Ishmael

by Daniel Quinn

  “Ah. Yes. Okay, I see it now.”

  6

  “So, what have we discovered here?”

  “We’ve discovered that any species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.”

  “Any species? Including man?”

  “Yes, obviously. That’s in fact what’s happening here.”

  “So you see that this—at least this—is not some mysterious wickedness peculiar to the human race. It isn’t some imponderable flaw in man that has made the people of your culture the destroyers of the world.”

  “No. The same thing would happen with any species, at least with any species strong enough to bring it off. Provided that every increase in food supply is answered by an increase in population.”

  “Given an expanding food supply, any population will expand. This is true of any species, including the human. The Takers have been proving this here for ten thousand years. For ten thousand years they’ve been steadily increasing food production to feed an increased population, and every time they’ve done this, the population has increased still more.”

  I sat there for a minute thinking. Then I said, “Mother Culture doesn’t agree.”

  “Certainly not. I’m sure she disagrees most strenuously. What does she say?”

  “She says it’s within our power to increase food production without increasing our population.”

  “To what end? Why increase food production?”

  “To feed the millions who’re starving.”

  “And as you feed them will you extract a promise that they will not reproduce?”

  “Well … no, that’s not part of the plan.”

  “So what will happen if you feed the starving millions?”

  “They’ll reproduce and our population will increase.”

  “Without fail. This is an experiment that has been performed in your culture annually for ten thousand years, with completely predictable results. Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population. Obviously it has to have this result, and to predict any other is simply to indulge in biological and mathematical fantasies.”

  “Even so …” I thought some more. “Mother Culture says that, if it comes to that, birth control will solve the problem.”

  “Yes. If you’re ever so foolish as to get into a conversation on this subject with some of your friends, you’ll find they heave a great sigh of relief when they remember to make this point. ‘Whew! Off the hook!’ It’s like the alcoholic who swears he’ll give up drink before it ruins his life. Global population control is always something that’s going to happen in the future. It was something that was going to happen in the future when you were three billion in 1960. Now, when you’re five billion, it’s still something that’s going to happen in the future.”

  “True. Nevertheless, it could happen.”

  “It could indeed—but not as long as you’re enacting this story. As long as you’re enacting this story, you will go on answering famine with increased food production. You’ve seen the ads for sending food to starving peoples around the world?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever seen ads for sending contraceptives?”

  “No.”

  “Never. Mother Culture talks out of both sides of her mouth on this issue. When you say to her population explosion she replies global population control, but when you say to her famine she replies increased food production. But as it happens, increased food production is an annual event and global population control is an event that never happens at all.”

  “True.”

  “Within your culture as a whole, there is in fact no significant thrust toward global population control. The point to see is that there never will be such a thrust so long as you’re enacting a story that says the gods made the world for man. For as long as you enact that story, Mother Culture will demand increased food production today—and promise population control tomorrow.”

  “Yes, I can see that. But I have a question.”

  “Proceed.”

  “I know what Mother Culture says about famine. What do you say?”

  “I? I say nothing, except that your species is not exempt from the biological realities that govern all other species.”

  “But how does that apply to famine?”

  “Famine isn’t unique to humans. All species are subject to it everywhere in the world. When the population of any species outstrips its food resources, that population declines until it’s once again in balance with its resources. Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from that process, so when she finds a population that has outstripped its resources, she rushes in food from the outside, thus making it a certainty that there will be even more of them to starve in the next generation. Because the population is never allowed to decline to the point at which it can be supported by its own resources, famine becomes a chronic feature of their lives.”

  “Yes. A few years ago I read a story in the paper about an ecologist who made the same point at some conference on hunger. Boy, did he get jumped on. He was practically accused of being a murderer.”

  “Yes, I can imagine. His colleagues all over the world understand perfectly well what he was saying, but they have the good sense not to confront Mother Culture with it in the midst of her benevolence. If there are forty thousand people in an area that can only support thirty thousand, it’s no kindness to bring in food from the outside to maintain them at forty thousand. That just guarantees that the famine will continue.”

  “True. But all the same, it’s hard just to sit by and let them starve.”

  “This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world’s divinely appointed ruler: ‘I will not let them starve. I will not let the drought come. I will not let the river flood.’ It is the gods who let these things, not you.”

  “A valid point,” I said. “Even so I have one more question on this.” Ishmael nodded me on. “We increase food production in the U.S. tremendously every year, but our population growth is relatively slight. On the other hand, population growth is steepest in countries with poor agricultural production. This seems to contradict your correlation of food production with population growth.”

  He shook his head in mild disgust. “The phenomenon as it’s observed is this: ‘Every increase in food production to feed an increased population is answered by another increase in population.’ This says nothing about where these increases occur.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “An increase in food production in Nebraska doesn’t necessarily produce a population increase in Nebraska. It may produce a population increase somewhere in India or Africa.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Every increase in food production is answered by an increase in population somewhere. In other words, someone is consuming Nebraska’s surpluses—and if they weren’t, Nebraska’s farmers would stop producing those surpluses, pronto.”

  “True,” I said, and spent a few moments in thought. “Are you suggesting that First World farmers are fueling the Third World population explosion?”

  “Ultimately,” he said, “who else is there to fuel it?”

  I sat there staring at him.

  “You need to take a step back from the problem in order to see it in global perspective. At present there are five and a half billion of you here, and, though millions of you are starving, you’re producing enough food to feed six billion. And because you’re producing enough food for six billion, it’s a biological certainty that in three or four years there will be six billion of you. By that time, however (even though millions of you will still be starving), you’ll be producing enough food for six and a half billion—which means that in another three or four years there will be six and a half billion. But by that time you’ll be producing enough food for seven billion (even though millions of you will still be starving), which again means that in
another three or four years there will be seven billion of you. In order to halt this process, you must face the fact that increasing food production doesn’t feed your hungry, it only fuels your population explosion.”

  “I see that. But how do we stop increasing food production?”

  “You do it the same way you stop destroying the ozone layer, the same way you stop cutting down the rain forests. If the will is there, the method will be found.”

  7

  “As you see, I left a book beside your chair,” Ishmael said.

  It was The American Heritage Book of Indians.

  “While we’re on or near the subject of population control, there’s a map of tribal locations there in the front that you may find illuminating.” After I’d studied it for a minute, he asked me what I made of it.

  “I didn’t realize there were so many. So many different peoples.”

  “Not all of them were there at the same time, but most of them were. What I’d like you to think about is what served to limit their growth.”

  “How is the map supposed to help?”

  “I wanted you to see that this was far from an empty continent. Population control wasn’t a luxury, it was a necessity.”

  “Okay.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “You mean from looking at the map? No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Tell me this: What do the people of your culture do if they get tired of living in the crowded Northeast?”

  “That’s easy. They move to Arizona. New Mexico. Colorado. The wide open spaces.”

  “And how do the Takers in the wide open spaces like that?”

  “They don’t. They put bumper stickers on their cars that say, ‘If you love New Mexico, go back where you came from.’”

  “But they don’t go back.”

  “No, they just keep coming.”

  “Why can’t the Takers of these areas stem the flood? Why can’t they limit the population growth of the Northeast?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t see how they could.”

  “So what you have is a gushing wellspring of growth in one part of the country that no one bothers to turn off, because the excess can always flow into the wide open spaces of the West.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Yet each of these states has a boundary. Why don’t those boundaries keep them out?”

  “Because they’re just imaginary lines.”

  “Exactly. All you have to do to transform yourself into an Arizonan is to cross that imaginary line and settle down. But the point to note is that around each of the Leaver peoples on that map was a boundary that was definitely not imaginary: a cultural boundary. If the Navajo started feeling crowded, they couldn’t say to themselves, ‘Well, the Hopi have a lot of wide open space. Let’s go over there and be Hopi.’ Such a thing would have been unthinkable to them. In short, New Yorkers can solve their population problems by becoming Arizonans, but the Navajo couldn’t solve their population problems by becoming Hopi. Those cultural boundaries were boundaries that no one crossed by choice.”

  “True. On the other hand, the Navajo could cross the Hopi’s territorial boundary without crossing their cultural boundary.”

  “You mean they could invade Hopi territory. Yes, absolutely. But the point I’m making still stands. If you crossed over into Hopi territory, they didn’t give you a form to fill out, they killed you. That worked very well. That gave people a powerful incentive to limit their growth.”

  “Yes, there is that.”

  “These were not people limiting their growth for the benefit of mankind or for the benefit of the environment. They limited their growth because for the most part this was easier than going to war with their neighbors. And of course there were some who made no great effort to limit their growth, because they had no qualms about going to war with their neighbors. I don’t mean to suggest that this was the peaceable kingdom of a Utopian dream. In a world where no Big Brother monitors everyone’s behavior and guarantees everyone’s property rights, it works well to have a reputation for fearlessness and ferocity—and you don’t acquire such a reputation by sending your neighbors curt notes. You want them to know exactly what they’ll be in for if they don’t limit their growth and stay in their own territory.”

  “Yes, I see. They limited each other.”

  “But not just by erecting uncrossable territorial boundaries. Their cultural boundaries had to be uncrossable too. The excess population of the Narraganset couldn’t just pack up and move out west to be Cheyenne. The Narraganset had to stay where they were and limit their population.”

  “Yes. It’s another case where diversity seems to work better than homogeneity.”

  8

  “A week ago,” Ishmael said, “when we were talking about laws, you said that there’s only one kind of law about how people should live—the kind that can be changed by a vote. What do you think now? Can the laws that govern competition in the community be changed by a vote?”

  “No. But they’re not absolutes, like the laws of aerodynamics. They can be broken.”

  “Can’t the laws of aerodynamics be broken?”

  “No. If your plane isn’t built according to the law, it doesn’t fly.”

  “But if you push it off a cliff, it stays in the air, doesn’t it?”

  “For a while.”

  “The same is true of a civilization that isn’t built in accordance with the law of limited competition. It stays in the air for a while, and then it comes down with a crash. Isn’t that what the people of your culture are facing here? A crash?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll ask the question another way. Are you certain that any species that, as a matter of policy, exempts itself from the law of limited competition will end by destroying the community to support its own expansion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what have we discovered here?”

  “We’ve discovered a piece of certain knowledge about how people ought to live. Must live, in fact.”

  “Knowledge that a week ago you said was unobtainable.”

  “Yes. But …”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t see how … Hold on for a minute.”

  “Take your time.”

  “I don’t see how to make this a source of knowledge in general. I mean, I don’t see any way to apply this knowledge in a general way, to other issues.”

  “Do the laws of aerodynamics show you how to repair damaged genes?”

  “No.”

  “Then what good are they?”

  “They’re good for … They enable us to fly.”

  “The law we’ve outlined here enables species to live—enables species to survive, including the human. It won’t tell you whether mood-altering drugs should be legalized or not. It won’t tell you whether premarital sex is good or bad. It won’t tell you whether capital punishment is right or wrong. It will tell you how you have to live if you want to avoid extinction, and that’s the first and most fundamental knowledge anyone needs.”

  “True. All the same …”

  “Yes?”

  “All the same, the people of my culture will not accept it.”

  “You mean the people of your culture will not accept what you’ve learned here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let’s be clear about what they will and will not accept. The law itself is beyond argument. It’s there, plainly in place in the community of life. What the Takers will deny is that it applies to mankind.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That hardly comes as a surprise. Mother Culture could accept the fact that mankind’s home is not the center of the universe. She could accept the fact that man evolved from the common slime. But she will never accept the fact that man is not exempt from the peace-keeping law of the community of life. To accept that would finish her off.”

  “So what are you saying? That it’s hopeless?”

  “Not at all. 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.”

  “True. But I don’t think people will let that happen.”

  Ishmael shrugged. “Then the law will do it for them. If they refuse to live under the law, then they simply won’t live. You might say that this is one of the law’s basic operations: Those who threaten the stability of the community by defying the law automatically eliminate themselves.”

  “The Takers will never accept that.”

  “Acceptance has nothing to do with it. You may as well talk about a man stepping off the edge of a cliff not accepting the effects of gravity. The Takers are in the process of eliminating themselves, and when they’ve done so, the stability of the community will be restored and the damage you’ve done can begin to be repaired.”

  “True.”

  “On the other hand, I think you’re being unreasonably pessimistic about this. I think there are a lot of people out there who know the jig is up and are ready to hear something new—who want to hear something new, just like you.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  9

  “I’m not quite satisfied with the way we’ve formulated this law,” I said.

  “No?”

  “We refer to it as a law, but it’s actually three laws. Or at any rate I described it as three laws.”

  “The three laws are branches. What you’re looking for is the trunk, which is something like, ‘No one species shall make the life of the world its own.’”

  “Yes, that’s what the rules of competition ensure.”

  “That’s one expression of the law. Here’s another: ‘The world was not made for any one species.’”

  “Yes. Then man was certainly not made to conquer and rule it.”

  “That’s too big a leap. In Taker mythology, the world needed a ruler because the gods had made a mess of it. What they’d created was a jungle, a howling chaos, an anarchy. But was it that in fact?”