May 4, 2023 • 20 mins
We’re all on our own quest to live more meaningful, healthy, and fruitful lives.
To more fully understand the situation we’re in, we’re going to have to expand our scope in geography and time.
This is a sociological examination of the personal, and a psychological examination of the social.
Alex takes you back in time to a fateful childhood summer when the world was a magical place to explore, yet seemed like it was ending just as he was getting to know it.
It was then that Alex first read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, the book that begins the quest of Human Nature Odyssey.
If you’d like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcasts, leave us a review, and visit humannatureodyssey.com.
Join us on Patreon and get exclusive access to audio extras, writings, and notes.
Music: Celestial Soda Pop
By: Ray Lynch
From the album: Deep Breakfast
Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI
All rights reserved.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You walk into your local bookstore,
the smell of worn and used book pages
blend with fresh coffeebrewing behind the counter
as you peruse the various selections,you stop at the self-help section.
There are books that offer ways to helpyou heal your anxiety, depression,
addiction, loneliness, stress, anger
(00:20):
with titles and subtitles that readHelp Me Help You Help Yourself.
Seven Highly Effective Distractionsfrom 13 Bad Habits.
Two ThingsYou Can do to forgive your mother
and how they will helpyou get out of bed on time.
You don't quite knowwhat's wrong with you,
so you just take this stack of booksand fall into an armchair.
You're not alone.
We're all on our own quest to live moremeaningful, healthy and fruitful lives.
(00:44):
Many of us feel we're out of balancewith ourselves that something is
missing or not quite right.
To better understand
ourselves, we might try to understandthe greater context in which we live.
Maybe you startby examining your identity.
What group am I a part of?
How do I fit into somethingbigger than me?
To more fully understandthe situation we're in,
(01:04):
we're going to have to expand our scopein geography and time.
Don't worry,you can stay in that cozy chair and finish
the simmering macchiato you just ordered.
But we need to expand our scopebecause you are living the latest chapter
in a 10,000 years story.
It's the story of a complex civilization
(01:26):
with ancient roots,bizarre rituals and strange customs.
It wields power that overmillennia has grown so enormous
it has transformed the worldinto its own image.
And then
you were born.
Oh, hello.
Just thrown into this mess at a time when,even though this civilization
is seemingly at its most powerful,
(01:48):
it may not have the powerto withstand its own demise.
And I thought I needed a self-help book.
I mean, if there was ever someone
who could use a helping handand a little healing.
It's civilization by understandingthe history and nature of civilization.
We can better understand ourselves.
And in turn,by better understanding ourselves,
can we better graspwhat is happening on a macro scale?
(02:11):
This is a sociological examinationof the personal
and a psychological examinationof the social.
Welcome the episodeOne of Human Nature Odyssey.
I'm outside.
(02:49):
Let me tell you a little more about thepodcast overall, and then we'll dove in.
This is
a podcast about mythology, philosophy
and human history with a broad scope.
Human beings, just like us, have
existedfor hundreds of thousands of years,
but then around 10,000 years ago,in several
(03:09):
isolated pockets around the world,something started to change
and it gave rise to somethingwe tend to call civilization.
What the heck happened?
Or we could ask instead what is happening
since it hasn't really stopped,just gotten larger.
Empires come and go, but we'll look atcivilization as a continuous phenomenon.
(03:31):
After all, the American empireis no more separate from the Roman
or even Sumerian empiresthan a leaf is separate from the tree.
In Human Nature Odyssey,you'll be finding patterns,
connecting dots and exploring the rootsof our present moment.
We'll be asking, What is civilization?
It's a loaded term.
(03:51):
Is civilization inevitable?
Inherently self-destructive?
Is it an imaginary game?
Come to life like Frankenstein's monster.
Civilization is a thing humans build,
but it also seems to have amind in the logic of its own.
And for a
long time I've been completely obsessedwith these questions.
In fact,I can remember the very first time
(04:13):
I started asking them,and it was the same summer I read a book
that has impacted memore than any other book
I've ever read.
Now on I will divide the booksI have read into two categories
the ones I read before Ishmaeland those right after.
This is a quote blurb thingon the front cover of this book
(04:35):
we were assigned to read over the summerbreak before starting ninth grade.
Yeah, I didn't want to read this book.
I didn't want to think aboutreading this book.
I don't even want to think about anythingrelated to scored on do anything for it.
I just finished the brutal torturethat was middle school
and I had two and a half monthsbefore going into high school.
The summer was my time, finally
(04:56):
for just a couple of monthsand enough to get up at the crack of dawn,
to get on some school bus or be talkedat by a series of adults for 8 hours
straight with five minute breaksin between to get from class to class.
I definitely shouldn'thave to read some book,
so I'm not actually,I've got a better idea.
Let's get out of the house.
Come on.
I'm taking you with me
(05:17):
just down the stairs,past the screen door.
Out on the sidewalk.
Let's walk.
This is where I grew up,where I first learned about the world
and where I spent most of my childhoodexistence.
(05:41):
Where are we?
Yeah. Okay.
How to explain?
It's an odd sort of land, though.
Maybe not too different from yours.
I could say it's in the United States,but that doesn't tell you anything really.
The United States is an idea,an imaginary place.
Where are we in the actual world?
Well,this is the land in between what's called
the endless mountainsof central Pennsylvania to the west,
(06:04):
these rolling green hillswith farmland filled valleys
and the pinebarrens of New Jersey to the east.
These scraggly, sandy, dark forestswith iron rich crimson water.
In the middle of those placesare two rivers.
The school and the Delaware.
Both running south and where they meetis the city of Philadelphia
(06:26):
or just north of the city here.
Eventually, when I graduate and leave homeand tell people where I grew up,
they'll say, Oh,so you don't live in the city?
Yeah, well, it was close.
It was five blocksaway from the city line.
When I go to China, King and CBS.But okay, fine.
I wasn't in the city.
This is suburbia.
A very specific feature of civilization.
(06:46):
And sure, on the surface, it'sjust a bunch of two
storeybrick houses, sidewalks and stop signs.
But a little kid,there can be magic anywhere.
Trees and bushes lined our backyardsand connected us to the neighbors
and other streets.
Adults knew not to cross theseinvisible lines, but us kids didn't care.
The neighborhood kids would meet upand play imaginary games.
(07:09):
As you grow up in suburbia,
you start to learn some neighborhoodetiquette and unsaid rules.
For starters,
you can't treat your neighborhoodlike a borderless playground any longer.
You mostly have to stay on the sidewalkand keep off your neighbor's lawn.
You learn what's private and off limits,which it turns out most of the land around
you is.
(07:30):
The kids
retreated to their basements, litby bright screens and played.
Imaginary game is built by tech companies.
Side note The adults who complain kidsstay inside staring at screens
too much are
the same adults who built neighborhoodswith nowhere for kids to explore.
So as a kid, I'm thinking,What is this strange world I'm in?
What kind of land is this?
No food grows here.
(07:51):
You can't drink the water
that runs in streams and creeksbecause it's polluted with sewage.
You weren't allowed to explore the land.
I'm completely alienatedfrom my surroundings, alienated
from the people around me.
It felt like growing up in a penwith narrow corridors
to travel back and forththrough by the summer before high school.
This all felt really weird to me.
(08:12):
I wanted the landto explore and be part of.
All right.
We've spent enough time on this street.I'm going to take you to a special place.
I found down the street to PleasantHill Road,
which winds slightly
up a subtle hill to the left.
(08:34):
Make a
right on Oak Lane,and then you'll get to the intersection
of Oak Lane Road and Ashbourne.
This intersection became like a gatewayinto another world
for me.
Okay.
Looks like there's a lots of carshere now.
(08:55):
We've got to let them die down a bit.
And when no one's looking.
Check it out.
If we scramble through these thicketsand bushes.
Watch out for the thorns.
Okay.
You see it there?
That really old house builta stone covered in vines.
(09:19):
Tree branchesbreak through dark, empty windows.
You can barely see it from the street.
It's totally abandoned, which makes it
the perfect place to explore.
Someone once told me This Old Housewas one of the first constructed
by William Pennand the Quakers over 300 years ago
when they founded the City of Philadelphiaand the state of Pennsylvania.
(09:41):
William Penn must not have liked the ruleswhere he came from
either and needed a new placeto explore the land the Quakers came to.
Was the same one we're in now.
You know, the one in betweenthe endless mountains and Pine Barrens.
Before Penn,this was the land of the wannabe people
whose land I spent my entire childhoodin Benue, very little about
(10:03):
300 or so years ago, William Pennand the Quakers
stopped along the Delaware Riverand apparently were friendly with wannabe.
At least that's the story I remember.
And Philadelphia,which is Latin for the City of Brotherly
Love, was founded when the new settlerswanted to expand West.
They made a friendly deal with on topthat they would expand no further.
(10:24):
And how far a man could walk in the day?
How far could you walk in a day?
And basically the deal was however farthat was.
That's where the Quakers would stayand they'd leave.
The rest of the wannabe landlord, though,wind up being honorable people.
Or at least not thinking anyone could getvery far in those pantaloons.
Agreed.
The settlers, being less honorable,cleared a path through the woods
(10:47):
and got the fastest runner
they could find to sprintas far as they could in one day.
William Penn Sons called itPenn's Woods or Pennsylvania.
Those guys like that. And there you go.
Hundreds of years passed and now there'snowhere left for a kid to really explore
except for one place.
Just wait till you see this
(11:08):
past the old abandoned house
through some more thickets in silence.
There it is.
Like a whole other world.
Ashbourne Country Club.
Once you cross the road and pass
the metal fences lined with tall bushes,
you're hidden out of sight.
(11:32):
You're free.
An oasis in a desert of asphaltand concrete.
Hills, meadows, trees.
No neighborhood etiquette.
No adults, no one.
When I first stepped foot in here,it was like coming to a mythical land.
(11:53):
The empty buildingson the old country club lay like ruins
of a lost civilization.
Just a few years ago,this country club was just another part of
the suburban sprawl.But now that it was abandoned,
I got to noticesomething pretty incredible happen
back in my neighborhood.
When the leaves fall
there, raked and collected,putting the trash bags and taken away.
(12:14):
But here in the abandonedAshbourne Country
Club, when the leaves fall,they blanket the ground.
In my neighborhood, when the grass growstoo tall, it's mowed down to a stubble.
But here, in the abandonedland of Ashbourne,
it grows into a chest highgrassland outside Ashbourne.
If the sidewalks crack
and a weed grows through it,the weed is cut, the crack is filled.
(12:36):
But here the weed grows and splintersthe asphalt around it.
Over the years, I got to watch the golfcourse turn to milkweed filled meadow.
Sand traps slowly were hidden by mossand small plants.
The private pool turned into a lilypad pond complete with croaking frogs
and acorns
and dirt piled up on the abandoned roofsof the old country club buildings.
(12:59):
By the time I left for college, there wasa small oak tree growing on the roof.
Here, the
outside suburban sound of leaf blowersand power tools
competed with the sound of birds and wind.
I wanted the names of all the treesin which birds liked, which trees
come here after school,and instead of doing my homework,
(13:20):
I lay on the grassand feel like I belonged.
The land William Penn in the settlerscovered up
was getting to breathe again.
One evening out on the golfcourse turned wild prairie.
I watched the sunset over the buddingyoung forest
just as the moon was rising overthe ivy covered fences,
(13:44):
a mist spread across the field, and a deer
and her fawn slowly crept out and munchedon the grass under the moonlight.
I cried,and not in some beautiful cinematic way.
Just a sad, quiet cry.
I cried not just because this felt like
my real homeland,but because I knew that it wouldn't last.
(14:07):
I understood that one day, probably soon.
Ashbourne was going to be taken backand developed.
Everything undeveloped gets developed.
No one has to tell you that.
It's one of those rulesthat goes without saying.
You can see it everywhere.
I knew the reasons too,and they weren't unreasonable.
You know, the land could be usedfor more houses, for more people
(14:28):
to live in, or businessesthat could lower the tax rate.
You know,all important adult real world stuff.
I was a kid, but I got it. I understood.
But part of me still felt they weren'tgoing to be developing Ashbourne.
They were going to destroy it.
And I was going to lose Ashbournejust as I was getting to know it.
I felt like thatabout the whole world, too.
(14:49):
Just as I was learning, icebergs existed.
I was learning they were melting.
The oceans were acidifying.
The rainforests were disappearing.
Well, fuck, I thought I just got here.
The way
the real world was pitched to meby adults was that eventually you grow up,
you stop playing imaginary games,and you deal with real world problems.
(15:11):
But he was the biggest problem of all,
and it kind of seemed likeno one was doing jack shit about it.
I felt betrayed.
I thought no one else cared.
I thought I was alone.
Later, I'd find out there were lotsof kids feeling a lot of the same way.
A friend in college told me to himit felt like we were all committing
mass suicide.
(15:31):
And you expect me to go homeand just do my homework?
But you have to do your homeworkor else you won't get into a good college
or get a good job.
And it wasn't just about going to collegeand getting a job.
School made it clearthe stakes were higher than that.
This wasn't a game. This was serious shit.
They wouldn't quite come out and say it,but really there was a desperation to it.
Do your homework and get a job.
Because if you don't, you'renot going to make enough money to eat.
(15:54):
You might not have enough to live.
Why? Schooltaught you all sorts of things,
but it never quite taught you why.
But for now, it was summer vacation.
This was the greatest freedoma kid could find.
But here I was, stuckhaving to read some stupid book
named Ishmaelby some guy named Daniel Quinn.
(16:16):
When I read Ishmael that summer
when I was 14,I remember not being impressed.
At first it was just a boring summerreading assignment.
But slowly, Ishmaelturned out to be like the wildflowers
growing through the crack in the asphaltof the abandoned parking lot.
Ishmael spoke to the things that feltso weird to me, gave context
to the strange culture I was born into,how things came to be this way.
(16:40):
And then the end.
How things might be different.
It wasn't an ordinary bookto give to students.
And Mr.
Wellman, my ninth grade Englishteacher, was not an ordinary teacher.
The ideas in that book plantedseeds in my mind, and it was Mr.
Whitman who helped those seeds grow.
He discussed it with us in class,adding his own questions and connections.
(17:01):
Remember when we were talkingabout understand
reading the greater contextin which we live at the beginning?
This is the teacher in the bookthat really first got me started on that
and the seeds in my mind this book plantedhave been growing ever since.
Ishmael is a book to wrestlewith to challenge the question.
It was written in the early 1990s andspeaks a specific language of its time.
(17:21):
It's a little outdated.
It's kind of written a historically notconnected to existing schools of thought.
But but I love this book.
I've got to agree with that quoteon the front cover of the book.
From now, I will divide the booksI have read into two categories
the ones I read beforeIshmael and those right after.
The subtitle of
Ishmael is an Adventureof the Mind and Spirit.
(17:45):
Together in this podcast,we're going to go on that adventure,
and this is how Human NatureOdyssey will begin.
If we're going
to create some kind of self-helpguide for society.
Ishmael is a good place to start.
Over the next series of episodeswill explore Ishmael and his ideas
about humanity, civilization,and our place in the world.
(18:08):
You don't have to have read Ishmaelby any means.
This won't be a book review.
This episodes will be inspired by Ishmael.
But it's not Ishmael.
And if you have read Ishmael, considerthis a companion analysis and commentary.
Like my high school English teacher,
I'll be sharing Ishmael with youin my own ways.
I'll guide us through the book,but a lot of it will be my own thoughts,
additions and challenges to the materials.
(18:30):
These are the ideasI want to share with you, and maybe
you'll be moved to add your own as well.
Thanks for listening.
In episode two,
we're going to begin our adventure ofthe mind and spirit and dove into Ishmael.
Until next time, I hope you'llconsider the land you grew up in.
What were the main landmarks?
(18:51):
What's the story of that place?
Where can you explore
tactician?
Thank you to Nick, Maggie, Dana, Joeand Hanin for helping create this episode.
Also, thank you to the StonyBrook University podcast Fellows
for all your support.
A theme music is celestial soda by whichyou can find the link in a show notes.
(19:14):
And if you'd like to support HumanNature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever
you enjoy your podcasts with this reviewand visit Human Nature Odyssey dot com.
Also, we do have a patron where you'llfind additional content just for you.
Each month there'll be eithera bonus audio episode that dives deeper
into specific subjects,unpublished writings and mini essays,
(19:35):
or my recommendations for reading,watching, listening
on these topicswith my notes and commentary.
Your support makes this endeavor possible,and I'd love to hear what you think.
So leave a message on the patronand be a part of
the conversation.
You walk into your local bookstore,
the smell of worn and used book pages
blend with fresh coffeebrewing behind the counter
as you peruse the various selections,you stop at the self-help section.
There are books that offer ways to helpyou heal your anxiety, depression,
addiction, loneliness, stress, anger
(00:20):
with titles and subtitles that readHelp Me Help You Help Yourself.
Seven Highly Effective Distractionsfrom 13 Bad Habits.
Two ThingsYou Can do to forgive your mother
and how they will helpyou get out of bed on time.
You don't quite knowwhat's wrong with you,
so you just take this stack of booksand fall into an armchair.
You're not alone.
We're all on our own quest to live moremeaningful, healthy and fruitful lives.
(00:44):
Many of us feel we're out of balancewith ourselves that something is
missing or not quite right.
To better understand
ourselves, we might try to understandthe greater context in which we live.
Maybe you startby examining your identity.
What group am I a part of?
How do I fit into somethingbigger than me?
To more fully understandthe situation we're in,
(01:04):
we're going to have to expand our scopein geography and time.
Don't worry,you can stay in that cozy chair and finish
the simmering macchiato you just ordered.
But we need to expand our scopebecause you are living the latest chapter
in a 10,000 years story.
It's the story of a complex civilization
(01:26):
with ancient roots,bizarre rituals and strange customs.
It wields power that overmillennia has grown so enormous
it has transformed the worldinto its own image.
And then
you were born.
Oh, hello.
Just thrown into this mess at a time when,even though this civilization
is seemingly at its most powerful,
(01:48):
it may not have the powerto withstand its own demise.
And I thought I needed a self-help book.
I mean, if there was ever someone
who could use a helping handand a little healing.
It's civilization by understandingthe history and nature of civilization.
We can better understand ourselves.
And in turn,by better understanding ourselves,
can we better graspwhat is happening on a macro scale?
(02:11):
This is a sociological examinationof the personal
and a psychological examinationof the social.
Welcome the episodeOne of Human Nature Odyssey.
I'm outside.
(02:49):
Let me tell you a little more about thepodcast overall, and then we'll dove in.
This is
a podcast about mythology, philosophy
and human history with a broad scope.
Human beings, just like us, have
existedfor hundreds of thousands of years,
but then around 10,000 years ago,in several
(03:09):
isolated pockets around the world,something started to change
and it gave rise to somethingwe tend to call civilization.
What the heck happened?
Or we could ask instead what is happening
since it hasn't really stopped,just gotten larger.
Empires come and go, but we'll look atcivilization as a continuous phenomenon.
(03:31):
After all, the American empireis no more separate from the Roman
or even Sumerian empiresthan a leaf is separate from the tree.
In Human Nature Odyssey,you'll be finding patterns,
connecting dots and exploring the rootsof our present moment.
We'll be asking, What is civilization?
It's a loaded term.
(03:51):
Is civilization inevitable?
Inherently self-destructive?
Is it an imaginary game?
Come to life like Frankenstein's monster.
Civilization is a thing humans build,
but it also seems to have amind in the logic of its own.
And for a
long time I've been completely obsessedwith these questions.
In fact,I can remember the very first time
(04:13):
I started asking them,and it was the same summer I read a book
that has impacted memore than any other book
I've ever read.
Now on I will divide the booksI have read into two categories
the ones I read before Ishmaeland those right after.
This is a quote blurb thingon the front cover of this book
(04:35):
we were assigned to read over the summerbreak before starting ninth grade.
Yeah, I didn't want to read this book.
I didn't want to think aboutreading this book.
I don't even want to think about anythingrelated to scored on do anything for it.
I just finished the brutal torturethat was middle school
and I had two and a half monthsbefore going into high school.
The summer was my time, finally
(04:56):
for just a couple of monthsand enough to get up at the crack of dawn,
to get on some school bus or be talkedat by a series of adults for 8 hours
straight with five minute breaksin between to get from class to class.
I definitely shouldn'thave to read some book,
so I'm not actually,I've got a better idea.
Let's get out of the house.
Come on.
I'm taking you with me
(05:17):
just down the stairs,past the screen door.
Out on the sidewalk.
Let's walk.
This is where I grew up,where I first learned about the world
and where I spent most of my childhoodexistence.
(05:41):
Where are we?
Yeah. Okay.
How to explain?
It's an odd sort of land, though.
Maybe not too different from yours.
I could say it's in the United States,but that doesn't tell you anything really.
The United States is an idea,an imaginary place.
Where are we in the actual world?
Well,this is the land in between what's called
the endless mountainsof central Pennsylvania to the west,
(06:04):
these rolling green hillswith farmland filled valleys
and the pinebarrens of New Jersey to the east.
These scraggly, sandy, dark forestswith iron rich crimson water.
In the middle of those placesare two rivers.
The school and the Delaware.
Both running south and where they meetis the city of Philadelphia
(06:26):
or just north of the city here.
Eventually, when I graduate and leave homeand tell people where I grew up,
they'll say, Oh,so you don't live in the city?
Yeah, well, it was close.
It was five blocksaway from the city line.
When I go to China, King and CBS.But okay, fine.
I wasn't in the city.
This is suburbia.
A very specific feature of civilization.
(06:46):
And sure, on the surface, it'sjust a bunch of two
storeybrick houses, sidewalks and stop signs.
But a little kid,there can be magic anywhere.
Trees and bushes lined our backyardsand connected us to the neighbors
and other streets.
Adults knew not to cross theseinvisible lines, but us kids didn't care.
The neighborhood kids would meet upand play imaginary games.
(07:09):
As you grow up in suburbia,
you start to learn some neighborhoodetiquette and unsaid rules.
For starters,
you can't treat your neighborhoodlike a borderless playground any longer.
You mostly have to stay on the sidewalkand keep off your neighbor's lawn.
You learn what's private and off limits,which it turns out most of the land around
you is.
(07:30):
The kids
retreated to their basements, litby bright screens and played.
Imaginary game is built by tech companies.
Side note The adults who complain kidsstay inside staring at screens
too much are
the same adults who built neighborhoodswith nowhere for kids to explore.
So as a kid, I'm thinking,What is this strange world I'm in?
What kind of land is this?
No food grows here.
(07:51):
You can't drink the water
that runs in streams and creeksbecause it's polluted with sewage.
You weren't allowed to explore the land.
I'm completely alienatedfrom my surroundings, alienated
from the people around me.
It felt like growing up in a penwith narrow corridors
to travel back and forththrough by the summer before high school.
This all felt really weird to me.
(08:12):
I wanted the landto explore and be part of.
All right.
We've spent enough time on this street.I'm going to take you to a special place.
I found down the street to PleasantHill Road,
which winds slightly
up a subtle hill to the left.
(08:34):
Make a
right on Oak Lane,and then you'll get to the intersection
of Oak Lane Road and Ashbourne.
This intersection became like a gatewayinto another world
for me.
Okay.
Looks like there's a lots of carshere now.
(08:55):
We've got to let them die down a bit.
And when no one's looking.
Check it out.
If we scramble through these thicketsand bushes.
Watch out for the thorns.
Okay.
You see it there?
That really old house builta stone covered in vines.
(09:19):
Tree branchesbreak through dark, empty windows.
You can barely see it from the street.
It's totally abandoned, which makes it
the perfect place to explore.
Someone once told me This Old Housewas one of the first constructed
by William Pennand the Quakers over 300 years ago
when they founded the City of Philadelphiaand the state of Pennsylvania.
(09:41):
William Penn must not have liked the ruleswhere he came from
either and needed a new placeto explore the land the Quakers came to.
Was the same one we're in now.
You know, the one in betweenthe endless mountains and Pine Barrens.
Before Penn,this was the land of the wannabe people
whose land I spent my entire childhoodin Benue, very little about
(10:03):
300 or so years ago, William Pennand the Quakers
stopped along the Delaware Riverand apparently were friendly with wannabe.
At least that's the story I remember.
And Philadelphia,which is Latin for the City of Brotherly
Love, was founded when the new settlerswanted to expand West.
They made a friendly deal with on topthat they would expand no further.
(10:24):
And how far a man could walk in the day?
How far could you walk in a day?
And basically the deal was however farthat was.
That's where the Quakers would stayand they'd leave.
The rest of the wannabe landlord, though,wind up being honorable people.
Or at least not thinking anyone could getvery far in those pantaloons.
Agreed.
The settlers, being less honorable,cleared a path through the woods
(10:47):
and got the fastest runner
they could find to sprintas far as they could in one day.
William Penn Sons called itPenn's Woods or Pennsylvania.
Those guys like that. And there you go.
Hundreds of years passed and now there'snowhere left for a kid to really explore
except for one place.
Just wait till you see this
(11:08):
past the old abandoned house
through some more thickets in silence.
There it is.
Like a whole other world.
Ashbourne Country Club.
Once you cross the road and pass
the metal fences lined with tall bushes,
you're hidden out of sight.
(11:32):
You're free.
An oasis in a desert of asphaltand concrete.
Hills, meadows, trees.
No neighborhood etiquette.
No adults, no one.
When I first stepped foot in here,it was like coming to a mythical land.
(11:53):
The empty buildingson the old country club lay like ruins
of a lost civilization.
Just a few years ago,this country club was just another part of
the suburban sprawl.But now that it was abandoned,
I got to noticesomething pretty incredible happen
back in my neighborhood.
When the leaves fall
there, raked and collected,putting the trash bags and taken away.
(12:14):
But here in the abandonedAshbourne Country
Club, when the leaves fall,they blanket the ground.
In my neighborhood, when the grass growstoo tall, it's mowed down to a stubble.
But here, in the abandonedland of Ashbourne,
it grows into a chest highgrassland outside Ashbourne.
If the sidewalks crack
and a weed grows through it,the weed is cut, the crack is filled.
(12:36):
But here the weed grows and splintersthe asphalt around it.
Over the years, I got to watch the golfcourse turn to milkweed filled meadow.
Sand traps slowly were hidden by mossand small plants.
The private pool turned into a lilypad pond complete with croaking frogs
and acorns
and dirt piled up on the abandoned roofsof the old country club buildings.
(12:59):
By the time I left for college, there wasa small oak tree growing on the roof.
Here, the
outside suburban sound of leaf blowersand power tools
competed with the sound of birds and wind.
I wanted the names of all the treesin which birds liked, which trees
come here after school,and instead of doing my homework,
(13:20):
I lay on the grassand feel like I belonged.
The land William Penn in the settlerscovered up
was getting to breathe again.
One evening out on the golfcourse turned wild prairie.
I watched the sunset over the buddingyoung forest
just as the moon was rising overthe ivy covered fences,
(13:44):
a mist spread across the field, and a deer
and her fawn slowly crept out and munchedon the grass under the moonlight.
I cried,and not in some beautiful cinematic way.
Just a sad, quiet cry.
I cried not just because this felt like
my real homeland,but because I knew that it wouldn't last.
(14:07):
I understood that one day, probably soon.
Ashbourne was going to be taken backand developed.
Everything undeveloped gets developed.
No one has to tell you that.
It's one of those rulesthat goes without saying.
You can see it everywhere.
I knew the reasons too,and they weren't unreasonable.
You know, the land could be usedfor more houses, for more people
(14:28):
to live in, or businessesthat could lower the tax rate.
You know,all important adult real world stuff.
I was a kid, but I got it. I understood.
But part of me still felt they weren'tgoing to be developing Ashbourne.
They were going to destroy it.
And I was going to lose Ashbournejust as I was getting to know it.
I felt like thatabout the whole world, too.
(14:49):
Just as I was learning, icebergs existed.
I was learning they were melting.
The oceans were acidifying.
The rainforests were disappearing.
Well, fuck, I thought I just got here.
The way
the real world was pitched to meby adults was that eventually you grow up,
you stop playing imaginary games,and you deal with real world problems.
(15:11):
But he was the biggest problem of all,
and it kind of seemed likeno one was doing jack shit about it.
I felt betrayed.
I thought no one else cared.
I thought I was alone.
Later, I'd find out there were lotsof kids feeling a lot of the same way.
A friend in college told me to himit felt like we were all committing
mass suicide.
(15:31):
And you expect me to go homeand just do my homework?
But you have to do your homeworkor else you won't get into a good college
or get a good job.
And it wasn't just about going to collegeand getting a job.
School made it clearthe stakes were higher than that.
This wasn't a game. This was serious shit.
They wouldn't quite come out and say it,but really there was a desperation to it.
Do your homework and get a job.
Because if you don't, you'renot going to make enough money to eat.
(15:54):
You might not have enough to live.
Why? Schooltaught you all sorts of things,
but it never quite taught you why.
But for now, it was summer vacation.
This was the greatest freedoma kid could find.
But here I was, stuckhaving to read some stupid book
named Ishmaelby some guy named Daniel Quinn.
(16:16):
When I read Ishmael that summer
when I was 14,I remember not being impressed.
At first it was just a boring summerreading assignment.
But slowly, Ishmaelturned out to be like the wildflowers
growing through the crack in the asphaltof the abandoned parking lot.
Ishmael spoke to the things that feltso weird to me, gave context
to the strange culture I was born into,how things came to be this way.
(16:40):
And then the end.
How things might be different.
It wasn't an ordinary bookto give to students.
And Mr.
Wellman, my ninth grade Englishteacher, was not an ordinary teacher.
The ideas in that book plantedseeds in my mind, and it was Mr.
Whitman who helped those seeds grow.
He discussed it with us in class,adding his own questions and connections.
(17:01):
Remember when we were talkingabout understand
reading the greater contextin which we live at the beginning?
This is the teacher in the bookthat really first got me started on that
and the seeds in my mind this book plantedhave been growing ever since.
Ishmael is a book to wrestlewith to challenge the question.
It was written in the early 1990s andspeaks a specific language of its time.
(17:21):
It's a little outdated.
It's kind of written a historically notconnected to existing schools of thought.
But but I love this book.
I've got to agree with that quoteon the front cover of the book.
From now, I will divide the booksI have read into two categories
the ones I read beforeIshmael and those right after.
The subtitle of
Ishmael is an Adventureof the Mind and Spirit.
(17:45):
Together in this podcast,we're going to go on that adventure,
and this is how Human NatureOdyssey will begin.
If we're going
to create some kind of self-helpguide for society.
Ishmael is a good place to start.
Over the next series of episodeswill explore Ishmael and his ideas
about humanity, civilization,and our place in the world.
(18:08):
You don't have to have read Ishmaelby any means.
This won't be a book review.
This episodes will be inspired by Ishmael.
But it's not Ishmael.
And if you have read Ishmael, considerthis a companion analysis and commentary.
Like my high school English teacher,
I'll be sharing Ishmael with youin my own ways.
I'll guide us through the book,but a lot of it will be my own thoughts,
additions and challenges to the materials.
(18:30):
These are the ideasI want to share with you, and maybe
you'll be moved to add your own as well.
Thanks for listening.
In episode two,
we're going to begin our adventure ofthe mind and spirit and dove into Ishmael.
Until next time, I hope you'llconsider the land you grew up in.
What were the main landmarks?
(18:51):
What's the story of that place?
Where can you explore
tactician?
Thank you to Nick, Maggie, Dana, Joeand Hanin for helping create this episode.
Also, thank you to the StonyBrook University podcast Fellows
for all your support.
A theme music is celestial soda by whichyou can find the link in a show notes.
(19:14):
And if you'd like to support HumanNature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever
you enjoy your podcasts with this reviewand visit Human Nature Odyssey dot com.
Also, we do have a patron where you'llfind additional content just for you.
Each month there'll be eithera bonus audio episode that dives deeper
into specific subjects,unpublished writings and mini essays,
(19:35):
or my recommendations for reading,watching, listening
on these topicswith my notes and commentary.
Your support makes this endeavor possible,and I'd love to hear what you think.
So leave a message on the patronand be a part of
the conversation.
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