Ishmael 10-13

        The end of this book brings everything full circle, all things getting more and more interesting even though Ishmael dies. Again, so many parts stand out to me, especially as an anthropology major. In these last few chapters we learn about culture and where leaver and taker cultures split off. "Leaver peoples are always conscious of having a tradition that goes back to very ancient times. We have no such consciousness. For the most part, we're a very 'new' people. Every generation is somehow new, more thoroughly cut off from the past than the one that came before."
         Due to the ancient times reaching back so far there is some evolution in the culture that we do not have as a society. When I went to Guatemala and lived among the descendants of Maya I was baffled because they seemed to have everything figured out about how to live because they didn't just take from the Earth. "The Takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things. The Leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people." This is so true.
         A lot of times I want to give everything up in our society but then I still have this irrational fear about living in the "wild." It is because Mother Culture tells us that the Leaver lifestyle is like a dream or nightmare, "a man is scrabbling along a ridge at twilight.. The man is short, thin, dark, and naked. He's running in a half crouch, looking for tracks. He's hunting, and he's desperate. Night is falling and he's got nothing to eat...[he is on a treadmill] because tomorrow at twilight he'll be there running still-or running again..." The book goes on explaining how frightful this life seems to us but in reality it is such a free life to live.
This is very interesting.

Ishmael Chapter 9

     When we spoke about Ishmael today it was brought up that this chapter was particularly uncomfortable and jarring because what we know is true is being tested. This brings up the topic of veganism. I have so many conversations on this topic and a lot of the time the other person is defensive or uncomfortable because what they know to be true is being tested, but that doesn't mean the new information is wrong in any way. Here is something I wrote yesterday that relates:

Who would be down to go shoot a dog?

Did that question strike you in any way? I hope so. How about this one: Who would be down to go shoot a deer?

Hmm, that one probably doesn't phase a lot of you, but why?

A deer and a dog are both animals with no real distinction apart from domestication, but cows(animals that we murder, rape and exploit) are also domesticated so that shouldn't hold much weight.

If it would bring you sorrow to see a dog shot but not a deer, what is the disconnect? Why does our society make it okay to murder some animals but not others?

Animals are animals, that is a simple truth. Loving animals is loving animals, that is a thing we say that discriminates against many and prioritizes few.

Doesn't this go against what so many of us seem to be fighting for, equality?

Think. Question. Research.
Don't do something just because it has been done before and don't justify your actions with meaningless claims that you know nothing about.

Ishmael Chapters 5-8

     I am in love with this book. It describes our society so well in so many ways and how it came to be. It is applicable to all of our lives though some may not be so receptive to what it tells us because it is jarring and provocative in relation to what we believe as true and moral. I have brought this book up in many situations already, especially my WeSustain internship because we are constantly coming to the problem of "why is society so messed up?"
     There are so many amazing quotes in this book that I will just have to put some in here. Daniel Quinn, through Ishmael, slowly brings us to some conclusions about life in a very effective manor, in my opinion. He addresses that we have never really sought out the knowledge of how to live as humans though for three million years we were fine.
      In my internship we discussed that yes this was a good time but we can not go back to it because of Globalization and the amount of people on the Earth. Hundreds of years ago we weren't able to see if people were starving in other countries so we did nothing about it and we let nature run its course. All of the humans on the planet now can not be subsisted in the places where humans are readily adapted to, like the tropics. We can't all move to the tropics and be gatherer/hunters, a lot of us would die, probably due to war on resources.
      "Obviously Mother Culture must be finished off if you're going to survive, and that's something the people of your culture can do. She has no existence outside your minds. Once you stop listening to her, she ceases to exist." This has to do with a lot of things but especially the way people interact with the world around them.
        Since reading this book I have noticed myself ignoring mother culture, and this isn't a change I have made because of the book, just an observation. Today, for example, I asked a friend for a tampon and she was trying to be discreet and I just blatantly said, "don't be ashamed of feminine products!" and proceeded to grab them in front of the whole class and walk back to my seat, tossing them all on my desk.
        As I am looking for outside research or pictures I am finding people trying to convince others to be themselves but Mother Culture doesn't allow that. There are laws that everyone has to obey and that's it, if you feel like grabbing your tampons and not having to hide them and not having to feel ashamed that it is there, hidden in your hand, it doesn't matter, Mother Culture has told you that you should feel this way.

Walden Part Two

       I had to finish the entire book to get to the end and unfortunately that took me forever, this book is not exactly a page turner, and I have also had a crazy week. Anyhow, the second half of the book was a little less enthralling than the first but I got through it finally. The beginning of The Pond in Winter poses an interesting question, well to question at all, the human condition. Thoreau says, "but there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips." Serene and satisfied, some things almost no human can keep for long but are always wishing for.
       Those things could be interpreted as happiness and that is the eternal goal for humans and therefore something we will never get to because we are always aiming that way. "Nature puts no question, and answers none which we morals ask." This statement also elaborates on that which humans have to struggle, constantly.
       We often think to question is a blessing or a gift because we know better but that is so far from the truth, in my perspective because there is no moral truth in my perspective but I can go on with this for hours due to my brain and stuff, because when have you thought that an animal did wrong? They are creatures of instinct, told by their evolutionary past and therefore there is not much to be wrong about as long as they are surviving and reproducing.

Walden Part One

      In reading Walden I have found many things I enjoy about Thoreau's writing style, let along what he has to say. I have a hard time reading things out of order so I had to read Economy before I could read Where I lived and What I lived for. In economy, Thoreau talks about many things and kind of rambles from one idea to the next, sometimes putting me to sleep I will admit. Among the sleepy parts there are a lot of good, quality things that Thoreau has to say, sometimes I don't understand how they relate to the economy but nonetheless I enjoyed them. In the premise of this book,
      Thoreau addresses that he is "confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience." The theme being that of his life and how he perceived and went about living it. You can only be you, even if you would wish otherwise, you are stuck, sometimes it feels eternally, within the bounds of your own experience. He goes on to talk about the self and the constraints it has on itself being "the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds." We are in control but we are also enslaved by that control and therefore the control the ideas around us inflict.
       I could very well relate to his line, "when one man has reduced a fact of his imagination to be a fact to his understanding." At the end of our fast-write we did a few weeks ago I came upon the conclusion that most of the time I am confidently saying things that I imagine to be true and I simply speak them into existence. It is a beautiful power but and often thwarted one.
      Another piece that spoke to me, being an anthropology major was "none can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty." Traditional anthropologists believe that they could go into some foreign land, live there for a few years, gain acceptance from whatever tribe was there and then go home and write an exhaustive book or essay about how those people came to be and how they live day to day. This was supposed to help humans figure out how best to live but really it was to convert all that did not live as white folks did to the white folk way. Here is some good stuff from Anthropology and other sciences.

Ishmael, chapters 3 and 4

       I am going to admit that I have finished the entire book already so my posts might be a little off-kilter with what I am writing about. What can I say, when a book grabs me it takes me all the way. I am so very fond of this book, I would recommend it to anyone. Correction, I will recommend it to everyone. Simply put, this book clearly guides us to the knowledge of how we came to be, rather, how we came to be so messed up.
       Concerning these chapters in particular, I really enjoyed the beginning of chapter three when Ishmael explains that "No creation story is a myth to the people who tell it. It's just the story." and then he goes on to tell him the story of the first being that found land and how they thought. Because the creature could only speak about what they knew, that is what was their truth. They didn't know what they didn't know, and that rule applies just the same to humans.
       The creature believes they are the most intelligent being there ever was and this is where it stops because everything was leading up to their existence. After this story was told Ishmael explains it to the narrator, "the pinnacle was reached in man. Man is the climax of the whole cosmic drama of creation." This part struck me, that is exactly how we think, the takers that is. Pardon all my quotes but they are so good, "the Takers regard the world as a sort of human life-support system, as a machine designed to produce and sustain human life." We believe that the world was made for us, the entire universe, everything. We are at its core and therefore it is ours to explore or exploit or concur.
       Humans think that we are this special gift to Earth, to finish what the gods tried to do but failed to do. Ishmael says "without man, the world was unfinished, was just nature, red in tooth and claw. It was in chaos, in a state of primeval anarchy." We obviously need to fix this, or so Mother Culture tells us. At the end of chapter four Ishmael says that when we split from the Leavers we had to choose "a brief life of glory or a long, uneventful life in obscurity." We chose the former and we are still enacting that story, the story that has us as the enemies of the Earth.
       This book is a gift, quite similar to a bible or other divine-influenced works. It is not much a book of fiction but more a guide to an idea, a true one nonetheless. This book gets at exactly what must be done in order for us to keep the Earth, not our Earth, alive. No spoilers but I did do a bit of crying towards the end of this book, quite a relief it gave me. An interesting Ishmael community? I suggest we all go on after this and read The Story of B and his other works, he is currently working on a book right now that he says might be his most important.
Daniel Quinns: Meaning of Life

Eaarth - Lightly, Carefully, Gracefully

"Diversity is everything. It goes all the way down to a handful of soil - which has more species, more biodiversity, thank a whole square mile above ground. And the way we farm is killing a lot of that right off." (174)
       This excerpt from the book Eaarth is really at the heart of the issue we have as humans. As I have been reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn I have seen that humans think that they are above all other species because the Earth and universe were made just for them. From there humans continue to conquer everything that falls into their paths, including other species. This causes for us to want to control these species which means we have to take out the variation among them. Without variation there is no longer diversity or any robust makeup of species because if one thing goes wrong everything does.
       The more we control the world the less complex it gets. As we all know we are constantly killing off species of plants and animals each day. You can see here of all the effects that humans have had on species degradation. We must focus on diversity as we do with social issues, but instead with special variation. We must also realize that this world is not ours to have.
       There is nothing that definitively states that we are entitled to everything here or anything at all. Agriculture in itself is a manipulation of the natural world that is a consequence of us thinking we can control such things.
       

Ishmael; chapters one and two

      This book has a very interesting beginning. At first, I read it as a piece of nonfiction because that is all I have been reading recently but then the gorilla came to be and I could not quite fit that into the real world any more. Not to say that there isn't magic and nonsense in the world, because there is, but you would be hard pressed to find it in a book that is trying to get you to believe something, objectively speaking.
      At the very beginning of the book there is a quote that stuck out to me, "Get a job, make some money, work till you're sixty, then move to Florida and die." It is quintessential to our society today and how we view the world, a single path to success. Daniel Quinn, the author of Ishmael, has a narrative that is very spirited and excited about another pathway. The narrator only desires this alternative pathway to "saving the world."
       I really enjoy when Ishmael first explains his story and how he came to be. It is very interesting that the author gets deep inside what he believes an animal may be able to think. Animals, supposedly, have no idea of their individualism especially if they live in a pack like a gorilla. They have a family so they are a family, not necessarily a part of it because without it the individual would not exist. It is a complicated phenomenon to think about because as humans we are extremely individualistic. Ishmael says that he is a "member of a family - of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven't known for thousands of years."
       Ishmael makes me think of my beginning studies of Anthropology, the evolution of the human and what that means. You can learn a lot about that here at this Human Evolution site.