Ishmael is a captivating story written by Daniel Quinn about a teacher, a gorilla named Ishmael who has the ability to speak telepathically, and a student with an eager desire to learn. Ishmael and the student begin to meet regularly while Ishmael teaches the student about the history of his culture and how things came to be. Throughout the story, Quinn successfully managed to completely change my opinion and outlook on how we, as humans, should take care of our world and the people who live on it. Eventually, Ishmael and his student reach towards the end of their discussion and try to figure out how to finish the story of his culture. The student comes to the conclusion that humans are flawed because they don’t know how to live. He explains
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I, too, took a moment to reflect and hypothesize a law that all species must live by. Once I yet again came to the conclusion that no such law exists, I continued to follow the story of this student and his teacher. After 4 days, the student came back with 4 laws. After much discussion, Ishmael and the student come to the conclusion that the law of all living things is simple: the law of limited competition. Essentially, the law states that a predator may compete to the best of its ability, but it may not stop their competitors from competing. The effect of breaking said law is that one would “end up with a community in which diversity is progressively destroyed in order to support the expansion of a single species.” Humans eliminate competitors, increase food supply, and then wonder what to do about the population explosion. The natural way of famine with any species is that when resources decrease, the population decreases as well to become once again balanced. Ishmael describes how Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from this law, and that when a population has fewer resources, she brings resources in from outside. However, bringing in food simply perpetuates the condition of …show more content…
Ishmael changed my perspective completely and brought me to understand how we need to change the world. While living according to this law would most likely aid in population control, Ishmael is correct in saying that humans won’t accept this law. The reason being that we think we’re in control of the world and how it works. As said in the beginning of Ishmael, God put humans on Earth to rule it. It’s the natural instinct of our culture to help a country in need by increasing our resources and sending it to them, but in the end their population simply produces more starving people, which leads to them needing more resources. It’s an endless and vicious cycle which will eventually end with a population too large and not enough resources. Essentially, as long as humans believe that God put them on this Earth to rule it, they will always increase food production and always put off population control. This law is one that humans must live by, or else we will ultimately either become extinct or destroy our Earth entirely. It is only once our culture accepts this law and abides by it that we can finally begin to repair the damage we have already
I, too, took a moment to reflect and hypothesize a law that all species must live by. Once I yet again came to the conclusion that no such law exists, I continued to follow the story of this student and his teacher. After 4 days, the student came back with 4 laws. After much discussion, Ishmael and the student come to the conclusion that the law of all living things is simple: the law of limited competition. Essentially, the law states that a predator may compete to the best of its ability, but it may not stop their competitors from competing. The effect of breaking said law is that one would “end up with a community in which diversity is progressively destroyed in order to support the expansion of a single species.” Humans eliminate competitors, increase food supply, and then wonder what to do about the population explosion. The natural way of famine with any species is that when resources decrease, the population decreases as well to become once again balanced. Ishmael describes how Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from this law, and that when a population has fewer resources, she brings resources in from outside. However, bringing in food simply perpetuates the condition of …show more content…
Ishmael changed my perspective completely and brought me to understand how we need to change the world. While living according to this law would most likely aid in population control, Ishmael is correct in saying that humans won’t accept this law. The reason being that we think we’re in control of the world and how it works. As said in the beginning of Ishmael, God put humans on Earth to rule it. It’s the natural instinct of our culture to help a country in need by increasing our resources and sending it to them, but in the end their population simply produces more starving people, which leads to them needing more resources. It’s an endless and vicious cycle which will eventually end with a population too large and not enough resources. Essentially, as long as humans believe that God put them on this Earth to rule it, they will always increase food production and always put off population control. This law is one that humans must live by, or else we will ultimately either become extinct or destroy our Earth entirely. It is only once our culture accepts this law and abides by it that we can finally begin to repair the damage we have already