And Quinn's new take on our environmental dilemma emerges. Ishmael claims that all intelligent life listens to the voice of its Mother Culture. The trouble is, Ishmael tells him, your Mother Culture says you're not just an ongoing part of evolution but its end product. Because of her voice, you violate the one natural law all living things are subject to.
Genesis, says Ishmael, is the oral history of the nomadic pre-agricultural Semites. It was a warning to the agricultural Israelites that they were breaking nature's law. But when the Israelites adopted Genesis, they focused on the part about being made in God's image, and so do you. You think you have the right to exterminate competitors.
You feel obliged to convert hunter-gatherers to agriculture and over-production -- not only of goods but of people as well. Eve symbolizes the fecundity of your agricultural species. By believing you're the end of evolution, he warns, you assure the end of yourselves. You defeat other species and over-populate yourselves into extinction. You ignore the law, "Take only what you need. The narrator still comes up short, so Ishmael gives him some homework. He suggests the narrator try to figure out his culture's creation myth.
Through Ishmael's foundation for the journey, Quinn establishes the key terms that will assist the reader in understanding the novel's main themes and foreshadows the trajectory of Ishmael's discussion. The first of these terms are Takers and Leavers. Recall that Quinn associates "takers" with civilization and "leavers" with primitive cultures. Consider how these terms might relate to notions of civilized and primitive cultures.
What do civilized cultures "take"? What do primitive cultures "leave"? Exploring these questions will help you follow Ishmael's interpretation of culture.
The next major term is Mother Culture, which Quinn employs to personify culture and make it another character in the novel. As a "mother," culture nurtures us, feeds us, and gives us the tools to understand the culture into which we are born. Ishmael will continue to expand on the character of Mother Culture as he uses "her" to help the narrator see the structure of his own culture more clearly. Additionally, Ishmael provides the narrator with three key definitions for story, to enact, and culture.
These three terms provide the framework for Ishmael's exploration of Takers and Leavers, who are groups of people with their own "story" they're "enacting" as a "culture. What do you do to "enact" your story of who you are and who you want to be? The method of inquiry that Ishmael uses for his student are like Zen koans—puzzles that cannot be resolved by our normal ways of thinking and require a totally different framework.
What is the meaning of our world? Because of this structure, the reader can jump in at almost any point and get a sense of the nature of that inquiry. I carry a copy of Ishmael with me, and often just pick it up and start reading on any page. In evaluating a book, we tend to judge content and process as if they are separable. Such an assumption is, however, part of the deep fragmentation that pervades our culture.
Literature is not just about presenting compelling ideas. In a great book, the method of exposition is as compelling as the ideas themselves. The power of Ishmael is that its method, process, and content are so tightly integrated. The very premise of the book engages people at a level beyond any mere exposition of its central issues.
For this reason, I believe Ishmael may indeed contribute to the very type of cultural change Quinn believes is necessary. By opening us to a whole different type of dialogue about our culture, it may create an opening in that culture. This is a book that appeals to each of us as individuals, and challenges us to begin making the individual changes necessary to create a collective cultural transformation.
Peter M. Ishmael is available through Pegasus Communications, Inc. Editorial support for this article was provided by Colleen LannonKim. Imagine an organization in which all the records disintegrated overnight.
Suddenly, there are no more reports, no computer files,…. From Events to Interrelationships A pragmatic view of systems thinking is that it is a body of tools and methodology for solving difficult, highly interdependent problems. The latest Chapter in an Ongoing Story The late physicist David Bohm, a leading thinker about dialogue, believed that human beings began to lose their capacity for thinking together long ago. Strutter and Meaning In evaluating a book, we tend to judge content and process as if they are separable.
Cultural inquiry, interrelationships, volume 5.
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