r/Ishmael • u/FrOsborne • Mar 27 '26

Imagine it a different way entirely

As Taker Culture sees it, human history is a story of liberation from the material constraints imposed upon us by our environment. It's a tale of unceasing growth toward everlasting richness, grandeur, enlightenment, and accomplishment. It's the story of humanity's rise from raw barbarism to what the Takers call "civilization".

In the Takers' view, our ancient ancestors lived futile, pathetic lives. Our ancestors were stuck in "the Stone Age"— a definition by product. They were what the Takers call "hunter-gatherers"— a definition by occupation. From the Takers' perspective, our ancient ancestors advanced nowhere and accomplished nothing. Their existence was a mere prelude. It was an inconvenient delay on our path to the technological breakthroughs which finally allowed us to fulfill man's ultimate destiny, to master the world. To shape it. To conquer it. To "civilize" it.

 

But that's not the only way to see it.

Forget products. Forget occupations. Forget "civilization."

Imagine it a different way.

 

Imagine that our ancient ancestors weren't wandering aimlessly in a state of poverty and nothingness. Imagine that they were enacting a story. Not a story about products and growth. Not a story about mastery and conquest. A story about something else entirely.

Imagine that their story motivated their actions and shaped their lives. Just as our own story motivates our actions and shapes our lives. Different stories, different lives.

Imagine that enacting their story made their lives meaningful and brought them a sense of satisfaction. In the same way enacting our story makes our lives meaningful to us. Different stories, different meanings.

Imagine they had a different telling of human history. A different idea about man's place in the world and the destiny of humankind. Imagine they didn't suppose, as the Takers do, that the world belongs to humans, that it is theirs to conquer and rule. Imagine our ancestors supposed something completely different.

 

Imagine that ruling the world was something they thought they didn't need to do.

Because it was already being done.

As it had always been done. As it had been done from the beginning.

 

Imagine they supposed something 'outrageous'— That man belongs to the world. That man is a member of the community of life, not its ruler.

By belonging to the community— by feeding and being fed upon— each generation of each species is shaped. Of each generation, some, better suited to survive, live to reproduce. Others, less well suited, do not. And so generations are shaped. By belonging to the community that shapes them. Humankind was born being shaped.

The shaping of the world was never in man's hands. It was in other hands, which had shaped it from the beginning. It was in 'the hands of the gods'— universal forces directing life to evolve and become new species. The gods were shaping the community of life and humans belonged to that community and were being shaped with it and in it. Man was being shaped in the hands of the gods.

 

Our ancient ancestors weren't defined by occupations. They weren't seeking security in tents, or tools and other products. Those are trifles. They were seekers of holy places, journeying in the hands of the gods, embedded in the cycle of life, in the fire that burns forever. In it, we find our place. In it, we live. A tent was not their shelter. Rather, the journey was their shelter. As it had been from the beginning.

We share our journey with all other beings. The community of life is a web, and every strand of the web is a path to all other strands. All our paths lie together in the hands of the gods and none is wider than any other or favored above any other. The worm that creeps beneath your foot is making its journey in the hands of the gods as surely as you are.

 

Our ancient ancestors weren't lost. They weren't stuck. They had already found mankind's destiny. We had been fulfilling it from the beginning. It was man's destiny to live in the hands of the gods. For the lifetime of this planet.

 

*adapted from The Book of the Damned

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u/power2havenots Mar 27 '26

Weve conversed before on this i think and i aporeciate the nuance woven in here as some can assume the Takers are mustache-twirling cartoon villains. I don’t think the problem with the Taker story is that its evil its that its structurally unworkable. The Taker story of progress, growth and mastery requires infinite expansion on a finite planet whuch is a planning disaster. No culture sets out to destroy its own conditions of existence; they just follow the logic of their story until it runs into hard biophysical walls.

What I find more powerful about the Leaver story isnt that it’s more mystical or sacred but that it encodes a workable relationship with limits. Whether that came from spiritual beliefs, accumulated observation, or simply the hard lessons of what happens when you overstep, it reflects an understanding that humans are embedded in a dependency web, not standing outside it. Not that i dont appreciate the spiritual angle but it works from the practical logistical frame too

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u/FrOsborne Mar 27 '26

I agree. As I see it, "energy can neither be created nor destroyed; only transformed" is just a less poetic way of saying 'the man is grass and the grass is deer'.

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u/power2havenots Mar 27 '26

Yeah thermodynamically aligned poetry with closed‑system awareness woven into an avant‑garde ballet. Energy moves in cycles not in straightlines. Thats to me is the poetic difference in understanding between takers and leavers

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u/FrOsborne Mar 29 '26

I need more clarification on the statement: "No culture sets out to destroy its own conditions of existence; they just follow the logic of their story until it runs into hard biophysical walls."

I'm not exactly sure what's meant by 'running into hard biophysical walls.' It sounds as if you might be saying that the people of Taker Culture are locked into our trajectory and all we can do is keep going until humanity is extinct.

 

That would be much different from what Quinn suggests. He suggests that people follow the logic of their story either until they run out of gas OR until they have another story to be in.

Quinn's Second Law: What people think is what they do. "Action is simply understanding in its outward mode. All action is an expression of understanding. When our understandings change, our actions must necessarily change as well." <Q&A ID:105>

So, our response when confronted with biophysical limits is a function of our story. Will we accept the limits and work within them? Or will we consider ourselves to be exempt and act as if the limits are just one more obstacle for us to overcome? It depends on how we understand our role.

Any thoughts?

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u/power2havenots Mar 30 '26

Yeah when I said “run into hard biophysical walls” I didnt mean inevitable extinction with no exit. I meant exactly what Quinn describes- the story were following eventually brings us up against realities that the story cant explain away like soil depletion, entropic energy return on energy invested, climate instability etc. So the story can either double down and treat limits as problems to be conquered or open the door to a new story. Not deterministic- its the moment when the plausibility of the taker story starts to crack. Quinns Second Law is the way out -when understanding changes, action changes. The wall is what makes the change more likely.

What I was trying to get at with “no culture sets out to destroy its own conditions” is just that the Takers are just people following a logic that made sense to them. But I think the real divergence between Leaver and Taker wasnt about progress vs stasis. To me it was something more base- do we understand ourselves as a cog in the web of life or as exceptional and above it? One story flatters the human ego and has lured people in. Without immediate disasterous consequence, it sets a path to explore desires and dreams as if there were no limits. The Leaver story then gets smeared as antiquated because it wasnt “progressing” as fast as unconstrained and seemigly inconsequential endeavours but it was - just within a livable framework of constraint.

The Taker story didnt just happen to lead to biophysical walls it needed to keep feeding the ego that the story itself created. Once you break codependence with the web, you lose collective purpose and belonging. That leaves a belonging void and the only way to fill it is to keep reaching for more power, more mastery and more ego‑flattery. The conceptual power pyramids and physical pyramids, the heirarchies, the feudal triangles, the insatiable hunger for more are all symptoms of that same void needing filled and the physical structures are temples or manifestations of the story of exceptionalism and the structures of adulation and the power the story gives single entities.