Asking what it is, they say “Oh, it’s B meat, of course. That’s all we eat.” The traveler is horrified to learn that B meat is the flesh of the friendly-looking people living in the neighboring house. In shocked response, he asks for clarification: do they mean to tell him that they eat people? The puzzled response: “We eat B’s.” [The analogy maps better in our brains if momentarily disabling human supremacy circuits and expanding application of the word “people” to describe all animals (and plants)—not human, but still people.]

The B’s don’t run away because to do so would move them from their food: the A’s who live across the street. The A’s don’t flee because then they would no longer have access to their food in the form of C’s (the hosts of the traveler). This symmetry suppresses any hierarchy: no group claims superiority over the other. The traveler, however, finds the practice to be barbaric, and labels it “lawless.” The confused hosts assure him that they live by a strict law, never violated. In fact, they attribute all their pleasant cultural qualities (that the traveler finds so charming) to strict obeyance of this law.

[I will interject that the ABC arrangement carries a shock value, but only because it’s framed as all-human. What Quinn is really describing is in interdependent ecology: how things must work. All animals eat and are eaten (even if by microbes and fungi). Nobody runs away, as everyone depends on the full ecological context to live.]

Then, Ishmael asks Alan how he—as the traveler—might discover the law without asking his hosts to spell it out. Alan, of course, has no clue. Ishmael clarifies that he is not asking Alan to generate the law, but to consider how one might discover it: what observational methods might one employ?

Waiting for a violation and the accompanying punishment is no good, because the law is followed perfectly. Alan ventures that he might watch for a long time to ascertain what it is they did not ever do, but Ishmael points out that one could construct a nearly infinite list of random acts they never did. Irrelevant acts can be tossed on the basis that abstaining from them would not account for the critical observation that heeding the law is central to producing the smoothly-working society he observes. [Example: they never wear pots on their heads, but it is not due to their abstaining from this practice that makes their society work—probably.]

Ishmael gives Alan a break: a violation has occurred, and the offender is sentenced to death. While direct questioning of what the violator did that broke the law is fruitless, his entire biography is available as public record. This and other prompts leads Alan to seek three pieces of information gleaned from observation: 1) what is it that makes their culture successful; 2) what is it they never do; and 3) what did the violator do that is unusual.

2. Declaration of War

Now Ishmael connects to the community of life, which has worked well for billions of years. Takers recoil from the perception—borne from ignorance—of the “lawless chaos” of the wild, believing it to be full of constant existential terror for every creature. Yet Leavers who actually inhabit this world [and thus know a hell-of-a-lot more about it than some clueless Taker] don’t find it to be this way, and will put their lives on the line rather than have their place within the community threatened.

The symmetry presented in the ABC parable works in the community of life as well, but with many more letters and cross-connections. From microbes to fungi to plants to insects to herbivores to omnivores to carnivores, and back to microbes and fungi, everything eats everything: recycling nutrients in a splendid arrangement far more elegant and complex than anything we could ever engineer.

Despite our culture’s tendency (reflected in documentaries) to stress the predator-prey “battle” dynamic in nature:

…the species are not in any sense at war with one another. The gazelle and the lion are enemies only in the minds of the Takers.

Lion encounters with gazelles are not war-like massacres, or expressions of hatred: just satisfaction of hunger in the way ecological relationships and evolution set them up to work. Once the lions have a gazelle down, the other gazelles go about grazing in close proximity to the lions, justifiably unconcerned.

Ishmael attributes this order to a law in operation: a law that holds off the sort of chaos that would otherwise lead to collapse. [I’ll interject that movies often depict rapid sequences of an animal chomping another, only to get chomped itself, and on up the food chain. But if life really were that dangerous, nothing would be left: Real life has to mostly be boring to work at all.] Humans would not be here without this stabilizing law. The law simultaneously offers protection to the whole community of life, to entire species, and even to individuals.

The law is, in effect, what keeps the peace, and holds chaos at bay. Nature is not at war. The entire process of evolution followed this law—without which the endeavor would have failed. Thus, evolution needs this law in order to operate. All the way through the present (including the emergence of Homo sapiens), the law was always in full force. [Incidentally, this all makes even more sense once absorbing lessons from future chapters; so do consider revisiting! The mosaic is hard to appreciate when (necessarily) assembled in series.]

Then, about 10,000 years ago one splinter group of humans decided that the law was not meant to apply to them.

And so they built a civilization that flouts the law at every point.

The rest is what we call history. Within fewer than 150 end-to-end human lifespans—a flash on evolutionary timescales—systematic violation of The Law has brought the community of life to its knees.

Takers interpret this dire development as a fundamental human flaw—as if baked into our DNA—rather than as the consequences of a rogue culture enacting a story whose premise is deeply (mythologically) flawed. Ishmael manages to get Alan to express doubts about the “human flaw” explanation.

3. Work it Out!

Ishmael points out that the Leavers of North America experimented and abandoned multiple attempts at building civilizations [e.g., Hohokam; Cahokia]. They were not in a hurry, and definitely reluctant to commit to a death-trap.

In answer to Alan’s query as to what’s next, Ishmael asks Alan to go away—returning only when he is prepared to deliver the Law of Life that has been operating all this time within the community of life.

Alan expresses misgivings about his readiness. Ishmael reminds him of the three questions relating to the ABC case: 1) what makes it work; 2) what do adherents never do; and 3) what do Takers do that is unusual? Without this law, the planet would be barren of life. Heretofore, every species has lived in accordance with the law. Only one faction of one species has thumbed their noses at the law, declaring themselves exempt and above the law. The consequences are becoming apparent. Now go work it out!

4. Pitiful Alan

Alan felt dejected, and also overwhelmed by neglected work tasks—now atop a seemingly impossible assignment from a gorilla! Probing deeper, he realized that being asked to work things out on his own was breaking his crutch-like dependency on Ishmael. But more frightening was the realization that the lessons would some day come to an end: a termination of his time with Ishmael. Emotionally, Alan desired a teacher for life. He had to face the fact that Ishmael would not fill this void.

Next Time

In the next installment, Chapter 8 has Alan finally working out the Law of Life, and its various facets and implications.

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

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