Ishmael

by Daniel Quinn

  “But not for all people. Each Leaver people has a system that works well for them because it evolved among them; it was suited to the terrain in which they lived, suited to the climate in which they lived, suited to the biological community in which they lived, suited to their own peculiar tastes, preferences, and vision of the world.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this kind of knowledge is called what?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Someone who knows what works well for people has what?”

  “Well … wisdom?”

  “Of course. Now, you know that the knowledge of what works well for production is what’s valued in your culture. In the same way, the knowledge of what works well for people is what’s valued in Leaver cultures. And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall, just as every time they stamp out a species of life, a life form ultimately tested since the birth of life disappears from the world beyond recall.”

  “Ugly,” I said.

  “Yes,” Ishmael said. “It is ugly.”

  9

  After a few minutes of head-scratching and earlobe-tugging, Ishmael sent me away for the night.

  “I’m tired,” he explained. “And I’m too cold to think.”

  ELEVEN

  1

  The drizzle continued, and when I arrived at noon the next day there wasn’t even anyone around to bribe. I had picked up two blankets for Ishmael at an Army-Navy store—and one for myself to keep him in countenance. He accepted them with gruff thanks but seemed glad enough to put them to use. We sat for a while wallowing in our misery, then he reluctantly began.

  “Shortly before my departure—I don’t remember what occasioned the question—you asked me when we were going to get to the story enacted by the Leavers.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Why are you interested in knowing that story?”

  The question nonplussed me. “Why wouldn’t I be interested in knowing it?”

  “I’m asking what the point is, in your mind. You know that Abel is all but dead.”

  “Well … yes.”

  “Then why learn the story he was enacting?”

  “Again, why not learn it?”

  Ishmael shook his head. “I don’t care to proceed on that basis. The fact that I can’t give you reasons for not learning something doesn’t supply me with a reason for teaching it.”

  He was clearly in a bad mood. I couldn’t blame him, but I couldn’t much sympathize either, since it was he who had insisted on having it this way.

  He said: “Is it just a matter of curiosity for you?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. You said in the beginning that two stories have been enacted here. I now know one of them. It seems natural that I’d want to know the other one.”

  “Natural …” he said, as if it wasn’t a word he much liked. “I wish you could come up with something that has a bit more heft. Something that would give me the feeling I wasn’t the only one here who was supposed to be using his brain.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  “I know you don’t, and that’s what irks me. You’ve become a passive listener here, turning your brain off when you sit down and turning it on when you get up to leave.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Then tell me why it isn’t just a waste of time for you to learn a story that is now all but extinguished.”

  “Well, I don’t consider it a waste of time.”

  “That’s not good enough. The fact that something is not a waste of time does not inspire me to do it.”

  I shrugged helplessly.

  He shook his head, totally disgusted. “You really do think that learning this would be pointless. That’s obvious.”

  “It’s not obvious to me.”

  “Then you think it has a point?”

  “Well … yes.”

  “What point?”

  “God … I want to learn it, that’s the point.”

  “No. I won’t proceed on that basis. I want to proceed, but not if all I’m doing is satisfying your curiosity. Go away and come back when you can give me some authentic reason for going on.”

  “What would an authentic reason sound like? Give me an example.”

  “All right. Why bother to learn what story is being enacted here by the people of your own culture?”

  “Because enacting that story is destroying the world.”

  “True. But why bother learning it?”

  “Because that’s obviously something that should be known.”

  “Known by whom?”

  “By everyone.”

  “Why? That’s what I keep coming back to. Why, why, why? Why should your people know what story they’re enacting as they destroy the world?”

  “So they can stop enacting it. So they can see that they’re not just blundering as they do what they do. So they can see that they’re involved in a megalomaniac fantasy—a fantasy as insane as the Thousand Year Reich.”

  “That’s what makes the story worth knowing?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Now go away and come back when you can explain what makes the other story worth knowing.”

  “I don’t need to go away. I can explain it now.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “People can’t just give up a story. That’s what the kids tried to do in the sixties and seventies. They tried to stop living like Takers, but there was no other way for them to live. They failed because you can’t just stop being in a story, you have to have another story to be in.”

  Ishmael nodded. “And if there is such a story, people should hear about it?”

  “Yes, they should.”

  “Do you think they want to hear about it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think you can start wanting something till you know it exists.”

  “Very true.”

  2

  “And what do you suppose this story is about?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you suppose it’s about hunting and gathering?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Be honest. Haven’t you been expecting some noble paean to the mysteries of the Great Hunt?”

  “I’m not aware of expecting anything like that.”

  “Well, you should at least know that it’s about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about the destiny of man.”

  “Yes.”

  “As I’ve said half a dozen times, man became man enacting this story. You should remember that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “How did man become man?”

  I examined that one for booby traps and gave it back. “I’m not sure what the question means,” I said. “Or rather I’m not sure what kind of answer you want. Obviously you don’t want me to say that man became man by evolving.”

  “That would just mean that he became man by becoming man, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the question is still there waiting to be answered: How did man become man?”

  “I suppose it’s one of those very obvious things.”

  “Yes. If I gave you the answer, you’d say, ‘Oh. Well of course, but so what?’”

  I shrugged, defeated.

  “We’ll have to approach it obliquely then—but keep it in mind as a question that needs answering.”

  “Okay.”

  3

  “According to Mother Culture, what kind of event was your agricultural revolution?”

  “What kind of event … I’d say that, according to Mother Culture, it was a technological event.”

  “No implication of deeper human resonances, cultural or religious?”

  “No. The first farmers were just neolithic technocrats. That’s the way it’s always seemed.”

  “But after our look at chapt
ers three and four of Genesis, you see there was a great deal more to it than Mother Culture teaches.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was and is a great deal more to it, of course, since the revolution is still in progress. Adam is still chewing the fruit of that forbidden tree, and wherever Abel can still be found, Cain is there too, hunting him down, knife in hand.”

  “That’s right.”

  “There’s another indication that the revolution goes deeper than mere technology. Mother Culture teaches that, before the revolution, human life was devoid of meaning, was stupid, empty, and worthless. Prerevolutionary life was ugly. Detestable.”

  “Yes.”

  “You believe that yourself, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Certainly most of you believe it, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who would be the exceptions?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose … anthropologists.”

  “People who actually have some knowledge of that life.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Mother Culture teaches that that life was unspeakably miserable.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Can you imagine any circumstances in which you yourself would trade your life for that sort of life?”

  “No. Frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would, given the choice.”

  “The Leavers would. Throughout history, the only way the Takers have found to tear them away from that life is by brute force, by wholesale slaughter. In most cases, they found it easiest just to exterminate them.”

  “True, But Mother Culture has something to say about that. What she says is that the Leavers just didn’t know what they were missing. They didn’t understand the benefits of the agricultural life, and that’s why they clung to the hunting-gathering life so tenaciously.”

  Ishmael smiled his sneakiest smile. “Among the Indians of this country, who would you say were the fiercest and most resolute opponents of the Takers?”

  “Well … I’d say the Plains Indians.”

  “I think most of you would agree with that. But before the introduction of horses by the Spanish, the Plains Indians had been agriculturalists for centuries. As soon as horses became readily available, they abandoned agriculture and resumed the hunting-gathering life.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, now you do. Did the Plains Indians understand the benefits of the agricultural life?”

  “I guess they must have.”

  “What does Mother Culture say?”

  I thought about that for a while, then laughed. “She says they didn’t really understand. If they had, they would never have gone back to hunting and gathering.”

  “Because that’s a detestable life.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can begin to see how thoroughly effective Mother Culture’s teachings are on this issue.”

  “True. But what I don’t see is where this gets us.”

  “We’re on our way to discovering what lies at the very root of your fear and loathing of the Leaver life. We’re on our way to discovering why you feel you must carry the revolution forward even if it destroys you and the entire world. We’re on our way to discovering what your revolution was a revolution against.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “And when we’ve done all that, I’m sure you’ll be able to tell me what story was being enacted here by the Leavers during the first three million years of human life and is still being enacted by them wherever they survive today.”

  4

  Having spoken of survival, Ishmael shuddered and sank down into his blankets with a kind of moaning sigh. For a minute he seemed to lose himself in the tireless drumming of rain on the canvas overhead, then he cleared his throat and went on.

  “Let’s try this,” he said. “Why was the revolution necessary?”

  “It was necessary if man was to get somewhere.”

  “You mean if man was to have central heating and universities and opera houses and spaceships.”

  “That’s right.”

  Ishmael nodded. “That sort of answer would have been acceptable when we began our work together, but I want you to go deeper than that now.”

  “Okay. But I don’t know what you mean by deeper.”

  “You know very well that for hundreds of millions of you, things like central heating, universities, opera houses, and spaceships belong to a remote and unattainable world. Hundreds of millions of you live in conditions that most people in this country can only guess at. Even in this country, millions are homeless or live in squalor and despair in slums, in prisons, in public institutions that are little better than prisons. For these people, your facile justification for the agricultural revolution would be completely meaningless.”

  “True.”

  “But though they don’t enjoy the fruits of your revolution, would they turn their backs on it? Would they trade their misery and despair for the sort of life that was lived in prerevolutionary times?”

  “Again, I’d have to say no.”

  “This is my impression as well. Takers believe in their revolution, even when they enjoy none of its benefits. There are no grumblers, no dissidents, no counterrevolutionaries. They all believe profoundly that, however bad things are now, they’re still infinitely preferable to what came before.”

  “Yes, I’d say so.”

  “Today I want you to get to the root of this extraordinary belief. When you’ve done that, you’ll have a completely different understanding of your revolution and of the Leaver life as well.”

  “Okay. But how do I do that?”

  “By listening to Mother Culture. She’s been whispering in your ear throughout your life, and what you’ve heard is no different from what your parents and grandparents heard, from what people all over the world hear daily. In other words, what I’m looking for is buried in your mind just as it’s buried in all your minds. Today I want you to unearth it. Mother Culture has taught you to have a horror of the life you put behind you with your revolution, and I want you to trace this horror to its roots.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s true that we have something amounting to a horror of that life, but the trouble is, this just doesn’t seem particularly mysterious to me.”

  “It doesn’t? Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a life that leads nowhere.”

  “No more of these superficial answers. Dig.”

  With a sigh, I scrunched down inside my blanket and proceeded to dig. “This is interesting,” I said a few minutes later. “I was sitting here thinking about the way our ancestors lived, and a very specific image popped into my head fully formed.”

  Ishmael waited for me to go on.

  “It has a sort of dreamlike quality to it. Or nightmarish. A man is scrabbling along a ridge at twilight. In this world it’s always 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’s running and running and running, as if he were on a treadmill. It is a treadmill, because tomorrow at twilight he’ll be there running still—or running again. But there’s more than hunger and desperation driving him. He’s terrified as well. Behind him on the ridge, just out of sight, his enemies are in pursuit to tear him to pieces—the lions, the wolves, the tigers. And so he has to stay on that treadmill forever, forever one step behind his prey and one step ahead of his enemies.

  “The ridge, of course, represents the knife-edge of survival. The man lives on the knife-edge of survival and has to struggle perpetually to keep from falling off. Actually it’s as though the ridge and the sky are in motion instead of him. He’s running in place, trapped, going nowhere.”

  “In other words, hunter-gatherers lead a very grim life.”

  “Yes.”

  “And why is it grim?”

  “Because it’s a struggle just to stay
alive.”

  “But in fact it isn’t anything of the kind. I’m sure you know that, in another compartment of your mind. Hunter-gatherers no more live on the knife-edge of survival than wolves or lions or sparrows or rabbits. Man was as well adapted to life on this planet as any other species, and the idea that he lived on the knife-edge of survival is simply biological nonsense. As an omnivore, his dietary range is immense. Thousands of species will go hungry before he does. His intelligence and dexterity enable him to live comfortably in conditions that would utterly defeat any other primate.

  “Far from scrabbling endlessly and desperately for food, hunter-gatherers are among the best-fed people on earth, and they manage this with only two or three hours a day of what you would call work—which makes them among the most leisured people on earth as well. In his book on stone age economics, Marshall Sahlins described them as ‘the original affluent society.’ And incidentally, predation of man is practically nonexistent. He’s simply not the first choice on any predator’s menu. So you see that your wonderfully horrific vision of your ancestors’ life is just another bit of Mother Culture’s nonsense. If you like, you can confirm all this for yourself in an afternoon at the library.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So?”

  “So now that you know that it’s nonsense, do you feel differently about that life? Does it seem less repulsive to you?”

  “Less repulsive maybe. But still repulsive.”

  “Consider this. Let’s suppose you’re one of this nation’s homeless. Out of work, no skills, a wife the same, two kids. Nowhere to turn, no hope, no future. But I can give you a box with a button on it. Press the button and you’ll all be whisked instantly back to prerevolutionary times. You’ll all be able to speak the language, you’ll all have the skills everyone had then. You’ll never again have to worry about taking care of yourself and your family. You’ll have it made, you’ll be a part of that original affluent society.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, do you press the button?”

  “I don’t know. I have to doubt it.”