June 8, 2023 • 37 mins
Why can’t we seem to stop destroying the world? Like seriously though?
Ishmael, the telepathic gorilla from Daniel Quinn’s philosophical novel, suggests we’re captives of a society where our individual society depends on our collective destruction.
As we embark on our quest through the landscape of ideas in Quinn’s novel, we’ll travel to a dystopian future where Nazi Germany won the war, meet our long lost furry and feathery cousins, explore a sinister layer where villainous henchman plot the end of the world, conduct an investigation into a planet-wide crime scene, and meet the gorilla we’ve all been waiting for.
If you’d like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcasts, leave us a review, and visit humannatureodyssey.com.
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Citations
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992)
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/01/world/sixth-mass-extinction-accelerating-intl/index.html
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/un-environment-programme_us_684562
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0959378094900035
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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https://amazon.com/music/player/albums/B000QQXURI
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https://open.spotify.com/track/2THDVIVytLuGX7S7UghuC1?si=20ea63807bba401f
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Imagine Nazi Germany won the war.
Yeah, it's really not good.
But they managed to pull it offand win the war.
Hitler's 1000 yearReich wasn't a total flop after all.
They conquered Europe and North America
and kept on conqueringuntil they took over the whole world.
(00:25):
And now many generations have passed,
and all memory of other peoplesand other cultures
have been erased.
The remaining people still livinglook and speak
and think exactly like all Nazis should.
In fact, for the children growing upin this dystopia, their school textbooks
(00:48):
don't even bring up the peoplesand other cultures that once existed.
And maybe at first, the textbooks wereactively whitewashing history.
But eventually, these textbooksdon't mention other peoples and cultures
and ways of thinking because the authorsdon't even know they once existed.
I'll read you what happens next.
(01:11):
But one day, twoyoung students were conversing
at the University of New Heidelbergin Tokyo.
One of them looked vaguely worriedand unhappy.
That was Kurt.
His friend said, What's wrong, Kurt?
Why are you always moping aroundlike this?
Kurt said, I'll tell you, Hans,
there is something that's troubling meand troubling me deeply.
(01:34):
His friend asked what it was.
It's like Kurt said,I can't shake the crazy feeling
that there is some small thingthat we're being lied
to about.
(02:24):
This parable is from the novel Ishmael,
an adventure of the mind and spirit.
Together,we are setting off on this adventure
and this student's curiosity.
The suspicion that things aren't rightand don't have to be this way
is the gateway to our quest.
Welcome to
Episode two of Human Nature Odyssey,
(02:46):
a search for better ways to understandand more clearly experience.
The incredible, terrified,lying and ridiculous world we live in.
I'm Alex.
Consider me your trusty sidekick.
I'll be the Sam to your Frodo,the scarecrow to your Dorothy,
the Chewbacca, to your Han Solo.
(03:09):
At the beginning of any adventure,
the hero begins their journeyin some kind of peaceful land.
For Dorothy, that was Kansas.
For Frodo Baggins, that was the Shire.
Luke Skywalker,that was his tattooing moisture farm.
So in our episode, I took youto the abandoned Ashbourne Country Club.
(03:31):
That was my of mind.
I wonder if you have a place,a special spot, where you started
your journey from.
To begin our journeymeans to leave those places.
But even though we leave them,a piece of them stays with us.
Well, I'm excited to go on this adventurewith you today.
(03:51):
The lands will travel through whatmight be treacherous and full of danger.
But I trust that togetherwe'll make it out the other side
in this first series of episodes, we'regoing to explore the ideas in the book.
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
Ishmael is a philosophical novelabout a telepathic gorillas, conversations
with a human narrator, exploring ideas
(04:14):
about humanity, civilization,and the fate of the world.
For anyone who has already read
Ishmael and is looking for a deeperanalysis of the ideas it raises.
This is for you.
And if you haven't read Ishmael,don't worry.
I've also made this for someone coming inentirely fresh.
Ideally, you're a personwho is curious about the world.
And maybe when you were a kid,you also felt things weren't quite right.
(04:44):
It's morning.
You haven't eaten yet.
You're already on the Internet.
You're scrolling throughwhatever the latest social media is.
There's a postpredicting the next financial crash.
You scroll a bitmore and find a news headline
about a distant warand the resulting famine.
A little further,there's a report from the U.N.
about how the rate of species
(05:06):
die off may be faster than scientistsinitially predicted.
And then you find this an ad that reads,Teacher seeks
pupil must have an earnest desireto save the world.
Apply in person.
Huh. What's your reaction?
Would you be excited?
Ignore it or think it was total bullshit?
(05:29):
Well, that's the adthe narrator of Ishmael is confronted
with, and it's how the book begins.
We're never given our narrator's name.
We just start with him in his kitchenwhen he finds this ad.
The book takes place in the early 1990,so instead of finding the ad
growing the Internet,the narrator finds it in the newspaper.
Eitherway, clearly this isn't a normal ad,
(05:52):
and our narrator's
reaction is complete disgust.
I mean, teacher. Six, pupil.
Give me a break. Oh.
An earnest desire to save the world.
Yeah, that's rich. Real rich.
Here's how the book begins.
Quote,The first time I read the ad, I choked
and coerced and spatand threw the paper to the floor.
Since even this didn'tseem to be quite enough, I snatched it up,
(06:15):
marched into the kitchenand shoved it in the trash, unquote.
The narrator tries to justify to ushis absolute
revulsionof finding the ad in the first place.
He tells us he was a child in the 1960s
when he had this sensethat, sure, things were terrifying.
There's the Vietnam War, the constantthreat of nuclear annihilation,
(06:37):
the assassinations of a presidentand leaders of the civil rights movement.
But it seemed likethings were really changing.
The whole world was changing.
Things would be better.
Quote, during the children'sevil of the sixties and seventies.
I was just old enough to understandwhat these kids had in mind.
They meant to turn the world upside down
and just young enough to believethey might actually succeed.
(07:00):
It's true.
Every morning when I open my eyes,I expected to see that the new era
had begun, that the sky was brighter blueand the grass brighter green.
I expected to hear laughter in the airand see people dancing the streets.
And not just kids. Everyone.
I won't apologize for my naivete.
You only have to listen to the songsto know I wasn't alone, unquote.
(07:23):
It's hard for me and
maybe for you, too, to imaginegrowing up in a time like this.
I remember first reading that descriptionof the optimistic outlook.
The narrator had as a kid in the sixtiesand thinking to myself how Damn, that is
not what the world seemed like to meas I was growing up.
Things only seemed more bleak over time.
There was 911 in the war on terror,Hurricane Katrina
(07:46):
and rising seas, a financial recessionand increasing wealth inequality.
Things haven't exactly gotten bettersince I was a kid, but
growing up in the early 21st century,I didn't really expect them to.
But that kind of cynical outlookwasn't the case for the narrator.
To him and maybe other kids of the 1960s,the future seemed hopeful.
(08:06):
There was a sense in the youthcounterculture that society might wake
up from its bad dream.
Then things
changed, but not in the waythe counterculture was hoping.
Instead of waking up from a nightmare,the narrator tells us he
then became a young adult in a timewhen it felt like the countercultural
vision itself was the dream,just a fantasy, and nothing existed
(08:29):
beyond the cold, hard realityof the current state of the world.
He says, quote,Then one day when I was in my mid-teens,
I woke up and realized that the new erawas never going to begin.
The revolt hadn't been put down.
It had just dwindled awayinto a fashion statement.
Can I have been the only personin the world who was disillusioned
by this?
(08:50):
Bewildered by this, it seems so.
Everyone else seemed to be able
to pass it off with a cynical grinthat said, Well, what did you expect?
There's never been any more than this,and never will be any more than this.
Nobody's out to save the world becausenobody gives a damn about the world.
That was just a bunch of goofykids talking.
Get a job, make some money, workday or 60, then moved to Florida and die.
(09:12):
Unquote. My God.
As a millennial, first of all, I'mexpecting to have to work way past 60,
but I kind of imagine the equivalentof this moment would be like waking up
one morning to find outno one cares about social justice anymore.
No one cares about gender equality,ending white supremacy.
No one's anti-capitalist.
(09:32):
That whole thing where masses of youngpeople push for social change
was just looked at as naive overidealistic history.
And not thatthose ideals were ever actually realized,
but nobody would even pretendthey care about them anymore.
That's the millennial versionof the sixties ending.
So there's the ad.
(09:52):
Teacher seeks pupil must havean earnest desire to save the world.
To save the world.
Saving the world kind of sounds crunchyin my 21st century years.
I got to say.
First of all,
no one wants to talk to the guywho says he wants to save the world.
I don't want to talk to that guy.
Second, it's like sayingyou're going to end all war and hunger.
(10:13):
I don't think it's going to happen.
Good luckeven trying to fix the electoral system.
I mean, I'll give you a medalif you can get the signal
to fix that potholeat the end of your street.
But I guess all the ad is really saying is
you need to have a desireto save the world in earnest.
Desire.
And when I was 14, reading Ishmaelfor the first time,
saving the worlddidn't sound corny to me at all.
(10:34):
I remember watching this documentaryon overfishing in high school
environmental science classand just wanting to, like,
flip the desks over and scream.
The world can't be destroyed.
I really felt that deeply.
I definitely had an earnest desireback then, and I think since then
I kind of lost that feeling or it's burieddeeper down somewhere.
(10:55):
Maybe I feel less hopeful in the world.
Or maybe I feel lesshopeful in my ability to help.
How about you?
How do we get in touch with that again?
Can we try something?
An interactive activity.
Okay,
let's look around and notice
our surroundings for a bit.
(11:18):
Whether you're insideor outside in the car,
walking down the street, lying in bed,
what's the tiniest living creatureyou can find where you are?
Is there a bird on the telephone wire?
A fly buzzing around your room?
Maybe a tree out your window.
Or a succulent gifted by a friend.
(11:41):
If you're in a particularly lifelessenvironment,
just remember the last pigeon you saw.
Let's watchor imagine this other being for a bit.
What's it up to?
If there's a direct line
going back from us all the wayto the first form of life.
(12:02):
That creature you're seeing
and you are cousins, your family
and Ishmael refers
to this family as the community of life,
which means millions of years ago,our distant ancestors
and that tiny creatures,distant ancestors were the same species,
just a couple of cousins hanging out.
(12:23):
And maybe there was some kind of familydrama, and one cousin moved out of town
to go do its own thing.
And millions of years went by
until that cousins descendantsbecame that tiny creature.
Meanwhile, our ancestors took their ownevolutionary path.
Can you imagine your ancestorsas they evolved from single celled
organisms, fish underwater,reptiles on land, rodents hiding in holes,
(12:48):
primates singing through treesto homo sapiens to you.
It's a billions of yearsold legacy we've inherited.
I want to tell youabout three of our cousins in our family,
the community of life.
There's the golden bamboo lemurin Madagascar,
the yellow tipped tree snail in Hawaii,
(13:10):
and the spics macaw in Brazil.
Each of those cousinshas had their own distinct journey,
but there's somethingthese three species have in common.
Their stories ended in the last few years
when they went extinct.
Early on in Ishmail,there's this statistic that says
(13:31):
200 species go extinct every day.
Wait, what?
200 speciesevery day. That can't be right.
That would mean. What?
So I googled it just to make sure.
I found this article from CNNthat references a study
from the University of Mexicothat found between the year 2001
(13:52):
to 2014, 173 species went extinct. Oh,
okay.
I mean, 173.
It's still not good,but it's not as bad, right?
Wait, so where the hell didDaniel Quinn get that number?
200 species a day.
You think that would bea useful thing to say?
(14:13):
And, well, I kept Googling.
Then I found this Guardian articledetailing a 2010 report
from the United Nations saying
150 to 200
species of plants,insects, birds and mammals
go extinct every 24 hours.
Oh, crap.
(14:33):
Okay, wait.
So why are the numbers so different?
Enough Googling. I got to talk to someone.
So I reached out to Gerda Keller,professor of paleontology
and geology in the GeosciencesDepartment of Princeton University.
She studiesthe most recent mass extinction,
the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
So maybe she'd have insight to ask,
(14:58):
is it truethat 200 species are going extinct
every day?
I think much more.
If you look at the endangered
the number of endangered speciesthat are barely hanging on.
They're not really viable populations.
They can go in any droughtor any bad year.
(15:19):
So the first article that I sent youis when I was looking into this
is there's a University of Mexico studiesthat CNN is talking about, saying
that 173 species went extinct between2001 2014.
I mean, that is that is an interestingarticle in terms of large
vertebrates, mammals for the most part.
(15:43):
It's not a very high numberas far as extinctions are going.
It was interesting, though, for them
to concentrate on that because it's it'sone of the
the large ones is what is on our mind.
It's more emotionally impactful,I suppose, for people to,
(16:05):
you know, the large mammalsthat we identify with.
Yeah.
The elephants and the bison.
To talk about the extinction of those.
Yeah. Let me tell you.
Okay.
If I write a paper and I tell you,
5000 species of insects
go extinct every year and say, so what?
(16:25):
They don't bother me.
Hopefully it's the mosquitoes,so I don't have to worry about them.
So what does
extinction look like normally versus now?
Normally, over about a million years,
you may lose 3 to 5 species
just three or five species total.
That's not even just a lot ofwhat is documented from the fossil record.
(16:50):
For example, the background rate.
Nothing to write home about here.
Two species that a species disappears.
It's the mass extinctions that
that start to bother us.
The first book that we're looking at
is this novel calledIshmael by Daniel Quinn.
(17:11):
And there's this line early on in the book
that mentions that 200 species are goingextinct today.
I remember reading thatwhen I was quite young, and as a human
we could think like, okay, well,200 species are going extinct today.
That doesn't affect me.
Like, you know, I'm at the top of the foodchain.
I'll still be fine.
(17:32):
And he makes the metaphor that, you know,if you live in a tower
and you live at the top of the towerand every day you take out 200 bricks
from the bottom of the tower, you'renot going to be atop that tower very long.
Yeah, mostly we think of ourselves.
We are the top dogs.
No question about it.
Top of the food chain.
So the dinosaurs being on top of the food
(17:55):
chain is not a good place to be,
not when things are getting critical.
It's already up therewhere it's affecting humans.
It really is following the playbookof all the other mass
extinctions, only much, much faster.
(18:19):
Oh, okay.
Hold up.
At this point,you might be saying to yourself,
oh, geez,is this going to be one of those things?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.The world's going to shit.
I get it.
I've seen Avatar.
The destruction of the world is obvious.
It's cliche, the truth is,
maybe it's too painful to think about.
Then there's the perspectivethat goes, okay.
(18:40):
Okay. Yeah.
The six mass extinction
life, as we know, may come to an end,but nature will be fine.
Give it a few million yearsand life going to bounce right back, okay?
Sure.
If that helps you sleep at night.
But listen, we've inheriteda pretty unbelievably amazing biodiversity
legacy here.
It's an unfathomable miracle.
(19:02):
Think of that tiny creatureyou're sharing space with from earlier
and all the other speciesthat share this world with us.
The squirrels and pandas and dolphins,
silverback gorillas and great whitesharks, honey badgers and peacocks,
clownfish kangaroos, octopi, jaguars,
komodo dragons, hippos,penguins, seahorse, camels, even pigeons.
(19:27):
These are our
cousins, our literal cousinsand the community of life.
We evolved with them.They evolved with us.
It's an indescribable,incredible legacy we've inherited
and it's a legacythat we're bringing to an end.
We're here together right now
on this planet,like some big family picnic.
What kind of family member ruinsthe picnic for everybody else?
(19:51):
When the narrator findsthe head must have an earnest desire
to save the world,he throws it in the trash.
He doesn't want to think about that.
Little doeshe know this is his call to adventure.
There's something inside himthat, despite his adult cynicism,
has some takingthe crumpled ad out of the trash
and going to see for himselfwhat it could be about.
(20:13):
And for us, just getting depressed aboutthe world ending doesn't help anyone.
When the Luke Skywalker finds his familymoisture farm
on tattooingburned to the ground by the evil empire.
Sure, it's devastating, but it's also thebeginning of his adventure.
And in our real
world, the stakes are incredibly high.
(20:34):
But this is our call to adventure.
So even though there's part of methat still thinks wanting to save
the world is corny,there's still part of me,
like the ad says,that has an earnest desire
to do so.
A crime is being committed
(20:55):
here on a planetary scale,and it's not an incoming
asteroid from outer spaceor volcanic eruptions.
It's us.
What gives?
Were we doomed to destroy the world?
Was it inevitable?
Is there something wrong with us
(21:17):
to help us investigate these questions
about this planet earth crime scene?
I've just received a tip from a compellinglead.
Let's go check it out.
We're going to descenddeep down into a secret and
sinister underground lair.
I know nothing ever good
(21:37):
happens in an underground lair,and this one is particularly seedy.
Imagine as you'redescending down into the dark
stairs, this evil music is playing.
Sitting around a long black table
is the kind of mean looking henchmanyou'd expect to find out here.
A tough underling,a terrifying assassin, and, of course,
(21:59):
an eyepatch wearing right handman at the head of the table.
A mean looking,hairless cat sits on the ring,
bearing lap of the mastermindbehind it all.
Like all evil masterminds, he's bald
with an ominous scarthat covers half his face.
He wears an evil looking gray suit
(22:20):
and his name conveniently
is Doctor Evil,
and he's assembled his henchmen
to reveal his new, sinister plan.
It's a maniacal contraptionthat can alter the climate, destroy
the ozone layer, and threaten the healthof all the people in the world.
(22:40):
Unfortunately for Doctor Evil,
his plan has been thwartedbefore it's even begun.
His eyepatch, wearing right handman informs him
that Sorry to report this doc,but it's already happening.
What do you mean?
The evil mastermind asks.
Well,the world is already being destroyed.
(23:04):
And it's true.
But in reality, this isn't the resultof some evil mastermind plan.
There's no secret roomwhere bad guys plot the world's demise.
That's the joke the 1990s comedyclassic Austin Powers is making.
We don't need bad guysto destroy the world.
So who's doing it?
Well, to answer that, we can leave theseevil henchmen and return to our main story
(23:27):
from the nineties that dealswith the more complicated nuance.
Real life destruction of the world.
It's time to meet Ishmael.
All right.
Let's follow the narratorand go meet this mysterious teacher.
So you arrive at the address given
in the newspaper, the narrator tells us.
When I got there, I was surprised to findit was a very ordinary sort of office
(23:52):
building full of second rate flatslawyers, dentists, travel
agents, a chiropractorand a private investigator, too.
I'd expected somethinga little more atmospheric.
A brownstone with paneledwalls, high ceilings
and shuttered windows, perhaps inkwell.
(24:12):
The narrator finds room 105
behind the back and without therebeing a sign or anything.
Steps inside.
Let's go inside with him.
I pushed it openand stepped into a large, empty room.
This uncommon space had been createdby knocking down interior partitions,
the marks of which could still be seenon the bare hardwood floor.
(24:33):
That was my first impression.
Emptiness.
The second was olfactory.
The place reeked of the circus inkwell.
So you're there with a narratorand you notice a bunch of books
on the walls about history,prehistory, anthropology,
and then you notice a large glass pane
and behind it, some leafy stalks.
(24:55):
But that's not all.
Emerging from the shadows of thisglass section is
maybe the last thing you thoughtyou'd find inside this office building.
A gorilla.
A large five and a half foottall silverback gorilla.
And he's looking right at you.
This is Ishmael.
(25:17):
Soon you learnthat Ishmael is no ordinary gorilla.
He's a telepathic gorilla.
And he shares with youhis whole life story of being captured
and taken from his family in the jungleand put on display at a traveling circus
where he became furiously
curious at his conditionand that of the humans around him
and dedicated his life to holding oneon one conversations with curious pupils
(25:42):
in an attempt to examinewhy things have to be this way.
And ultimately, Ishmael proposes,
they don't go
on our adventure of the mind and spirit.
Ishmael will be our guide.
Like Gandalf or Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Or Glinda the Good Witch in Wizard of Oz.
Like a good hero's journey guide.
(26:04):
Ishmael won't always be with us,but we'll find he'll come and help us
when we need him most.
Ishmael
asks the narrator to first ponderthe question
Who wants to destroy the world?
(26:27):
Unlike the evildoers,from our field trip to the underground
lair, obviouslyno one wants to destroy the world.
Not even the people benefiting
most from the world's destructionand don't want the world to end.
Because then there's no world,not even for the rich.
And the rest of us certainly don'twant the world to end either.
Yet we still driving.
Cars fly and planes heat.
(26:48):
Our homes, core homes run, our applianceseat, packaged foods made in factories,
order things onlineboth necessary and less necessary.
As Ishmaelputs it, each of us, in our own small way,
quote, contributes dailyto the destruction of the world, unquote.
And destruction is one way to put it.
(27:08):
Another wayis the consumption of the world.
We're using the world to feedus, clothes us, transport us, keep us warm
and protected, make weapons to make sureothers aren't warm and protected
so they can't stop usfrom being warm and protected.
We use the world for our convenience,for our luxury,
our entertainment, andif we're all helping to destroy the world.
(27:29):
But no one actually wants to.
Well,then maybe we should reframe our question.
Why don't we stop destroying the world?
Is it out of ignorance?
I don't know how many people are trulyunaware of our impact on the world.
Is it greed?
Is the destructionbecause people care more
about their personal gainand the state of the world?
(27:51):
Certainly there's those. This is true for.
But even the low income farmer in Brazilworking to clear the Amazon
rainforest for farmland, that destructionisn't amassing the much material wealth.
They're doing itjust to get by to feed their family.
So many of us are just tryingto get through the day.
We're not plotting outthe destruction of the world.
(28:13):
We're just trying to live our lives.
And that's the bizarre thing.
We live in a society where our individual
survivaldepends on our collective suicide.
What kind of
advanced society would find itselfin this predicament?
In the first chapter, Ishmael tells us
(28:34):
the subject he teaches is captivity.
And as a gorilla growing up in cages, he'squite familiar with this topic.
Ishmael suggests that we too are captive
compelled to quote, to go ondestroying the world in order to live.
Unquote.
And unlike the caged animals in the zoo,
the bars of our cage harder to see.
(28:58):
Ishmael is not sayingthat we don't have personal agency
or responsibility for our actions.
The gorilla in the cage can still chooseto climb the fake tree or bear
its teeth to the gawking visitors.
There are plenty of choiceswithin our captivity
and also the quality of our confinementcan change drastically
from person to person.
I mean, some people are literallyimprisoned in cages
(29:19):
while others walk the streetswherever they want to.
A few people even have enough moneyto casually fly into space.
Yet even
for those of us who experienceprivileges, others don't.
Is that evidence of our freedomor just evidence of being treated
relatively betterwithin the context of a greater captivity?
(29:40):
Okay, we're captive, but captive by here.
Well, I got a list of suspects here.
First, there's those in power.
Yeah. How about those in power?
Fair culprit. After all,they are in power.
They make the rules and enforce them.
How much freedom do even the leadersand rulers of countries really have?
(30:03):
After all, if a leader goesagainst the grain, that person
generally has a limited timebeing in charge.
Leaders are maybe more like surfersriding the momentum of a wave.
The same is true for the very wealthy.
Jeff Bezos made his wealth not by goingagainst society, but by riding the wave
of crossing those in
(30:25):
power and the very wealthy offthe list of potential captors.
Who else?
Who? Most of my list.
And wrote down the Illuminati. Come on.
Some people are convinced
that there must be secret rulerswho control society behind the scenes
because there's got to besomeone behind it.
All right.
Maybe that's more comfortingto think than the idea
(30:45):
that no person or groupis truly in control of our captivity.
But the insight, Ishmael, the gorilla hasis that in our society,
the zookeepers are locked inside as well.
All right.
All right.
It's not the Illuminati at this point.
You might be thinking, well,yeah, dude, it's
a systemic issue, right?
(31:08):
Okay, you're good. We're getting closer.
Let me draw a circleor put an asterisks next to this system.
Suspect
others throughout
history have recognizedthe systemic nature of our captivity
in some way, like the countercultureof the sixties that are narrated.
Grew up in.
It's the system, man.
We got to stop the system.
(31:29):
Ishmael proposesthe reason why the Sixties counterculture
didn't break out of this systemis because, quote,
they were unable to find the barsof our cage, unquote.
If we're going to escape our captivity,we need to first find the bars.
So what the heck is thissystem we're talking about?
(31:50):
Now, I know there's folks out herewho were thinking, Alex,
if you don't bring up capitalismin the next
5 seconds, I swear to the Lord, I'mgiving this podcast less than one star.
Okay, fair point.
Capitalism,
I mean, yeah, if you'relooking for a system that compels
people inside it to destroy the world,just in order to get by.
That is a prime example.
(32:11):
But what if capitalism isn'tthe source of our captivity?
But just the latest,most streamlined expression of it.
Because it's not like the Soviet
Union was a beaconof environmental sustainability.
In fact, by the 1980s,the USSR was apparently responsible
for one and a half times the amount of airpollution as the US was back then.
(32:32):
So there's something elseunderlying these industrial systems,
whether they're capitalistor an authoritarian centralized economy.
And Ishmael has a suspect in mind,and it's our job to investigate.
Okay, cue the People's Court theme music.
What's that?
Oh, we don'thave the money to pay for the rights.
Well, should we get to our suspect?
(32:54):
Well, guess what? It's Hitler.
No, no, it's not Hitler.
Not this time.
But at the beginning of the book,Ishmael explains that Hitler held
the people of Germany,even those who hated him, captive.
He held them captive,not with terror or charisma,
but a story, a story of Aryan supremacy.
(33:15):
Now, Ishmael says, quote,
Even if you weren't personally captivatedby the story, you were a captive
all the same, because the people aroundyou made you captive.
You were like an animal being sweptalong in the middle
of a stampede.
When the story is new, onesfirst being told.
(33:36):
It's easier to see it for what it isthat it's just a story.
But remember the little Nazi childliving in the dystopian future
where the authors of textbooks
don't even realize what they're writingis propaganda and myths.
That's because when the story's been toldfor a very,
very long time,it doesn't sound like a story anymore.
It just sounds like the truth.
(33:59):
In our own way,we too, are captives of a story.
Ishmael thinks that this storyis the bars of our cage.
And Ishmael,our friendly guerilla guide, believes
that humanity isn't inherently flawedor doomed to destroy the world.
We've just been held captive for fartoo long.
(34:22):
Together,
we're going to discover the storythat holds us captive.
The story is ever present constantlyaround us and acts as white noise.
It wields incredible power over us.
But as Tom Hanks playing Mister Rogers inthe Mister Rogers movie, I watched them.
My grandma a couple of years agosaid anything mentionable is manageable.
(34:44):
Something can't have as much powerover you when it's spoken out loud.
Ishmael Says, quote, Onceyou know this story,
you'll hear it everywhere in your culture
and you'll be astonishedthat the people around
you don't hear it as well,but merely take it in. And
(35:04):
so we're alive at a time of great peril.
None of us asked for this.
But here we are.
It's like when Frodo inLord of the Rings is faced with
the daunting task of carrying the ringall the way to Mount Doom.
And more or less,all middle earth is destroyed.
He confides in Gandalf.
(35:24):
I wish it neednot have happened in my time.
And Gandalf tells Frodo. So do I.
And so do all who lived to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decideis what to do with the time
that has given us.
(35:44):
What Ishmael will aid us onis reimagining the situation.
Our civilization is in
this new understanding, won't alonesave the world, but will hopefully provide
clarity, making the steps we can takein that direction much more clear.
At least that's what Ishmael did for me.
(36:07):
Thanks for listening today.
The next task on our adventure in Episodethree of Human Nature Odyssey will search
for the story that's the bars of our cage
and embark on telling it out loud.
And then we'll set out to replace itwith something else.
Until next time,I hope you'll consider the question.
We'll explore together next.
(36:28):
What story could be leadingto the destruction of the world?
What could this story be?
Talk with us in
thank you to Dana, Jo and Haninfor helping give feedback
for this episode and to Professor Kellerfor providing her expertize.
The theme music you were listening towas Celestial Soda Pop by Ray Lynch,
(36:48):
and if you'd like to support Human
Nature Odyssey, please subscribewherever you enjoy your podcasts.
Leave us a review and visitHuman Nature Odyssey BBC.com.
Also, we do have a patriot where you'llfind additional materials just for you.
Each month there'll be bonusaudio episodes that dove deeper
into specific subjectswritings, mini essays,
and my recommendations for reading,watching and listening on these topics
(37:12):
with 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 Patreonand be a part of the conversation.
Imagine Nazi Germany won the war.
Yeah, it's really not good.
But they managed to pull it offand win the war.
Hitler's 1000 yearReich wasn't a total flop after all.
They conquered Europe and North America
and kept on conqueringuntil they took over the whole world.
(00:25):
And now many generations have passed,
and all memory of other peoplesand other cultures
have been erased.
The remaining people still livinglook and speak
and think exactly like all Nazis should.
In fact, for the children growing upin this dystopia, their school textbooks
(00:48):
don't even bring up the peoplesand other cultures that once existed.
And maybe at first, the textbooks wereactively whitewashing history.
But eventually, these textbooksdon't mention other peoples and cultures
and ways of thinking because the authorsdon't even know they once existed.
I'll read you what happens next.
(01:11):
But one day, twoyoung students were conversing
at the University of New Heidelbergin Tokyo.
One of them looked vaguely worriedand unhappy.
That was Kurt.
His friend said, What's wrong, Kurt?
Why are you always moping aroundlike this?
Kurt said, I'll tell you, Hans,
there is something that's troubling meand troubling me deeply.
(01:34):
His friend asked what it was.
It's like Kurt said,I can't shake the crazy feeling
that there is some small thingthat we're being lied
to about.
(02:24):
This parable is from the novel Ishmael,
an adventure of the mind and spirit.
Together,we are setting off on this adventure
and this student's curiosity.
The suspicion that things aren't rightand don't have to be this way
is the gateway to our quest.
Welcome to
Episode two of Human Nature Odyssey,
(02:46):
a search for better ways to understandand more clearly experience.
The incredible, terrified,lying and ridiculous world we live in.
I'm Alex.
Consider me your trusty sidekick.
I'll be the Sam to your Frodo,the scarecrow to your Dorothy,
the Chewbacca, to your Han Solo.
(03:09):
At the beginning of any adventure,
the hero begins their journeyin some kind of peaceful land.
For Dorothy, that was Kansas.
For Frodo Baggins, that was the Shire.
Luke Skywalker,that was his tattooing moisture farm.
So in our episode, I took youto the abandoned Ashbourne Country Club.
(03:31):
That was my of mind.
I wonder if you have a place,a special spot, where you started
your journey from.
To begin our journeymeans to leave those places.
But even though we leave them,a piece of them stays with us.
Well, I'm excited to go on this adventurewith you today.
(03:51):
The lands will travel through whatmight be treacherous and full of danger.
But I trust that togetherwe'll make it out the other side
in this first series of episodes, we'regoing to explore the ideas in the book.
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
Ishmael is a philosophical novelabout a telepathic gorillas, conversations
with a human narrator, exploring ideas
(04:14):
about humanity, civilization,and the fate of the world.
For anyone who has already read
Ishmael and is looking for a deeperanalysis of the ideas it raises.
This is for you.
And if you haven't read Ishmael,don't worry.
I've also made this for someone coming inentirely fresh.
Ideally, you're a personwho is curious about the world.
And maybe when you were a kid,you also felt things weren't quite right.
(04:44):
It's morning.
You haven't eaten yet.
You're already on the Internet.
You're scrolling throughwhatever the latest social media is.
There's a postpredicting the next financial crash.
You scroll a bitmore and find a news headline
about a distant warand the resulting famine.
A little further,there's a report from the U.N.
about how the rate of species
(05:06):
die off may be faster than scientistsinitially predicted.
And then you find this an ad that reads,Teacher seeks
pupil must have an earnest desireto save the world.
Apply in person.
Huh. What's your reaction?
Would you be excited?
Ignore it or think it was total bullshit?
(05:29):
Well, that's the adthe narrator of Ishmael is confronted
with, and it's how the book begins.
We're never given our narrator's name.
We just start with him in his kitchenwhen he finds this ad.
The book takes place in the early 1990,so instead of finding the ad
growing the Internet,the narrator finds it in the newspaper.
Eitherway, clearly this isn't a normal ad,
(05:52):
and our narrator's
reaction is complete disgust.
I mean, teacher. Six, pupil.
Give me a break. Oh.
An earnest desire to save the world.
Yeah, that's rich. Real rich.
Here's how the book begins.
Quote,The first time I read the ad, I choked
and coerced and spatand threw the paper to the floor.
Since even this didn'tseem to be quite enough, I snatched it up,
(06:15):
marched into the kitchenand shoved it in the trash, unquote.
The narrator tries to justify to ushis absolute
revulsionof finding the ad in the first place.
He tells us he was a child in the 1960s
when he had this sensethat, sure, things were terrifying.
There's the Vietnam War, the constantthreat of nuclear annihilation,
(06:37):
the assassinations of a presidentand leaders of the civil rights movement.
But it seemed likethings were really changing.
The whole world was changing.
Things would be better.
Quote, during the children'sevil of the sixties and seventies.
I was just old enough to understandwhat these kids had in mind.
They meant to turn the world upside down
and just young enough to believethey might actually succeed.
(07:00):
It's true.
Every morning when I open my eyes,I expected to see that the new era
had begun, that the sky was brighter blueand the grass brighter green.
I expected to hear laughter in the airand see people dancing the streets.
And not just kids. Everyone.
I won't apologize for my naivete.
You only have to listen to the songsto know I wasn't alone, unquote.
(07:23):
It's hard for me and
maybe for you, too, to imaginegrowing up in a time like this.
I remember first reading that descriptionof the optimistic outlook.
The narrator had as a kid in the sixtiesand thinking to myself how Damn, that is
not what the world seemed like to meas I was growing up.
Things only seemed more bleak over time.
There was 911 in the war on terror,Hurricane Katrina
(07:46):
and rising seas, a financial recessionand increasing wealth inequality.
Things haven't exactly gotten bettersince I was a kid, but
growing up in the early 21st century,I didn't really expect them to.
But that kind of cynical outlookwasn't the case for the narrator.
To him and maybe other kids of the 1960s,the future seemed hopeful.
(08:06):
There was a sense in the youthcounterculture that society might wake
up from its bad dream.
Then things
changed, but not in the waythe counterculture was hoping.
Instead of waking up from a nightmare,the narrator tells us he
then became a young adult in a timewhen it felt like the countercultural
vision itself was the dream,just a fantasy, and nothing existed
(08:29):
beyond the cold, hard realityof the current state of the world.
He says, quote,Then one day when I was in my mid-teens,
I woke up and realized that the new erawas never going to begin.
The revolt hadn't been put down.
It had just dwindled awayinto a fashion statement.
Can I have been the only personin the world who was disillusioned
by this?
(08:50):
Bewildered by this, it seems so.
Everyone else seemed to be able
to pass it off with a cynical grinthat said, Well, what did you expect?
There's never been any more than this,and never will be any more than this.
Nobody's out to save the world becausenobody gives a damn about the world.
That was just a bunch of goofykids talking.
Get a job, make some money, workday or 60, then moved to Florida and die.
(09:12):
Unquote. My God.
As a millennial, first of all, I'mexpecting to have to work way past 60,
but I kind of imagine the equivalentof this moment would be like waking up
one morning to find outno one cares about social justice anymore.
No one cares about gender equality,ending white supremacy.
No one's anti-capitalist.
(09:32):
That whole thing where masses of youngpeople push for social change
was just looked at as naive overidealistic history.
And not thatthose ideals were ever actually realized,
but nobody would even pretendthey care about them anymore.
That's the millennial versionof the sixties ending.
So there's the ad.
(09:52):
Teacher seeks pupil must havean earnest desire to save the world.
To save the world.
Saving the world kind of sounds crunchyin my 21st century years.
I got to say.
First of all,
no one wants to talk to the guywho says he wants to save the world.
I don't want to talk to that guy.
Second, it's like sayingyou're going to end all war and hunger.
(10:13):
I don't think it's going to happen.
Good luckeven trying to fix the electoral system.
I mean, I'll give you a medalif you can get the signal
to fix that potholeat the end of your street.
But I guess all the ad is really saying is
you need to have a desireto save the world in earnest.
Desire.
And when I was 14, reading Ishmaelfor the first time,
saving the worlddidn't sound corny to me at all.
(10:34):
I remember watching this documentaryon overfishing in high school
environmental science classand just wanting to, like,
flip the desks over and scream.
The world can't be destroyed.
I really felt that deeply.
I definitely had an earnest desireback then, and I think since then
I kind of lost that feeling or it's burieddeeper down somewhere.
(10:55):
Maybe I feel less hopeful in the world.
Or maybe I feel lesshopeful in my ability to help.
How about you?
How do we get in touch with that again?
Can we try something?
An interactive activity.
Okay,
let's look around and notice
our surroundings for a bit.
(11:18):
Whether you're insideor outside in the car,
walking down the street, lying in bed,
what's the tiniest living creatureyou can find where you are?
Is there a bird on the telephone wire?
A fly buzzing around your room?
Maybe a tree out your window.
Or a succulent gifted by a friend.
(11:41):
If you're in a particularly lifelessenvironment,
just remember the last pigeon you saw.
Let's watchor imagine this other being for a bit.
What's it up to?
If there's a direct line
going back from us all the wayto the first form of life.
(12:02):
That creature you're seeing
and you are cousins, your family
and Ishmael refers
to this family as the community of life,
which means millions of years ago,our distant ancestors
and that tiny creatures,distant ancestors were the same species,
just a couple of cousins hanging out.
(12:23):
And maybe there was some kind of familydrama, and one cousin moved out of town
to go do its own thing.
And millions of years went by
until that cousins descendantsbecame that tiny creature.
Meanwhile, our ancestors took their ownevolutionary path.
Can you imagine your ancestorsas they evolved from single celled
organisms, fish underwater,reptiles on land, rodents hiding in holes,
(12:48):
primates singing through treesto homo sapiens to you.
It's a billions of yearsold legacy we've inherited.
I want to tell youabout three of our cousins in our family,
the community of life.
There's the golden bamboo lemurin Madagascar,
the yellow tipped tree snail in Hawaii,
(13:10):
and the spics macaw in Brazil.
Each of those cousinshas had their own distinct journey,
but there's somethingthese three species have in common.
Their stories ended in the last few years
when they went extinct.
Early on in Ishmail,there's this statistic that says
(13:31):
200 species go extinct every day.
Wait, what?
200 speciesevery day. That can't be right.
That would mean. What?
So I googled it just to make sure.
I found this article from CNNthat references a study
from the University of Mexicothat found between the year 2001
(13:52):
to 2014, 173 species went extinct. Oh,
okay.
I mean, 173.
It's still not good,but it's not as bad, right?
Wait, so where the hell didDaniel Quinn get that number?
200 species a day.
You think that would bea useful thing to say?
(14:13):
And, well, I kept Googling.
Then I found this Guardian articledetailing a 2010 report
from the United Nations saying
150 to 200
species of plants,insects, birds and mammals
go extinct every 24 hours.
Oh, crap.
(14:33):
Okay, wait.
So why are the numbers so different?
Enough Googling. I got to talk to someone.
So I reached out to Gerda Keller,professor of paleontology
and geology in the GeosciencesDepartment of Princeton University.
She studiesthe most recent mass extinction,
the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
So maybe she'd have insight to ask,
(14:58):
is it truethat 200 species are going extinct
every day?
I think much more.
If you look at the endangered
the number of endangered speciesthat are barely hanging on.
They're not really viable populations.
They can go in any droughtor any bad year.
(15:19):
So the first article that I sent youis when I was looking into this
is there's a University of Mexico studiesthat CNN is talking about, saying
that 173 species went extinct between2001 2014.
I mean, that is that is an interestingarticle in terms of large
vertebrates, mammals for the most part.
(15:43):
It's not a very high numberas far as extinctions are going.
It was interesting, though, for them
to concentrate on that because it's it'sone of the
the large ones is what is on our mind.
It's more emotionally impactful,I suppose, for people to,
(16:05):
you know, the large mammalsthat we identify with.
Yeah.
The elephants and the bison.
To talk about the extinction of those.
Yeah. Let me tell you.
Okay.
If I write a paper and I tell you,
5000 species of insects
go extinct every year and say, so what?
(16:25):
They don't bother me.
Hopefully it's the mosquitoes,so I don't have to worry about them.
So what does
extinction look like normally versus now?
Normally, over about a million years,
you may lose 3 to 5 species
just three or five species total.
That's not even just a lot ofwhat is documented from the fossil record.
(16:50):
For example, the background rate.
Nothing to write home about here.
Two species that a species disappears.
It's the mass extinctions that
that start to bother us.
The first book that we're looking at
is this novel calledIshmael by Daniel Quinn.
(17:11):
And there's this line early on in the book
that mentions that 200 species are goingextinct today.
I remember reading thatwhen I was quite young, and as a human
we could think like, okay, well,200 species are going extinct today.
That doesn't affect me.
Like, you know, I'm at the top of the foodchain.
I'll still be fine.
(17:32):
And he makes the metaphor that, you know,if you live in a tower
and you live at the top of the towerand every day you take out 200 bricks
from the bottom of the tower, you'renot going to be atop that tower very long.
Yeah, mostly we think of ourselves.
We are the top dogs.
No question about it.
Top of the food chain.
So the dinosaurs being on top of the food
(17:55):
chain is not a good place to be,
not when things are getting critical.
It's already up therewhere it's affecting humans.
It really is following the playbookof all the other mass
extinctions, only much, much faster.
(18:19):
Oh, okay.
Hold up.
At this point,you might be saying to yourself,
oh, geez,is this going to be one of those things?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.The world's going to shit.
I get it.
I've seen Avatar.
The destruction of the world is obvious.
It's cliche, the truth is,
maybe it's too painful to think about.
Then there's the perspectivethat goes, okay.
(18:40):
Okay. Yeah.
The six mass extinction
life, as we know, may come to an end,but nature will be fine.
Give it a few million yearsand life going to bounce right back, okay?
Sure.
If that helps you sleep at night.
But listen, we've inheriteda pretty unbelievably amazing biodiversity
legacy here.
It's an unfathomable miracle.
(19:02):
Think of that tiny creatureyou're sharing space with from earlier
and all the other speciesthat share this world with us.
The squirrels and pandas and dolphins,
silverback gorillas and great whitesharks, honey badgers and peacocks,
clownfish kangaroos, octopi, jaguars,
komodo dragons, hippos,penguins, seahorse, camels, even pigeons.
(19:27):
These are our
cousins, our literal cousinsand the community of life.
We evolved with them.They evolved with us.
It's an indescribable,incredible legacy we've inherited
and it's a legacythat we're bringing to an end.
We're here together right now
on this planet,like some big family picnic.
What kind of family member ruinsthe picnic for everybody else?
(19:51):
When the narrator findsthe head must have an earnest desire
to save the world,he throws it in the trash.
He doesn't want to think about that.
Little doeshe know this is his call to adventure.
There's something inside himthat, despite his adult cynicism,
has some takingthe crumpled ad out of the trash
and going to see for himselfwhat it could be about.
(20:13):
And for us, just getting depressed aboutthe world ending doesn't help anyone.
When the Luke Skywalker finds his familymoisture farm
on tattooingburned to the ground by the evil empire.
Sure, it's devastating, but it's also thebeginning of his adventure.
And in our real
world, the stakes are incredibly high.
(20:34):
But this is our call to adventure.
So even though there's part of methat still thinks wanting to save
the world is corny,there's still part of me,
like the ad says,that has an earnest desire
to do so.
A crime is being committed
(20:55):
here on a planetary scale,and it's not an incoming
asteroid from outer spaceor volcanic eruptions.
It's us.
What gives?
Were we doomed to destroy the world?
Was it inevitable?
Is there something wrong with us
(21:17):
to help us investigate these questions
about this planet earth crime scene?
I've just received a tip from a compellinglead.
Let's go check it out.
We're going to descenddeep down into a secret and
sinister underground lair.
I know nothing ever good
(21:37):
happens in an underground lair,and this one is particularly seedy.
Imagine as you'redescending down into the dark
stairs, this evil music is playing.
Sitting around a long black table
is the kind of mean looking henchmanyou'd expect to find out here.
A tough underling,a terrifying assassin, and, of course,
(21:59):
an eyepatch wearing right handman at the head of the table.
A mean looking,hairless cat sits on the ring,
bearing lap of the mastermindbehind it all.
Like all evil masterminds, he's bald
with an ominous scarthat covers half his face.
He wears an evil looking gray suit
(22:20):
and his name conveniently
is Doctor Evil,
and he's assembled his henchmen
to reveal his new, sinister plan.
It's a maniacal contraptionthat can alter the climate, destroy
the ozone layer, and threaten the healthof all the people in the world.
(22:40):
Unfortunately for Doctor Evil,
his plan has been thwartedbefore it's even begun.
His eyepatch, wearing right handman informs him
that Sorry to report this doc,but it's already happening.
What do you mean?
The evil mastermind asks.
Well,the world is already being destroyed.
(23:04):
And it's true.
But in reality, this isn't the resultof some evil mastermind plan.
There's no secret roomwhere bad guys plot the world's demise.
That's the joke the 1990s comedyclassic Austin Powers is making.
We don't need bad guysto destroy the world.
So who's doing it?
Well, to answer that, we can leave theseevil henchmen and return to our main story
(23:27):
from the nineties that dealswith the more complicated nuance.
Real life destruction of the world.
It's time to meet Ishmael.
All right.
Let's follow the narratorand go meet this mysterious teacher.
So you arrive at the address given
in the newspaper, the narrator tells us.
When I got there, I was surprised to findit was a very ordinary sort of office
(23:52):
building full of second rate flatslawyers, dentists, travel
agents, a chiropractorand a private investigator, too.
I'd expected somethinga little more atmospheric.
A brownstone with paneledwalls, high ceilings
and shuttered windows, perhaps inkwell.
(24:12):
The narrator finds room 105
behind the back and without therebeing a sign or anything.
Steps inside.
Let's go inside with him.
I pushed it openand stepped into a large, empty room.
This uncommon space had been createdby knocking down interior partitions,
the marks of which could still be seenon the bare hardwood floor.
(24:33):
That was my first impression.
Emptiness.
The second was olfactory.
The place reeked of the circus inkwell.
So you're there with a narratorand you notice a bunch of books
on the walls about history,prehistory, anthropology,
and then you notice a large glass pane
and behind it, some leafy stalks.
(24:55):
But that's not all.
Emerging from the shadows of thisglass section is
maybe the last thing you thoughtyou'd find inside this office building.
A gorilla.
A large five and a half foottall silverback gorilla.
And he's looking right at you.
This is Ishmael.
(25:17):
Soon you learnthat Ishmael is no ordinary gorilla.
He's a telepathic gorilla.
And he shares with youhis whole life story of being captured
and taken from his family in the jungleand put on display at a traveling circus
where he became furiously
curious at his conditionand that of the humans around him
and dedicated his life to holding oneon one conversations with curious pupils
(25:42):
in an attempt to examinewhy things have to be this way.
And ultimately, Ishmael proposes,
they don't go
on our adventure of the mind and spirit.
Ishmael will be our guide.
Like Gandalf or Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Or Glinda the Good Witch in Wizard of Oz.
Like a good hero's journey guide.
(26:04):
Ishmael won't always be with us,but we'll find he'll come and help us
when we need him most.
Ishmael
asks the narrator to first ponderthe question
Who wants to destroy the world?
(26:27):
Unlike the evildoers,from our field trip to the underground
lair, obviouslyno one wants to destroy the world.
Not even the people benefiting
most from the world's destructionand don't want the world to end.
Because then there's no world,not even for the rich.
And the rest of us certainly don'twant the world to end either.
Yet we still driving.
Cars fly and planes heat.
(26:48):
Our homes, core homes run, our applianceseat, packaged foods made in factories,
order things onlineboth necessary and less necessary.
As Ishmaelputs it, each of us, in our own small way,
quote, contributes dailyto the destruction of the world, unquote.
And destruction is one way to put it.
(27:08):
Another wayis the consumption of the world.
We're using the world to feedus, clothes us, transport us, keep us warm
and protected, make weapons to make sureothers aren't warm and protected
so they can't stop usfrom being warm and protected.
We use the world for our convenience,for our luxury,
our entertainment, andif we're all helping to destroy the world.
(27:29):
But no one actually wants to.
Well,then maybe we should reframe our question.
Why don't we stop destroying the world?
Is it out of ignorance?
I don't know how many people are trulyunaware of our impact on the world.
Is it greed?
Is the destructionbecause people care more
about their personal gainand the state of the world?
(27:51):
Certainly there's those. This is true for.
But even the low income farmer in Brazilworking to clear the Amazon
rainforest for farmland, that destructionisn't amassing the much material wealth.
They're doing itjust to get by to feed their family.
So many of us are just tryingto get through the day.
We're not plotting outthe destruction of the world.
(28:13):
We're just trying to live our lives.
And that's the bizarre thing.
We live in a society where our individual
survivaldepends on our collective suicide.
What kind of
advanced society would find itselfin this predicament?
In the first chapter, Ishmael tells us
(28:34):
the subject he teaches is captivity.
And as a gorilla growing up in cages, he'squite familiar with this topic.
Ishmael suggests that we too are captive
compelled to quote, to go ondestroying the world in order to live.
Unquote.
And unlike the caged animals in the zoo,
the bars of our cage harder to see.
(28:58):
Ishmael is not sayingthat we don't have personal agency
or responsibility for our actions.
The gorilla in the cage can still chooseto climb the fake tree or bear
its teeth to the gawking visitors.
There are plenty of choiceswithin our captivity
and also the quality of our confinementcan change drastically
from person to person.
I mean, some people are literallyimprisoned in cages
(29:19):
while others walk the streetswherever they want to.
A few people even have enough moneyto casually fly into space.
Yet even
for those of us who experienceprivileges, others don't.
Is that evidence of our freedomor just evidence of being treated
relatively betterwithin the context of a greater captivity?
(29:40):
Okay, we're captive, but captive by here.
Well, I got a list of suspects here.
First, there's those in power.
Yeah. How about those in power?
Fair culprit. After all,they are in power.
They make the rules and enforce them.
How much freedom do even the leadersand rulers of countries really have?
(30:03):
After all, if a leader goesagainst the grain, that person
generally has a limited timebeing in charge.
Leaders are maybe more like surfersriding the momentum of a wave.
The same is true for the very wealthy.
Jeff Bezos made his wealth not by goingagainst society, but by riding the wave
of crossing those in
(30:25):
power and the very wealthy offthe list of potential captors.
Who else?
Who? Most of my list.
And wrote down the Illuminati. Come on.
Some people are convinced
that there must be secret rulerswho control society behind the scenes
because there's got to besomeone behind it.
All right.
Maybe that's more comfortingto think than the idea
(30:45):
that no person or groupis truly in control of our captivity.
But the insight, Ishmael, the gorilla hasis that in our society,
the zookeepers are locked inside as well.
All right.
All right.
It's not the Illuminati at this point.
You might be thinking, well,yeah, dude, it's
a systemic issue, right?
(31:08):
Okay, you're good. We're getting closer.
Let me draw a circleor put an asterisks next to this system.
Suspect
others throughout
history have recognizedthe systemic nature of our captivity
in some way, like the countercultureof the sixties that are narrated.
Grew up in.
It's the system, man.
We got to stop the system.
(31:29):
Ishmael proposesthe reason why the Sixties counterculture
didn't break out of this systemis because, quote,
they were unable to find the barsof our cage, unquote.
If we're going to escape our captivity,we need to first find the bars.
So what the heck is thissystem we're talking about?
(31:50):
Now, I know there's folks out herewho were thinking, Alex,
if you don't bring up capitalismin the next
5 seconds, I swear to the Lord, I'mgiving this podcast less than one star.
Okay, fair point.
Capitalism,
I mean, yeah, if you'relooking for a system that compels
people inside it to destroy the world,just in order to get by.
That is a prime example.
(32:11):
But what if capitalism isn'tthe source of our captivity?
But just the latest,most streamlined expression of it.
Because it's not like the Soviet
Union was a beaconof environmental sustainability.
In fact, by the 1980s,the USSR was apparently responsible
for one and a half times the amount of airpollution as the US was back then.
(32:32):
So there's something elseunderlying these industrial systems,
whether they're capitalistor an authoritarian centralized economy.
And Ishmael has a suspect in mind,and it's our job to investigate.
Okay, cue the People's Court theme music.
What's that?
Oh, we don'thave the money to pay for the rights.
Well, should we get to our suspect?
(32:54):
Well, guess what? It's Hitler.
No, no, it's not Hitler.
Not this time.
But at the beginning of the book,Ishmael explains that Hitler held
the people of Germany,even those who hated him, captive.
He held them captive,not with terror or charisma,
but a story, a story of Aryan supremacy.
(33:15):
Now, Ishmael says, quote,
Even if you weren't personally captivatedby the story, you were a captive
all the same, because the people aroundyou made you captive.
You were like an animal being sweptalong in the middle
of a stampede.
When the story is new, onesfirst being told.
(33:36):
It's easier to see it for what it isthat it's just a story.
But remember the little Nazi childliving in the dystopian future
where the authors of textbooks
don't even realize what they're writingis propaganda and myths.
That's because when the story's been toldfor a very,
very long time,it doesn't sound like a story anymore.
It just sounds like the truth.
(33:59):
In our own way,we too, are captives of a story.
Ishmael thinks that this storyis the bars of our cage.
And Ishmael,our friendly guerilla guide, believes
that humanity isn't inherently flawedor doomed to destroy the world.
We've just been held captive for fartoo long.
(34:22):
Together,
we're going to discover the storythat holds us captive.
The story is ever present constantlyaround us and acts as white noise.
It wields incredible power over us.
But as Tom Hanks playing Mister Rogers inthe Mister Rogers movie, I watched them.
My grandma a couple of years agosaid anything mentionable is manageable.
(34:44):
Something can't have as much powerover you when it's spoken out loud.
Ishmael Says, quote, Onceyou know this story,
you'll hear it everywhere in your culture
and you'll be astonishedthat the people around
you don't hear it as well,but merely take it in. And
(35:04):
so we're alive at a time of great peril.
None of us asked for this.
But here we are.
It's like when Frodo inLord of the Rings is faced with
the daunting task of carrying the ringall the way to Mount Doom.
And more or less,all middle earth is destroyed.
He confides in Gandalf.
(35:24):
I wish it neednot have happened in my time.
And Gandalf tells Frodo. So do I.
And so do all who lived to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decideis what to do with the time
that has given us.
(35:44):
What Ishmael will aid us onis reimagining the situation.
Our civilization is in
this new understanding, won't alonesave the world, but will hopefully provide
clarity, making the steps we can takein that direction much more clear.
At least that's what Ishmael did for me.
(36:07):
Thanks for listening today.
The next task on our adventure in Episodethree of Human Nature Odyssey will search
for the story that's the bars of our cage
and embark on telling it out loud.
And then we'll set out to replace itwith something else.
Until next time,I hope you'll consider the question.
We'll explore together next.
(36:28):
What story could be leadingto the destruction of the world?
What could this story be?
Talk with us in
thank you to Dana, Jo and Haninfor helping give feedback
for this episode and to Professor Kellerfor providing her expertize.
The theme music you were listening towas Celestial Soda Pop by Ray Lynch,
(36:48):
and if you'd like to support Human
Nature Odyssey, please subscribewherever you enjoy your podcasts.
Leave us a review and visitHuman Nature Odyssey BBC.com.
Also, we do have a patriot where you'llfind additional materials just for you.
Each month there'll be bonusaudio episodes that dove deeper
into specific subjectswritings, mini essays,
and my recommendations for reading,watching and listening on these topics
(37:12):
with 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 Patreonand be a part of the conversation.
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