August 10, 2023 • 33 mins
In this episode we take a step back from Ishmael to better view the philosophical context it was written in.
We explore the history of the terms “civilized” and “primitive” and how their definitions have evolved over time.
Topics include: Rome’s influence on Western European colonization, noble savage theory, primitivism, and the rise of the identity “indigenous”.
When we say civilization who do we include and exclude? Who is civilized and what does that mean?
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Citations
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992)
The Dawn of Everything by David Wengrow and David Graeber (2021)
Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford (1620-1647)
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Conquest of North America by Pekka Hämäläinen (2022)
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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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It was a peaceful autumn morning in 1996.
The birds were chirping,the air was crisp.
The leaves were just starting to change.
It was on this fine morning. OprahWinfrey.
Yes. Oprah Winfrey.
Once she opened her front door,she noticed something different,
something unexpected.
(00:21):
Lying right there on herfront doorstep was a book.
The book was Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
Oprah had heard of Ishmael, which had justbeen published a few years before.
Isn't this that book about a gorillashe thought to herself
when she first heard about it?
She hadn't been interestedin reading a book about a gorilla.
But today, she later recalled,it felt like a sign.
(00:44):
So Oprah picked up the anonymously
gifted book from her frontsteps and read Ishmael for herself.
When she later introduced
Daniel Quinn, the author of Ishmael,as a guest on her show.
And you can read the transcriptof the episode online.
She introduced him by saying,When I mentioned I was reading
Ishmael the story of a gorillawho was a teacher.
(01:05):
A lot of my friendsthought I was a little crazy.
But the message in the bookis very powerful,
and there are thousands of other peoplewho have read it and they say it's
changing the way they see the worldand also their lives.
It certainly opened my eyes.
Oprah had many questions for her guest,but the first one she asked was,
How do you explain to people,what is this about?
(01:27):
And Daniel Quinn,who at this point was in his sixties
with wisps of gray hair and a soft voice,was just for the first time
in his whole life,gaining some recognition for his ideas.
I mean, herehe was sitting across from Oprah.
And when Oprah asked him how to explainwhat Ishmael is about, he told her that
rather than explaining what it's about,it's more helpful to know what it does.
(01:52):
He told her that, like medicine,the first thing you want to know is
what's the effect?
Welcome to Episode
four of Human Nature Odyssey,a podcast exploring new ways to rethink
what we take for granted about historyand our society.
(02:14):
I'm Alex.
So what does Daniel Quinn's bookIshmael do?
What's the effect?
(02:36):
Quinn explained that he wrote it to quote,
give people a new vision of our placeon this planet, unquote.
I like to think that the ideas in Ishmaelare like a lens, like a pair of glasses.
You can wear and see the worldmore clearly.
You might find some clarityin surprising and interesting places.
(02:56):
This particular metaphorical
prescription lensis going to help us examine the question
that is the focus of Ishmael,the book, as well as this entire podcast.
What is civilized nation?
What exactly is going wrong here?
And can it go right?And not just in modern
civilization as it is today,but how it's evolved over time.
(03:20):
And while
on the Human Nature Odysseypodcast will explore many ideas, thinkers
and their works, the novel Ishmael iswhere our adventure has started.
Now, Daniel Quinn is not speakingto us, the readers directly,
but through the imaginary characterIshmael, a telepathic gorilla.
If you're going to get an honest
look at humanity,it helps to have an outside observer,
(03:41):
in this case a well read, criticallythinking gorilla to offer some insight.
And so far on this podcast, we've begunto outline a bit of Ismail's vision.
In episode two, we talked abouthow we are destroying the world,
not because we're too greedy or selfish,
but because we're captives in society
where our individual survival dependson our collective suicide.
(04:06):
And Ishmael arguesthat what's holding us captive is a story.
In episode three, we learned that
Ishmael has a name for the peoplewho are captives of this story.
He calls them takers.
The takers argue among themselvesabout which language to speak the name
of their gods, the color of their flag,the structure of their marketplace.
(04:28):
But there's something fundamental.
They all share takermythology, a story they
we are all captives enacting
according to Take Your Mythology.
The world belongs to humansand humans must concrete,
but we'll probably screw it upbecause humans are innately flawed.
That's the story.
Our civilizationis acting out on a daily basis
(04:51):
because take our civilizationhas colonized and expanded
across much of the world.
We might forget that there could be anyother modes of existence, but there are.
And Ishmael
calls the cultures who don't participateand take your civilization levers.
Now, just to add.
Generally speaking, takers self-organizeinto what we traditionally call
(05:15):
civilization city based societies.
Believers self-organize into what wesometimes
referred to as tribes or kinbased societies.
Takerssocieties are built mainly on agriculture.
Weaversusually practice hunting and gathering.
Taker economies are based on extractionof resources and exponential growth,
(05:38):
while Weaver economies are based onsustainable resource management
and stability.
Well, in order to understandthis taker Weaver dichotomy
and why it's so significant, I think it'sworth zooming out from the book
for this episodeand talk about the history and context.
Daniel Quinn wrote his book in.
(06:07):
My dad likes to say
there are two kinds of peoplein the world,
those who divide the world intotwo kinds of people and those who don't.
My aunt usually then likes to makethe joke that actually there are
three kinds of people in the world,those who can count and those who can.
But anyway, as we now know, Ishmaelis the kind of gorilla who likes to divide
the world into two groups of people,the takers and the weavers.
(06:27):
Now, the narrator, who,if you remember, is the reluctant pupil
who first found Ishmael ad in the paperand has come to his private office
to find out what this is all about.
Essentially,he says, Hold up, hold up a minute.
The takers and the Weavers.
You're going to reduce the entire worldinto just two groups.
Seems a bit too oversimplified to me.
Clearly,the narrator is one of the two kinds
(06:49):
of people who doesn't like dividingthe world into two kinds of people.
But as Ishmael points out,dividing the world like
this is somethingour culture already does, or least we did.
But the words we used to useare civilized and primitive.
We're going to look at the historyof these words their use,
their limitations,and what they've been replaced by since.
(07:11):
Now, hearing these wordsmight make your skin crawl a bit.
Oh, labeling people primitive,that does not sound good to my ears.
Yeah, well,
I don't think the word primitivewas originally intended as a compliment.
It was used as justificationfor a conquest.
Genocide and forced assimilation of,quote unquote, primitive people
by people who thought of themselvesas, quote unquote, civilized.
(07:34):
Now, in the grand scheme of civilization,the words civilized and primitive
are actually relatively recent waysof labeling these two groups.
But the phenomenon of this dichotomy
is as oldand as widespread as civilization itself.
The Romans and Greeks used to use the wordbarbarians.
The show dynasty of Ancient China.
(07:55):
Use the wordsY and e y, meaning Chinese and civilized
e meaning wild or uncivilized tribesand Malacca was the Sanskrit word
in ancient India to describe foreignersor tribes outside their civilization.
The exact meanings of these wordsvary a bit, but there is
this general conceptof other outside of civilization.
(08:18):
They're trying to label and more oftenthan not, ponder and convert.
Over the last 500 years, Europeancolonization has most directly shaped
the way we think about this dichotomyof these two groups today.
And then Naquin wroteIshmael commenting on this tradition.
(08:41):
So when people who saw themselvesas civilized,
like Christopher Columbus and Cortez,literally, and countless other
khakis, stores, missionaries,fur trappers, pioneers
and slavers left the continentcalled Europe to gain riches and power
in the continents that eventually becameknown as North and South America.
(09:01):
Not to mentionmany other parts of the world.
They believed that these other people,the people who were living in the lands
they were attempting to conquer,were uncivilized, even subhuman.
Like one in 1651, William Bradford,an English separatist
and governor of the Plymouth Colony,wrote of Massachusetts as, quote,
being devoid of all civil inhabits,where there are only savage
(09:24):
and brutish men which range up and downlittle otherwise than the wild beasts
of the state, unquote.
So what does it even mean to be civilizedhere?
It kind of has two definitions.
On one hand,it refers to members of the civilization,
the kind of society with written lawsand hierarchy, yada, yada.
But on the other hand, the word civilizedalso means to be humane and polite.
(09:48):
Which gets confusing when you considerhow the Spanish conquistadors,
American slaveholdersand Nazi concentration camp guards.
Sure, they were civilized in the sensethat they lived within civilization.
But were they civilized in the sensethat they were humane and highbrow?
No, no, no. The answer is obviously no.
They were not.
(10:08):
But where did they get this conceptof being civilized
from?
Many Western European colonizers feltthey were carrying the proud tradition
of this whole being civilized thingfrom the great Roman Empire,
which they viewed as the OG,the creme de la creme of civilization.
(10:32):
As author Anthony Paglen puts it, quote,
It was above all, Rome,which has provided the ideologues
of the colonial systems of Spain,Britain and France
with the language and political modesthey required for the Imperium.
Romana has always had a unique placein the political imagination
of Western Europe, unquote.
(10:53):
Spanish philosopher
Juan Inés disciple Vitor,who lived during Spain's 16th century
invasion of the Americas, wrote a treatisejustifying Spain's invasion
based on the Roman, quote, rightto conquer in order to civilize, unquote.
He went on to write, quote, With theserights, the Romans are very civilized
(11:14):
people and exalted in virtue subjectedto their rule the barbarian nations.
Unquote.
In fact, the word civilizedand civilization come from the Latin root.
Not to mention the wordsimperialism, empire,
colonialism and colonyalso were handed down from ancient Rome.
Now, the irony here is just the millennia.
(11:36):
So before Western Europeansgleefully colonized
the world and looked downon other cultures as being primitive.
The Romans themselveslooked down on Western Europeans,
like the vandals and Gaulsand Celts as primitive.
The Roman statesman Cassiodorusridiculed these, quote,
barbarians as thosewho, quote, did not live in cities
(11:57):
making their abodes in the fieldslike wild animals, unquote.
But after a few centuries,the descendants of the tribes,
like the vandals and Gaulsand Celts, the Western Europeans
would view themselves more culturallyaligned with their old colonizer,
the Romans, than with their so-calledprimitive ancestors.
(12:19):
The Western European descendantseven took it
a step further from Rome and made up a
new nickname to designate themselvesas civilized, a.k.a.
the Superior Group,and started calling themselves White
a concept that had existedbefore the 1600s.
These new white supremacistsand colonizers believe
(12:40):
that civilization itselforiginated with the Romans and the Greeks.
But this is not the case.
Ironically, civilizationdidn't even begin with the people
they would consider white.
The Romans,after all, were only the latest
to carry the torch of the empiresthat came before them.
In the ancient Mediterranean world,it was the Greeks, the Persians,
(13:03):
the Assyrians, the Egyptians,the Babylonians,
all the way back to the Sumeriansin modern day Iraq.
So when in 2006,Tucker Carlson, former Fox News
crisis actor,
called the people of Iraq, quote,semi-literate primitive monkeys, unquote.
Iraq, the place
(13:23):
where a Western civilizationcan ultimately trace its roots back to.
Tucker wasn'tjust being incredibly racist.
He was being to put it lightly,shall we say.
Very incorrect.
And of course, civilizationdidn't just originate in the Middle East,
but long ago in China, India,Central America and South America.
(13:44):
So white supremacy is not included.
We all understand thatno human has civilization,
more or less in their DNA than others.
As I mentioned earlier, primitive
is a relatively recent wayof describing societies.
Primitive only started being usedin the mid to late 1800s, actually,
after Darwin wrote Origins of the Species
(14:05):
and the concept of evolution startedbeing applied to human societies.
The word used before that by WesternEuropeans was savage.
The scientists who had been labeledas savage and barbarian
were now being called primitivebecause it was thought that these forms
of societies preceded the inevitabledevelopment of civilization.
(14:26):
In this
context, primitivemight sound a little kinder than savage,
but it's essentially saying, Don't worry,guys, you're not stuck like this.
You can become advanced like us.
Okay, now actually that kind and primitivealong with being used
derogatorily is also a lousy wayto describe the phenomenon
of people living outside this entitywe call civilization.
(14:49):
After all, there are many ways so-calledprimitive societies are far more
sophisticated, complex, advancedthan so-called civilized societies.
It just depends on what you considersophisticated, complex and advanced.
For example, David Graeber and DavidWayne GROSS book The Dawn of Everything
touches on howwhen many native North American societies
(15:11):
with elaborate forms of government,intricate democracies and self-organizing
councils first learnedabout European monarchies and their rigid
hierarchies, lack of individual freedomand massive wealth inequality.
The native societieswere not very impressed.
So if we're scrapping civilized andprimitive, what do we replace them with?
(15:34):
Well, maybe we don't replace them.
Maybe we shouldn't divide peopleinto two categories in the first place.
Maybe the narrator's right and we shouldview humanity as one big whole.
But the danger of lumping all of humanityinto one category is that we start to see
the destructive behavior of our societyas reflective of all humanity.
(15:57):
People start to talk
about the destruction of the worldas a problem with our whole species.
Comedian
George Carlin called us pesky,troublesome species.
Actor and playwright WallaceShawn described us
as the species that went madand destroyed the planet.
Then there's biologist Julian Huxley,who took it a bit further
(16:17):
saying that the human racewill be the cancer of this planet.
And if you're thinking,what, isn't that from The Matrix?
Well, yes, Agent Smith also famously says
human beings are a disease,a cancer of this planet.
There's a lot of talkabout how destructive
our species has been,how destructive human nature is.
(16:39):
But are the horrors of World War,
the threat of nuclear annihilationand ecological catastrophe?
The failings of our entire species?
Do they reflect our inevitable tragichuman nature?
Or are they the failings of just one wayof life, one way of being?
And what about
the peoplewho actually live a different way?
(17:01):
The words civilizedand primitive are not great words,
but they are described in something worthlooking at.
So what words could we use instead?
Well, this is where Daniel Cohen comes in.
He proposes that the labels takersand the levers
could be helpful.
(17:24):
In the last episode,we really got into taker
mythology, which boils down to the worldbelongs to us.
We're meant to rule.
This is the story of all people living in
Take Your Culture, are acting outand held captive.
And it's resultingin the destruction of the world.
But who does Ishmael really considertakers?
It's not just one group or country.
(17:47):
At this point, the takers arean interconnected global culture.
While each culture
within it is unique, we're tied togethermore than just economically.
We're all in this ongoingideological conversation with each other.
So this global macro culture
includes the so-called developed countriesand developing countries.
Which makes sense because it's like
(18:08):
even though the wealthy people who liveat the top of an apartment complex
like to think they're separate
from the people living on the streetin front of the building.
To an anthropologist,the people at the top
and the people at the bottom are clearlypart of the same society and culture.
It's just the culture that distributesthe wealth very unequal,
even the very different formsof governments like the Soviet
(18:31):
Union's version of communism,democratic republics and fascist regimes
are just different waysto organize the various nations
within the macro culturethat Ishmael calls takers.
Okay, so take your civilizationincludes Western civilization
and Eastern civilization,and it includes the developed world
and the developing world, the first worldand the Third World,
(18:54):
the full swaths of the political spectrumfrom right to left, both.
And what the heck else is,
Ishmael would say, believers.
But before we can really figure out
who Ishmael includesand the leaves are category,
we've got to discuss a termthat's replaced primitive
in recent decades.
(19:15):
Depending on what country you livein, you'll hear
the termsAboriginal people or first nations.
One of the most commonis the word Indigenous,
which a bit ironicallyis also quite civilized Latin a.k.a.
Roman Empire. Word.
But unlike the word primitive,the term indigenous
has become a source of pride for many.
(19:36):
It's become a collective identityto build solidarity around and demand
rightsthat were taken away by colonization
only as recently as the 2000s.
The word indigenous was adopted as anofficial term used by the United Nations.
One way the UN defines indigenous is quote
descendants of those who inhabiteda country or a geographical region.
(19:57):
At the time when people of differentcultures or ethnic origins arrived,
they have retained social, cultural,
economic and political characteristicsthat are distinct
from those of the dominant societiesin which they live, unquote.
And while indigenous is mostly now used
instead of the word primitive, it'snot the same thing.
(20:19):
For example,
the word primitive is referring to one'sway of life, and inherent in
that is the idea that you're supposedto advance beyond where you are.
Indigenous emphasizes nativity to a land
the one that they are indigenousto the Northeast United States.
The Aymara are indigenous to Bolivia.
The Maori are indigenous to New Zealand.
(20:40):
And it doesn't lock in your identityto a specific way of life.
If a person from an indigenous societymoves to a city and doesn't
speak their ancestral language,they wouldn't lose the title
of Indigenous, which is criticalfor people trying to demand
their rights and unique culturewhile navigating assimilation.
In a way, it's
almost somewhat of an ethnic group
(21:01):
that is, it's an identitypassed down through blood.
But even though Western Europeansare also descendants of societies
we'd call indigenous, we don't referto Western Europeans as indigenous.
That's because the word indigenousis generally describing
the post European colonization worldwe still live in.
But what if we want to talk about historybeyond the last 500 years?
(21:24):
So we need another word for our purposeshere.
And just as the word indigenous broughtin the conversation from using the word
primitive, this new word could expandthe conversation again.
And this is where I think Ismael's
term lever could really come in handy.
So while one can be indigenous,regardless of their cultural assimilation,
(21:45):
the term lever, like the word primitive,
doesn't refer to an individual identity,but a whole society.
It's referring to an economicand cultural way of life.
Primarily, leavers are hunter gatherers,but Ishmael makes the point
that some weavers also participatein sustainable farming,
pastoralism and animal husbandry.
(22:07):
And unlike what the wordprimitive implies, Ishmael
doesn't believe Weaver cultures are inneed of so-called advancement.
It's a way of lifethat actually works well.
Similarly to how the
takers are a macro culture that is made upof many different groups and people.
We can think of weaversas their own kind of macro culture.
(22:27):
But unlike the takerstoday, Weaver cultures are often isolated
from one another and are much more diversein their rituals, customs and language.
Take your macro culture trends towardsmonolithic ways of being.
WeaverMacro culture trends towards diversity.
And in a sense, we can see the historyof civilization as the conflict between
(22:49):
these groups, according to the visionlaid out in Ishmael.
The takers are the newcomers.
Before the agricultural revolutionand the birth of Take Your Culture.
All of humanity livedas different versions of being a weaver.
The lever way of lifeexisted for tens of thousands,
(23:09):
even hundreds of thousands of years,and continues to exist today.
But even though takersare the historical newbies,
they have become the overwhelminglydominant culture
and historically confidentin their superiority over the weavers.
But in the last half century,as take your civilization's
overwhelming might, is leadingto the clear destruction of the world.
(23:33):
Some in take your society beganquestioning whether their way of life
really was superior after all.
Daniel Quinn was one of them.
Born in
1935, in a boarding housein Omaha, Nebraska.
As a young child,
Daniel Quinn would have heard the horrorsof World War Two over the radio.
Grew up as a young man during the Cold War
(23:54):
with constant threatof nuclear annihilation.
And then Daniel Quinnsettled into full adulthood
as the growing environmental movementmade clear that even without genocide
and nuclear war,we were destroying the world.
And Daniel Quinn became gravely concernedwith the self-destructive trajectory.
Take our civilizationseem to be heading in,
(24:17):
and so did a growing number of people,a bit younger than him,
those in the countercultureof the 1960s and seventies.
So what do you do when you find yourselfliving in a culture
you start to see as deeply flawed?
Well, many within the counterculturelook to cultures outside their own,
like esoteric
and occult traditions, their originsand spiritualities of Eastern cultures.
(24:41):
And perhaps what would have shockedtheir Western ancestors the most.
Was it new interestin the culture of the people
their ancestors would have labeledas primitive believers?
Plenty of this interest was surface level.
What we now call appropriation,just using tribal
imagery and symbolismas a logos on tote bags or bongs.
(25:01):
Sure,many pissed off your colonizer ancestors,
but it doesn't really disruptour way of life.
Many indigenous people withintake our society
pushed back on this appropriationbecause in a way, by adopting tribal
imagery, it's not actually rebellingagainst colonization.
It's an extension of it.
Native American authorand attorney of the Pawnee Nation, Walter
(25:22):
Ecko Hock, wrote, quote,
The theft of culture is part of the oneway transfer of property from indigenous
to non-indigenous hands, seen in coloniesand settler states around the world,
and includes not only the taking of land,natural resources and personal property,
but even the heritage ofindigenous peoples and their identities.
Poking them is clean as a safe way.
(25:42):
Chicken, unquote.
So for those in the Western takertradition who felt genuinely
their own culture was not satisfyingtheir deep needs and was in fact
leading to the world's destruction.
The question remained. But what do we do?
Some of these countercultural takersweren't
just adopting the imagery of weaversor performing new versions
(26:03):
of their religious ceremonies,but saw weavers as a source of wisdom
and hope for how their own takers societycould be
to some countercultural takers.
It seemed civilizationwith its wars, poverty and pollution
was actually far inferiorto so-called primitive cultures who seemed
to treat nature and their communitieswith much greater respect.
(26:26):
This kind of reframing is usually referredto as the noble savage theory.
The noble savage theoryis that instead of humanity's beginnings
being nasty, brutish and short,until we were plucked
out of the primordial muckby the glories of civilization,
humanity actually originally livedas noble and good, close to nature,
before being corruptedby the evils of civilization.
(26:50):
And while
this kind of romanticizationgained prominence as an idea,
even forming an offshoot movementreferred to as primitivism
during the 1970sand eighties, this primitivist romanticism
was actually not an entirely newphenomenon.
It's usually traced back to the Frenchphilosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Rousseau, in 1755, arguedthat humanity actually began
(27:13):
in the egalitarianand free, quote, state of nature.
Rousseau actually never used the termnoble savage, but it's a similar idea.
But actually this romanticized versionof the wild man,
uncorrupted by civilization,goes back far deeper than that.
Pretty much all the way
to the beginning of Take Your Civilizationand the epic of Gilgamesh,
the first known, written epic in history,the great Sumerian king.
(27:36):
Gilgamesh befriendsa wild man named Enkidu,
part man, part animalwho lives in the step and eats grass.
And thoughGilgamesh is the embodiment of the power
and glory of civilization,you can't help but see.
There's something admirable,even noble, about his new wild friend.
So anyway, that'sjust to say, the noble, savage concept,
(27:57):
while seemingly challenging to take,
your mythology has existed withintake your culture for a very long time.
Maybe because it's not as challengingas we think.
Yes. Noble, savage theory.
And this kind of primitivismadmires levers.
But in the sort of condescending way,
sure, it's goodthat they don't destroy the world,
but that's because they're too primitiveor childlike, and rightly so.
(28:19):
There's been push backto this kind of romanticization.
Primitivism has been dismissed,especially after the nineties,
as a form of Western exoticismand fetishizing of other cultures.
The critique of primitivismalso reminds us that so many so-called
primitive societies practice behaviorand norms we'd find appalling.
After all, every group of peopleis capable of causing harm.
(28:42):
There are tribal societiesthat held their version of slaves.
Yet if we stop at this critique,
then we're back at the placewhere we're lumping all of humanity
into the same categoryas being inherently screwed up.
And the conversationcomes to a grinding halt.
But after
writing and rewriting his ideasfor 15 years,
Daniel Quinn was finally readyto publish Ishmael.
(29:05):
Sometimes I hear Ishmael getting lumpedinto the Primitivist movement.
The noble, savage side of the debate.
There's a quote I've seen from Ishmaeltaken out of context that goes, quote,
People living close to naturetend to be noble.
It's seeing all those sunsetsthat does it.
You can't watch a sunsetand then go off and set
fire to your neighbor's teepee, unquote.
(29:27):
The irony is, is that if you actually readthe book, the very next line in
Ishmael is him tellingthe narrator, quote, You understand?
And I'm not saying anything like this.
So what is Ishmael saying?
Well, for one, Ishmael doesn't claimto speak for believers.
The point of having a character of Ishmaelbe a gorilla
is a thought experiment for Daniel Quinnto try and view humanity
(29:48):
from the outside, which, of course,he can't really.
Daniel Quinn isn't the gorilla.
He's grown up inside this culture.
He can't fully erasesbiases and blind spots.
But Ishmael is his attempt
to see the bigger picturebeyond the mindset of these two groups.
So if Daniel Quinn is Exoticizedand Weaver's, he's also exoticized.
Takers as a way to question our ownmost basic assumptions and see the society
(30:13):
we're most familiarwith as what it truly is
its own kind of weird culture.
But the real significance of whereIshmael differs from other texts
is what he sees as the real distinctionbetween takers and levers,
as a taker.
You have much more in commonwith a bartender in Tokyo
(30:33):
and an accountant in Mexico Cityand a software engineer in New Delhi
than you do with lever culturesand Ishmael asks,
What do takers fundamentally share?
That's differentfrom what leavers fundamentally share.
Part of the answer is technology.
You could all hop on a Zoom call right nowif you wanted to.
You all use a form of currency
and learn to read or writerather than share knowledge orally.
(30:56):
But Ishmael suggeststhe deeper fun of mental difference
between takers and leaversis not technology, but their mindset.
And they have a different mindsetbecause they share a different mythology.
They enact a different story.
As Ishmael puts it, quote, There's nothingfundamentally wrong with people
giving a story to an actthat puts them in accord with the world
(31:18):
they will live in accord with the world
given a story to enact in which the worldis a foe to be conquered,
they will conquer like a phone,and one day, inevitably their foe will lie
bleeding to death at their feetas the world is now, unquote.
And the reason
why levers have not wreckedthe same havoc on the world
is not because they're more nobleor more ignorant, but because, as Ishmael
(31:41):
puts it, they are, quote, enacting a story
that works well for people, unquote.
Thanks for listening.
Until next time.
What could this story beand what does it mean to work?
Well for people?
How would we know and what it evenbe possible for us to enact it today?
(32:02):
That's what we'll explore next, then
talk with you in.
Thank you to Dan,
Dad, Fig and Gary for helpinggive feedback on this episode.
The theme music you were listening towas Celestial Soda Pop by Ray Lynch,
and if you'd like to support Human
Nature Odyssey, please subscribewherever you enjoy your podcasts.
(32:26):
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 subjects writings, mini essays,and my recommendations for reading,
watching and listening on these topicswith my notes and commentary.
(32:46):
Your support makes this endeavor possible,and I'd love to hear what you think.
So we've a message on the patronand be a part of the conversation.
It was a peaceful autumn morning in 1996.
The birds were chirping,the air was crisp.
The leaves were just starting to change.
It was on this fine morning. OprahWinfrey.
Yes. Oprah Winfrey.
Once she opened her front door,she noticed something different,
something unexpected.
(00:21):
Lying right there on herfront doorstep was a book.
The book was Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
Oprah had heard of Ishmael, which had justbeen published a few years before.
Isn't this that book about a gorillashe thought to herself
when she first heard about it?
She hadn't been interestedin reading a book about a gorilla.
But today, she later recalled,it felt like a sign.
(00:44):
So Oprah picked up the anonymously
gifted book from her frontsteps and read Ishmael for herself.
When she later introduced
Daniel Quinn, the author of Ishmael,as a guest on her show.
And you can read the transcriptof the episode online.
She introduced him by saying,When I mentioned I was reading
Ishmael the story of a gorillawho was a teacher.
(01:05):
A lot of my friendsthought I was a little crazy.
But the message in the bookis very powerful,
and there are thousands of other peoplewho have read it and they say it's
changing the way they see the worldand also their lives.
It certainly opened my eyes.
Oprah had many questions for her guest,but the first one she asked was,
How do you explain to people,what is this about?
(01:27):
And Daniel Quinn,who at this point was in his sixties
with wisps of gray hair and a soft voice,was just for the first time
in his whole life,gaining some recognition for his ideas.
I mean, herehe was sitting across from Oprah.
And when Oprah asked him how to explainwhat Ishmael is about, he told her that
rather than explaining what it's about,it's more helpful to know what it does.
(01:52):
He told her that, like medicine,the first thing you want to know is
what's the effect?
Welcome to Episode
four of Human Nature Odyssey,a podcast exploring new ways to rethink
what we take for granted about historyand our society.
(02:14):
I'm Alex.
So what does Daniel Quinn's bookIshmael do?
What's the effect?
(02:36):
Quinn explained that he wrote it to quote,
give people a new vision of our placeon this planet, unquote.
I like to think that the ideas in Ishmaelare like a lens, like a pair of glasses.
You can wear and see the worldmore clearly.
You might find some clarityin surprising and interesting places.
(02:56):
This particular metaphorical
prescription lensis going to help us examine the question
that is the focus of Ishmael,the book, as well as this entire podcast.
What is civilized nation?
What exactly is going wrong here?
And can it go right?And not just in modern
civilization as it is today,but how it's evolved over time.
(03:20):
And while
on the Human Nature Odysseypodcast will explore many ideas, thinkers
and their works, the novel Ishmael iswhere our adventure has started.
Now, Daniel Quinn is not speakingto us, the readers directly,
but through the imaginary characterIshmael, a telepathic gorilla.
If you're going to get an honest
look at humanity,it helps to have an outside observer,
(03:41):
in this case a well read, criticallythinking gorilla to offer some insight.
And so far on this podcast, we've begunto outline a bit of Ismail's vision.
In episode two, we talked abouthow we are destroying the world,
not because we're too greedy or selfish,
but because we're captives in society
where our individual survival dependson our collective suicide.
(04:06):
And Ishmael arguesthat what's holding us captive is a story.
In episode three, we learned that
Ishmael has a name for the peoplewho are captives of this story.
He calls them takers.
The takers argue among themselvesabout which language to speak the name
of their gods, the color of their flag,the structure of their marketplace.
(04:28):
But there's something fundamental.
They all share takermythology, a story they
we are all captives enacting
according to Take Your Mythology.
The world belongs to humansand humans must concrete,
but we'll probably screw it upbecause humans are innately flawed.
That's the story.
Our civilizationis acting out on a daily basis
(04:51):
because take our civilizationhas colonized and expanded
across much of the world.
We might forget that there could be anyother modes of existence, but there are.
And Ishmael
calls the cultures who don't participateand take your civilization levers.
Now, just to add.
Generally speaking, takers self-organizeinto what we traditionally call
(05:15):
civilization city based societies.
Believers self-organize into what wesometimes
referred to as tribes or kinbased societies.
Takerssocieties are built mainly on agriculture.
Weaversusually practice hunting and gathering.
Taker economies are based on extractionof resources and exponential growth,
(05:38):
while Weaver economies are based onsustainable resource management
and stability.
Well, in order to understandthis taker Weaver dichotomy
and why it's so significant, I think it'sworth zooming out from the book
for this episodeand talk about the history and context.
Daniel Quinn wrote his book in.
(06:07):
My dad likes to say
there are two kinds of peoplein the world,
those who divide the world intotwo kinds of people and those who don't.
My aunt usually then likes to makethe joke that actually there are
three kinds of people in the world,those who can count and those who can.
But anyway, as we now know, Ishmaelis the kind of gorilla who likes to divide
the world into two groups of people,the takers and the weavers.
(06:27):
Now, the narrator, who,if you remember, is the reluctant pupil
who first found Ishmael ad in the paperand has come to his private office
to find out what this is all about.
Essentially,he says, Hold up, hold up a minute.
The takers and the Weavers.
You're going to reduce the entire worldinto just two groups.
Seems a bit too oversimplified to me.
Clearly,the narrator is one of the two kinds
(06:49):
of people who doesn't like dividingthe world into two kinds of people.
But as Ishmael points out,dividing the world like
this is somethingour culture already does, or least we did.
But the words we used to useare civilized and primitive.
We're going to look at the historyof these words their use,
their limitations,and what they've been replaced by since.
(07:11):
Now, hearing these wordsmight make your skin crawl a bit.
Oh, labeling people primitive,that does not sound good to my ears.
Yeah, well,
I don't think the word primitivewas originally intended as a compliment.
It was used as justificationfor a conquest.
Genocide and forced assimilation of,quote unquote, primitive people
by people who thought of themselvesas, quote unquote, civilized.
(07:34):
Now, in the grand scheme of civilization,the words civilized and primitive
are actually relatively recent waysof labeling these two groups.
But the phenomenon of this dichotomy
is as oldand as widespread as civilization itself.
The Romans and Greeks used to use the wordbarbarians.
The show dynasty of Ancient China.
(07:55):
Use the wordsY and e y, meaning Chinese and civilized
e meaning wild or uncivilized tribesand Malacca was the Sanskrit word
in ancient India to describe foreignersor tribes outside their civilization.
The exact meanings of these wordsvary a bit, but there is
this general conceptof other outside of civilization.
(08:18):
They're trying to label and more oftenthan not, ponder and convert.
Over the last 500 years, Europeancolonization has most directly shaped
the way we think about this dichotomyof these two groups today.
And then Naquin wroteIshmael commenting on this tradition.
(08:41):
So when people who saw themselvesas civilized,
like Christopher Columbus and Cortez,literally, and countless other
khakis, stores, missionaries,fur trappers, pioneers
and slavers left the continentcalled Europe to gain riches and power
in the continents that eventually becameknown as North and South America.
(09:01):
Not to mentionmany other parts of the world.
They believed that these other people,the people who were living in the lands
they were attempting to conquer,were uncivilized, even subhuman.
Like one in 1651, William Bradford,an English separatist
and governor of the Plymouth Colony,wrote of Massachusetts as, quote,
being devoid of all civil inhabits,where there are only savage
(09:24):
and brutish men which range up and downlittle otherwise than the wild beasts
of the state, unquote.
So what does it even mean to be civilizedhere?
It kind of has two definitions.
On one hand,it refers to members of the civilization,
the kind of society with written lawsand hierarchy, yada, yada.
But on the other hand, the word civilizedalso means to be humane and polite.
(09:48):
Which gets confusing when you considerhow the Spanish conquistadors,
American slaveholdersand Nazi concentration camp guards.
Sure, they were civilized in the sensethat they lived within civilization.
But were they civilized in the sensethat they were humane and highbrow?
No, no, no. The answer is obviously no.
They were not.
(10:08):
But where did they get this conceptof being civilized
from?
Many Western European colonizers feltthey were carrying the proud tradition
of this whole being civilized thingfrom the great Roman Empire,
which they viewed as the OG,the creme de la creme of civilization.
(10:32):
As author Anthony Paglen puts it, quote,
It was above all, Rome,which has provided the ideologues
of the colonial systems of Spain,Britain and France
with the language and political modesthey required for the Imperium.
Romana has always had a unique placein the political imagination
of Western Europe, unquote.
(10:53):
Spanish philosopher
Juan Inés disciple Vitor,who lived during Spain's 16th century
invasion of the Americas, wrote a treatisejustifying Spain's invasion
based on the Roman, quote, rightto conquer in order to civilize, unquote.
He went on to write, quote, With theserights, the Romans are very civilized
(11:14):
people and exalted in virtue subjectedto their rule the barbarian nations.
Unquote.
In fact, the word civilizedand civilization come from the Latin root.
Not to mention the wordsimperialism, empire,
colonialism and colonyalso were handed down from ancient Rome.
Now, the irony here is just the millennia.
(11:36):
So before Western Europeansgleefully colonized
the world and looked downon other cultures as being primitive.
The Romans themselveslooked down on Western Europeans,
like the vandals and Gaulsand Celts as primitive.
The Roman statesman Cassiodorusridiculed these, quote,
barbarians as thosewho, quote, did not live in cities
(11:57):
making their abodes in the fieldslike wild animals, unquote.
But after a few centuries,the descendants of the tribes,
like the vandals and Gaulsand Celts, the Western Europeans
would view themselves more culturallyaligned with their old colonizer,
the Romans, than with their so-calledprimitive ancestors.
(12:19):
The Western European descendantseven took it
a step further from Rome and made up a
new nickname to designate themselvesas civilized, a.k.a.
the Superior Group,and started calling themselves White
a concept that had existedbefore the 1600s.
These new white supremacistsand colonizers believe
(12:40):
that civilization itselforiginated with the Romans and the Greeks.
But this is not the case.
Ironically, civilizationdidn't even begin with the people
they would consider white.
The Romans,after all, were only the latest
to carry the torch of the empiresthat came before them.
In the ancient Mediterranean world,it was the Greeks, the Persians,
(13:03):
the Assyrians, the Egyptians,the Babylonians,
all the way back to the Sumeriansin modern day Iraq.
So when in 2006,Tucker Carlson, former Fox News
crisis actor,
called the people of Iraq, quote,semi-literate primitive monkeys, unquote.
Iraq, the place
(13:23):
where a Western civilizationcan ultimately trace its roots back to.
Tucker wasn'tjust being incredibly racist.
He was being to put it lightly,shall we say.
Very incorrect.
And of course, civilizationdidn't just originate in the Middle East,
but long ago in China, India,Central America and South America.
(13:44):
So white supremacy is not included.
We all understand thatno human has civilization,
more or less in their DNA than others.
As I mentioned earlier, primitive
is a relatively recent wayof describing societies.
Primitive only started being usedin the mid to late 1800s, actually,
after Darwin wrote Origins of the Species
(14:05):
and the concept of evolution startedbeing applied to human societies.
The word used before that by WesternEuropeans was savage.
The scientists who had been labeledas savage and barbarian
were now being called primitivebecause it was thought that these forms
of societies preceded the inevitabledevelopment of civilization.
(14:26):
In this
context, primitivemight sound a little kinder than savage,
but it's essentially saying, Don't worry,guys, you're not stuck like this.
You can become advanced like us.
Okay, now actually that kind and primitivealong with being used
derogatorily is also a lousy wayto describe the phenomenon
of people living outside this entitywe call civilization.
(14:49):
After all, there are many ways so-calledprimitive societies are far more
sophisticated, complex, advancedthan so-called civilized societies.
It just depends on what you considersophisticated, complex and advanced.
For example, David Graeber and DavidWayne GROSS book The Dawn of Everything
touches on howwhen many native North American societies
(15:11):
with elaborate forms of government,intricate democracies and self-organizing
councils first learnedabout European monarchies and their rigid
hierarchies, lack of individual freedomand massive wealth inequality.
The native societieswere not very impressed.
So if we're scrapping civilized andprimitive, what do we replace them with?
(15:34):
Well, maybe we don't replace them.
Maybe we shouldn't divide peopleinto two categories in the first place.
Maybe the narrator's right and we shouldview humanity as one big whole.
But the danger of lumping all of humanityinto one category is that we start to see
the destructive behavior of our societyas reflective of all humanity.
(15:57):
People start to talk
about the destruction of the worldas a problem with our whole species.
Comedian
George Carlin called us pesky,troublesome species.
Actor and playwright WallaceShawn described us
as the species that went madand destroyed the planet.
Then there's biologist Julian Huxley,who took it a bit further
(16:17):
saying that the human racewill be the cancer of this planet.
And if you're thinking,what, isn't that from The Matrix?
Well, yes, Agent Smith also famously says
human beings are a disease,a cancer of this planet.
There's a lot of talkabout how destructive
our species has been,how destructive human nature is.
(16:39):
But are the horrors of World War,
the threat of nuclear annihilationand ecological catastrophe?
The failings of our entire species?
Do they reflect our inevitable tragichuman nature?
Or are they the failings of just one wayof life, one way of being?
And what about
the peoplewho actually live a different way?
(17:01):
The words civilizedand primitive are not great words,
but they are described in something worthlooking at.
So what words could we use instead?
Well, this is where Daniel Cohen comes in.
He proposes that the labels takersand the levers
could be helpful.
(17:24):
In the last episode,we really got into taker
mythology, which boils down to the worldbelongs to us.
We're meant to rule.
This is the story of all people living in
Take Your Culture, are acting outand held captive.
And it's resultingin the destruction of the world.
But who does Ishmael really considertakers?
It's not just one group or country.
(17:47):
At this point, the takers arean interconnected global culture.
While each culture
within it is unique, we're tied togethermore than just economically.
We're all in this ongoingideological conversation with each other.
So this global macro culture
includes the so-called developed countriesand developing countries.
Which makes sense because it's like
(18:08):
even though the wealthy people who liveat the top of an apartment complex
like to think they're separate
from the people living on the streetin front of the building.
To an anthropologist,the people at the top
and the people at the bottom are clearlypart of the same society and culture.
It's just the culture that distributesthe wealth very unequal,
even the very different formsof governments like the Soviet
(18:31):
Union's version of communism,democratic republics and fascist regimes
are just different waysto organize the various nations
within the macro culturethat Ishmael calls takers.
Okay, so take your civilizationincludes Western civilization
and Eastern civilization,and it includes the developed world
and the developing world, the first worldand the Third World,
(18:54):
the full swaths of the political spectrumfrom right to left, both.
And what the heck else is,
Ishmael would say, believers.
But before we can really figure out
who Ishmael includesand the leaves are category,
we've got to discuss a termthat's replaced primitive
in recent decades.
(19:15):
Depending on what country you livein, you'll hear
the termsAboriginal people or first nations.
One of the most commonis the word Indigenous,
which a bit ironicallyis also quite civilized Latin a.k.a.
Roman Empire. Word.
But unlike the word primitive,the term indigenous
has become a source of pride for many.
(19:36):
It's become a collective identityto build solidarity around and demand
rightsthat were taken away by colonization
only as recently as the 2000s.
The word indigenous was adopted as anofficial term used by the United Nations.
One way the UN defines indigenous is quote
descendants of those who inhabiteda country or a geographical region.
(19:57):
At the time when people of differentcultures or ethnic origins arrived,
they have retained social, cultural,
economic and political characteristicsthat are distinct
from those of the dominant societiesin which they live, unquote.
And while indigenous is mostly now used
instead of the word primitive, it'snot the same thing.
(20:19):
For example,
the word primitive is referring to one'sway of life, and inherent in
that is the idea that you're supposedto advance beyond where you are.
Indigenous emphasizes nativity to a land
the one that they are indigenousto the Northeast United States.
The Aymara are indigenous to Bolivia.
The Maori are indigenous to New Zealand.
(20:40):
And it doesn't lock in your identityto a specific way of life.
If a person from an indigenous societymoves to a city and doesn't
speak their ancestral language,they wouldn't lose the title
of Indigenous, which is criticalfor people trying to demand
their rights and unique culturewhile navigating assimilation.
In a way, it's
almost somewhat of an ethnic group
(21:01):
that is, it's an identitypassed down through blood.
But even though Western Europeansare also descendants of societies
we'd call indigenous, we don't referto Western Europeans as indigenous.
That's because the word indigenousis generally describing
the post European colonization worldwe still live in.
But what if we want to talk about historybeyond the last 500 years?
(21:24):
So we need another word for our purposeshere.
And just as the word indigenous broughtin the conversation from using the word
primitive, this new word could expandthe conversation again.
And this is where I think Ismael's
term lever could really come in handy.
So while one can be indigenous,regardless of their cultural assimilation,
(21:45):
the term lever, like the word primitive,
doesn't refer to an individual identity,but a whole society.
It's referring to an economicand cultural way of life.
Primarily, leavers are hunter gatherers,but Ishmael makes the point
that some weavers also participatein sustainable farming,
pastoralism and animal husbandry.
(22:07):
And unlike what the wordprimitive implies, Ishmael
doesn't believe Weaver cultures are inneed of so-called advancement.
It's a way of lifethat actually works well.
Similarly to how the
takers are a macro culture that is made upof many different groups and people.
We can think of weaversas their own kind of macro culture.
(22:27):
But unlike the takerstoday, Weaver cultures are often isolated
from one another and are much more diversein their rituals, customs and language.
Take your macro culture trends towardsmonolithic ways of being.
WeaverMacro culture trends towards diversity.
And in a sense, we can see the historyof civilization as the conflict between
(22:49):
these groups, according to the visionlaid out in Ishmael.
The takers are the newcomers.
Before the agricultural revolutionand the birth of Take Your Culture.
All of humanity livedas different versions of being a weaver.
The lever way of lifeexisted for tens of thousands,
(23:09):
even hundreds of thousands of years,and continues to exist today.
But even though takersare the historical newbies,
they have become the overwhelminglydominant culture
and historically confidentin their superiority over the weavers.
But in the last half century,as take your civilization's
overwhelming might, is leadingto the clear destruction of the world.
(23:33):
Some in take your society beganquestioning whether their way of life
really was superior after all.
Daniel Quinn was one of them.
Born in
1935, in a boarding housein Omaha, Nebraska.
As a young child,
Daniel Quinn would have heard the horrorsof World War Two over the radio.
Grew up as a young man during the Cold War
(23:54):
with constant threatof nuclear annihilation.
And then Daniel Quinnsettled into full adulthood
as the growing environmental movementmade clear that even without genocide
and nuclear war,we were destroying the world.
And Daniel Quinn became gravely concernedwith the self-destructive trajectory.
Take our civilizationseem to be heading in,
(24:17):
and so did a growing number of people,a bit younger than him,
those in the countercultureof the 1960s and seventies.
So what do you do when you find yourselfliving in a culture
you start to see as deeply flawed?
Well, many within the counterculturelook to cultures outside their own,
like esoteric
and occult traditions, their originsand spiritualities of Eastern cultures.
(24:41):
And perhaps what would have shockedtheir Western ancestors the most.
Was it new interestin the culture of the people
their ancestors would have labeledas primitive believers?
Plenty of this interest was surface level.
What we now call appropriation,just using tribal
imagery and symbolismas a logos on tote bags or bongs.
(25:01):
Sure,many pissed off your colonizer ancestors,
but it doesn't really disruptour way of life.
Many indigenous people withintake our society
pushed back on this appropriationbecause in a way, by adopting tribal
imagery, it's not actually rebellingagainst colonization.
It's an extension of it.
Native American authorand attorney of the Pawnee Nation, Walter
(25:22):
Ecko Hock, wrote, quote,
The theft of culture is part of the oneway transfer of property from indigenous
to non-indigenous hands, seen in coloniesand settler states around the world,
and includes not only the taking of land,natural resources and personal property,
but even the heritage ofindigenous peoples and their identities.
Poking them is clean as a safe way.
(25:42):
Chicken, unquote.
So for those in the Western takertradition who felt genuinely
their own culture was not satisfyingtheir deep needs and was in fact
leading to the world's destruction.
The question remained. But what do we do?
Some of these countercultural takersweren't
just adopting the imagery of weaversor performing new versions
(26:03):
of their religious ceremonies,but saw weavers as a source of wisdom
and hope for how their own takers societycould be
to some countercultural takers.
It seemed civilizationwith its wars, poverty and pollution
was actually far inferiorto so-called primitive cultures who seemed
to treat nature and their communitieswith much greater respect.
(26:26):
This kind of reframing is usually referredto as the noble savage theory.
The noble savage theoryis that instead of humanity's beginnings
being nasty, brutish and short,until we were plucked
out of the primordial muckby the glories of civilization,
humanity actually originally livedas noble and good, close to nature,
before being corruptedby the evils of civilization.
(26:50):
And while
this kind of romanticizationgained prominence as an idea,
even forming an offshoot movementreferred to as primitivism
during the 1970sand eighties, this primitivist romanticism
was actually not an entirely newphenomenon.
It's usually traced back to the Frenchphilosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Rousseau, in 1755, arguedthat humanity actually began
(27:13):
in the egalitarianand free, quote, state of nature.
Rousseau actually never used the termnoble savage, but it's a similar idea.
But actually this romanticized versionof the wild man,
uncorrupted by civilization,goes back far deeper than that.
Pretty much all the way
to the beginning of Take Your Civilizationand the epic of Gilgamesh,
the first known, written epic in history,the great Sumerian king.
(27:36):
Gilgamesh befriendsa wild man named Enkidu,
part man, part animalwho lives in the step and eats grass.
And thoughGilgamesh is the embodiment of the power
and glory of civilization,you can't help but see.
There's something admirable,even noble, about his new wild friend.
So anyway, that'sjust to say, the noble, savage concept,
(27:57):
while seemingly challenging to take,
your mythology has existed withintake your culture for a very long time.
Maybe because it's not as challengingas we think.
Yes. Noble, savage theory.
And this kind of primitivismadmires levers.
But in the sort of condescending way,
sure, it's goodthat they don't destroy the world,
but that's because they're too primitiveor childlike, and rightly so.
(28:19):
There's been push backto this kind of romanticization.
Primitivism has been dismissed,especially after the nineties,
as a form of Western exoticismand fetishizing of other cultures.
The critique of primitivismalso reminds us that so many so-called
primitive societies practice behaviorand norms we'd find appalling.
After all, every group of peopleis capable of causing harm.
(28:42):
There are tribal societiesthat held their version of slaves.
Yet if we stop at this critique,
then we're back at the placewhere we're lumping all of humanity
into the same categoryas being inherently screwed up.
And the conversationcomes to a grinding halt.
But after
writing and rewriting his ideasfor 15 years,
Daniel Quinn was finally readyto publish Ishmael.
(29:05):
Sometimes I hear Ishmael getting lumpedinto the Primitivist movement.
The noble, savage side of the debate.
There's a quote I've seen from Ishmaeltaken out of context that goes, quote,
People living close to naturetend to be noble.
It's seeing all those sunsetsthat does it.
You can't watch a sunsetand then go off and set
fire to your neighbor's teepee, unquote.
(29:27):
The irony is, is that if you actually readthe book, the very next line in
Ishmael is him tellingthe narrator, quote, You understand?
And I'm not saying anything like this.
So what is Ishmael saying?
Well, for one, Ishmael doesn't claimto speak for believers.
The point of having a character of Ishmaelbe a gorilla
is a thought experiment for Daniel Quinnto try and view humanity
(29:48):
from the outside, which, of course,he can't really.
Daniel Quinn isn't the gorilla.
He's grown up inside this culture.
He can't fully erasesbiases and blind spots.
But Ishmael is his attempt
to see the bigger picturebeyond the mindset of these two groups.
So if Daniel Quinn is Exoticizedand Weaver's, he's also exoticized.
Takers as a way to question our ownmost basic assumptions and see the society
(30:13):
we're most familiarwith as what it truly is
its own kind of weird culture.
But the real significance of whereIshmael differs from other texts
is what he sees as the real distinctionbetween takers and levers,
as a taker.
You have much more in commonwith a bartender in Tokyo
(30:33):
and an accountant in Mexico Cityand a software engineer in New Delhi
than you do with lever culturesand Ishmael asks,
What do takers fundamentally share?
That's differentfrom what leavers fundamentally share.
Part of the answer is technology.
You could all hop on a Zoom call right nowif you wanted to.
You all use a form of currency
and learn to read or writerather than share knowledge orally.
(30:56):
But Ishmael suggeststhe deeper fun of mental difference
between takers and leaversis not technology, but their mindset.
And they have a different mindsetbecause they share a different mythology.
They enact a different story.
As Ishmael puts it, quote, There's nothingfundamentally wrong with people
giving a story to an actthat puts them in accord with the world
(31:18):
they will live in accord with the world
given a story to enact in which the worldis a foe to be conquered,
they will conquer like a phone,and one day, inevitably their foe will lie
bleeding to death at their feetas the world is now, unquote.
And the reason
why levers have not wreckedthe same havoc on the world
is not because they're more nobleor more ignorant, but because, as Ishmael
(31:41):
puts it, they are, quote, enacting a story
that works well for people, unquote.
Thanks for listening.
Until next time.
What could this story beand what does it mean to work?
Well for people?
How would we know and what it evenbe possible for us to enact it today?
(32:02):
That's what we'll explore next, then
talk with you in.
Thank you to Dan,
Dad, Fig and Gary for helpinggive feedback on this episode.
The theme music you were listening towas Celestial Soda Pop by Ray Lynch,
and if you'd like to support Human
Nature Odyssey, please subscribewherever you enjoy your podcasts.
(32:26):
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 subjects writings, mini essays,and my recommendations for reading,
watching and listening on these topicswith my notes and commentary.
(32:46):
Your support makes this endeavor possible,and I'd love to hear what you think.
So we've a message on the patronand be a part of the conversation.
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