At first this post was supposed to become another book review, this time of one of the two books I’ve read by Daniel Quinn: Ishmael and The Story of B. As I started sorting through the ideas I was going to address, I realized that I had to mention both works, and later decided to review neither. Instead I wanted to focus on Quinn’s philosophical concepts, which is really the most important, or rather only important parts of the book. Otherwise neither book would be worth much.
It’s Not About the Stories
Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I won’t get around giving a brief overview of both novels. The first, and more famous one, is titled Ishmael, and it is a series of dialogues between the narrator and a telepathically talking gorilla. Through these conversations, in which the ape assumes the role of a teacher, Quinn conveys his ideas to the reader. In his other book The Story of B. the author employs similar didactic means to elaborate his world view, except for the character supplying all the information is not an ape, but a controversial lecturer, feared by certain religious authorities as the ‘Antichrist’.
This should be enough background to the books, which I have to admit are not that great. They tend to be a bit boring, one-sided, and even the parts where Quinn tries to make things interesting turn out to be annoying, only distracting from the one saving grace… That, however, is worth all the time and effort of dredging through the story parts, and really are THE aspects of the book that made me want to write this post. They are the exciting concepts Quinn introduces, regarding culture, nature, and belief systems. Let me examine a few of them here:
Totalitarian Agriculture
There have been many different ways of growing in food in history. Some are extensive practices, others highly intensive. Some use various animals and other species, others don’t. Some require a large input of labor, others involve leaving the place for considerable time. As such, European explorers failed to see the extensive food-forests maintained by Native Americans, as it wasn't “farming” in the sense they were used to.
Quinn describes Totalitarian Agriculture as a way of growing food that excludes every other species from the ecosystem that is not the desired crop. Though at first it was unpractical to limit an area to only one plant, it didn't stop people from trying, which they've been doing for the last 10,000 years. That’s how our culture came up with such concepts as pests and weeds. Not surprisingly, this exclusion was also applied to other human beings who were not owners of this “private property”. And by denying them access to the cultivated land, the owners made it more valuable for themselves. The extreme end of this Totalitarian Agriculture can be seen today, with powerful pesticides and herbicides poisoning vast stretches of land, growing immense amounts of food while millions are starving.
The Great Forgetting
Another interesting idea Quinn proposes, he calls The Great Forgetting. What did we forget, and when did this happen? As described in both his books, it happened around 10,000 years ago, when people adopted large scale farming as their main method of sustenance. That coincided and influenced many other developments, such as the formation of centralized power, the emergence of writing, professional specializations, the rise of standing armies, the birth of empires, urban life, grain-based finance system, grain-based alcoholism, and the stratification of society into those with money and power, and those without. So what did we forget then?
Precisely that this is not how it’s always been! As we know today, humans have existed in their currently evolved form for thirty times longer than the last 10,000 years. During most of our history we practiced a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, before anyone even got the idea of growing just one species of plants. During this time people developed a good amount of knowledge necessary for day-to-day survival. This may include the behaviors of animals, using certain plants for specific purposes, predicting the weather, and finding your way around this globe. Quite naturally, it also came with a deep understanding of patterns of nature in general. The most shocking part of The Great Forgetting is that although it started with the first agrarian societies, it hasn’t completely finished yet. It continues up to this day, as hunter-gatherer cultures continue abandoning their traditional ways, similarly as they had been doing ever since the first encounter.
The Takers and The Leavers
Talking about the encounter between traditional hunter-gatherer society and the “modern” agrarian one, I should mention The Takers and The Leavers, which is how Quinn likes to refer to them. He is trying to imply that one of the distinguishing features of agrarian culture is hoarding: stashing things away for later use, or at least to avoid being used by others. Taking more than you need, taking as much as you can, in fact taking everything that can be taken, is the underlying attitude that drives our world. This unifies all our supposedly distinct cultures under the one thing we have in common: that is being Takers. As opposed to this, the culture of the the Leavers takes enough to sustain themselves, and leaves the rest for the rest.
Cain and Abel
One more interesting concept explained in the book Ishmael is the biblical story of Cain and Abel, and what it is trying to symbolize. Looking back, it is so simple and straight forward that I’m surprised I hadn’t noticed it until I read Quinn. Abel being the herdsman represents nomadic pastoralism, becoming a victim to Cain, symbolizing agricultural society. From the point of view of the Hebrews, who practiced a pastoral lifestyle, this was certainly a tragedy, seeing Cain as the villain of the story. It’s worth the mention, though, that neither the pastoral Hebrews, nor the agricultural … Indo-europeans (?) were hunter-gatherers. That would be another story, known from the Bible as the one about the Garden of Eden.
Why Read Quinn’s Books?
So, even though the two books I mentioned here are no great literary masterpieces, for the ideas they convey I can highly recommend them. It’s true, they don’t offer any radically new views. If anything, they tackle age-old concepts, which have sunk down from common consciousness into the obscure, from where they have been slowly re-emerging in recent times. Hopefully, these radical concepts will reach mainstream again, where we won’t have to keep re-iterating the most basic truths:
We as humans are not separate from the rest of the ecosystem, the world was NOT created for us, and in order to live well, we must take into account everyone and everything.
Join LBRY To Get Your Own Copies!
If you are interested in reading these books, you can find them on my stortebeker channel at LBRY. If you are interested in joining LBRY, please follow my invite. You may also be interested in my other book reviews in my Bibliophilia series:
My 12 Most Recommendable Permaculture Readings
Another 12 Permaculture Books - Specialized Readings
Riane Eisler – The Chalice and the Blade
William McDonough and Michael Braungart - Cradle to Cradle
Charles Eisenstein - Sacred Economics
Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Charles C. Mann - 1491
Tom Wolfe - From Bauhaus to Our House
Ideas and Concepts of Daniel Quinn
B. Traven - The Death Ship and The Cotton Pickers
Books by Wladimir Kaminer
Remembering the Good Doctor Gonzo - Hunter S. Thompson
Tom Wolfe - The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Robert A. Wilson Expanding His Readers' Minds
Gary Jennings' Head-dive into Mexican History