Ishmael Updated
A 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn updated
The short of it: a modern metastatic human seeks a teacher to “save the world.” A telepathic gorilla, representing the Gaian system, becomes his teacher (as no modern human — separate from, superior to, and at war with Nature — could).
The core teaching: as an individual or species you can compete to persist, but not seek to Lord Over, to dominate Nature, be at war with the system or other subsystems for short-term gain.
If you haven’t, then read the book: Ishmael.pdf.
Read the Wikipedia entry.
Read Tom Murphy’s overview and chapter by chapter summary with context to understand why this book is important.
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Read my 2018 response.
My interest now is to note that since 1992 new information exists (e.g. archaeogenetic data), that Quinn (died 2018) did not use to frame the two cultures (Leavers and Takers). I will briefly retell the story as needed to reflect new information.
- The story includes modern humans, the gods themselves such as modern humans believe in (one or more, metaphorically only or not), and the Earth system (Gaia, Mother, normal humans/gorillas as K-selected animals living within limits).
- Modern r-cultures (more-is-better quantity maximizers) are an enacting of a consensus narrative, a shared ideology based on zero-order humanism (the necessary primacy of the modern human enterprise).
- Takers are “civilized” people, the 99.99988%, particularly r-selected agropastoralists empowered thereby to build empires and live in cities (overcomplex societies). Later modern humans (beginning about 450 years ago) have been empowered, for a time, by fossil fuels to increase their population 10 fold unto plague-phase overshoot.
- Leavers are people of pre-expansionist cultures, presently about 10k San and Hadza Leavers with pre-modern K-selected culture and genome mostly (>80%) intact (all other indigenous cultures are early modern human or mid modern human expansionist cultures with the possible exception of renormalizing former expansionist Tairona/Kogi culture).
While there is nothing wrong with pre-expansionist homininans (K-selected animals) per se, the r-selected expansionist form of Homo sapiens sapiens var. narrator is an obligate invasive species/domesticant not remotely compatible with the Gaian system long term any more than one or more metastatic pancreas cells growing exponentially are compatible with the soma they are a subsystem of. The main difference is that the metastatic cancer kills the body it is turning into more like unto itself. Metastatic modernity will damage/degrade but not kill the global biosphere. We moderns, as such, will go away if not the human taxon.
Metastatic modernity has no long term future. The condition of being an r-selected Taker will be selected out of the Gaian system. Some individual modern humans may persist by choiceless reversion mutation leading back to a non-metastatic form of human that has the potential to last long term as a complex, adaptive, dissipative and evolvable animal with technology and information (e.g. agriculture) as a form of homininan with a K-selected culture able to meta-reflexively live within limits (manage human demands on Nature’s recourses).
