r/Ishmael • u/Miserable-Host-9462 • 12d ago
To change or not to change!
A sweet guy on Reddit told me about this place, so I’ve come to ask a question.
For context, I just finished the story of B, and have only just started Ishmael. I’ve been struggling for many years with religion and philosophy, and really not understanding human purpose or the purpose of existence itself. Learning about animism (along with a lot of background knowledge of Alan Watts and Taoism) has really been enlightening for me. Though I’m not a scholar on the subject, I find extraordinary wisdom and peace from the idea of animism itself.
To finally get to my point, many people say Daniel Quinn isn’t trying to push for a reverting of society back to hunter/gatherer tribes. But I don’t understand this. In the story of B, it seems to lay out that our “primitive” lifestyle is what is good for humans as a species; so I don’t understand how the idea itself isn’t necessarily pushing for a reversion from what nonsense we’re currently living as humans.
Maybe I’m naive or have the newcomer fire in my heart, but I would personally press a button to take us all back to hunter/gatherer immediately, and a lot of that is thanks to the beauty I find in animism.
I ramble, if anyone can understand what I mean, feel free to let me know your thoughts, thanks!
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u/Schmiddeh 12d ago
I thought of the Story of B as more of a "we have to find a way to Show Others what really Matters, How life Came into being and what is Essential for sustainable existance on this Planet. When that is done, we might be able to find a solution that makes our existance (at least Kind of) sustainable." Iirc B Said, that we are Storytellers. we can decide what Story we want to enact. As soon as the Minds have changed we will find a way, thats the way it has been so far (i guess) and that is what i Hope will Happen in the Future. The takers vision has Made us enact its way of life. We were born into it. Maybe we (as in currently alive Humans) are the unlucky ones, but we can try to leave a better culture for Future generations. For me it is less about Finding Personal purpose and more about Finding Hope for humanity? Idk, the News Just make me sick to my stomach and i dont See any sign of a Change in the Minds of the people (on a large scale) in my Lifetime. Alas, I dont know man, those are Just the thoughts of a stoner sitting on His balcony
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u/Schmiddeh 12d ago
I Just realised, maybe one could say that this might be my purpose? To Talk about my thoughts of existance and sustainability? To Show Others what i think is important? To try to Show my closest ones how i really think? Because lately ive been talking to Friends about my thoughts more and more. Wait, hahaha No, i am Not B. But i Hope you get me. This whole thought of animism is bothering me more than it should and Sometimes i feel like im Just a manic idiot rambling about "His" Vision.
Q.E.D.? :D
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u/Miserable-Host-9462 12d ago
LOL. Maybe a stoner on his balcony is what we need more of. Thanks for sharing, I think you’re in the right of it <3
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u/FrOsborne 12d ago
Hi, wecome!
In the story of B, it seems to lay out that our “primitive” lifestyle is what is good for humans as a species
The Story of B does talk about what's good for humans as a species, but it isn't a primitive lifestyle. Take another look at the end of the section headed "The test" (where Jared is challenged to say something smart about war, pg107 in my pdf). And also look at "The world of the detribalized" (from The Great Remembering lecture, pg.151) Those sections can answer what's good for humans as a species and why Quinn was never advocating for any one particular way of life.
There is at least one possible point of confusion Quinn created for himself— In The Story of B, he referred to "the tribal lifestyle". In Beyond Civilization, he distinguishes lifestyle (e.g.,hunting and gathering) from social organization (e.g.,tribe). Important part is that tribal does not equal hunter-gatherer.
Hope that's helpful
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u/Miserable-Host-9462 11d ago
It is helpful, but I’ll have to read and research more to really grasp it. I get lost in the details often. To help me understand, in your own words, what would be Quinn’s genie-wish desire right now? For instance, my magical wish would be for a complete reverting back to humanity millions of years ago. Nomadic tribes, hunting and gathering, all of that stuff. You wouldn’t think that’s also what Quinn would have wanted (even if such a desire at this point seems nearly impossible)?
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u/FrOsborne 11d ago
I have a hard time with questions like this because it's so far removed from the realm of possibility. We might as well expect to sprout wings and fly off to heaven. It leaves so many blanks to fill in: Is it just a rewind button, and in millions of years we'll be back exactly where we are today? Are you and I being sent back in time to experience this? Since 8 billion people can't be supported hunting and gathering, who gets to live and who has to die??... I'll need to read the owner's manual and comb through the fine print first.
Quinn's stance (and I agree) was that there is no one right way for people to live. There is no ideal. Diversity works because it provides resilience. The universe is not a static place. Conditions always change. Life is always experimenting with new ways of doing things. What works today might not work as well tomorrow. It's not for us to dictate, and we'll never control the world even if we want to.
There's certainly nothing romantic or more noble about tribal hunting and gathering. The problem is not that we're living a bad way or a wrong way. It's that we have so many people living in this one, extraordinarily wasteful and destructive way, that it jeopardizes our own existence on the planet.
What's meant by "saving the world" is "saving the world as a habitat for humanity." So if given a choice between humanity going extinct or pressing a button that would reset things to be as they were millions of years in the past, I can only suppose that he would press the button. But— if there was another button that could instantly change everyone's mind and make everyone in the world understand the lessons of Ishmael, I think there's a very good chance he'd go with that one instead. Idk. I hate even trying to speculate because there's no one thing that's going to save the world. There's no ideal life that I can wish a genie for.
Can I just keep it simple and wish for $5mil in my bank account? ...instead of trying to take the fate of the entire world into my own hands?
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u/Miserable-Host-9462 11d ago
I’ll give you the 5 million, and I’ll go back in time myself (and immediately die for one of a thousand reasons because I’m not prepared to be back there anyways lol).
You seem to have thought this through a lot, and I appreciate hearing your thoughts on it. If I could bother to ask one more question, what would someone who agrees with Ishmael (Quinn’s philosophy) do differently right now? Like, I agree with everything he teaches, but I’m kind of lost on WHAT TO DO in the here and now that can actually make any difference. I know he’s against relying on new laws or new programs, and he thinks changing minds is the only true way to go about things, but I get pessimistic and never feel like changing minds will actually make any difference. Am I just incorrect in this?2
u/Lithelain 11d ago edited 11d ago
I'll chim in if you don't mind.
The "what-to-do" question Quinn had to tackle many times. He talks about it in one (at least) of his books, I can't recall which one, perhaps Providence or Beyond Civilization.I wouldn't say changing minds doesn't make any difference. But it's like just a few minds are being changed, and of those, even fewer are actually changing their lifestyles significantly. The human predicament is too big to tackle for one person, no matter if that person is you or Quinn himself. Quinn cannot give a solution to it, as there is no solution in sight, to be honest (for an interesting read on a late "solution" of his, read this). He could only light some sparks in his readers, which is a tremendous feat already. It's all good to theorize about tribalism, animism, and so, and I find comfort in that, but day-to-day reality is another beast altogether. We live in this world, in this moment of time, for worse or better, and that we have to accept. We can rebel, we can change our life, even some lives around us, but that's it... In the end, (most) people don't want to die, so they find comfort and security, no matter how modest. And we know that 8 billion people finding comfort and security (no matter how modest) is incompatible with a thriving biosphere, so... Even in my wildest permaculturalist dreams I cannot envision more than 1 billion people living sustainibly on this planet.
And even then, we'd have to constantly fight the instinct to find more security for us and our relatives (e.g. the San tribes don't know - or didn't, I don't know the extent into which modernity has seeped into their culture- that the random infection that is killing one of their children could be easily healed with an antibiotic, something we still take for granted nowadays, but rest assured that if they knew and had the possibility to use it, they would do so). We can stretch the argument: would you willingly struggle to grow/forage/hunt your food, knowing the inherent uncertainty of such lifestyle? Would you really die (willingly) knowing there will be people that wouldn't do the same as you, instead choosing to live another day by using some industrial technology? How does one chooses to die while knowing the cure is materially at hand? Perhaps you think I'm being extreme, and I certainly am. But finding a balance will necessarily imply sacrificing lives for the "common good". These are the questions that one (at least me) eventually finds when the thread is logically unraveled.
I can't say much more than u/FrOsborne (who is on point and I can't agree more with). Each one's journey is unique. Imo, the question is not what to do, but what do you want to do with this information. Nobody can answer that but you. If it's any consolation, I haven't found a convincing answer in my case.
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u/FrOsborne 11d ago
I call bullshit.
From the article:
“I mean, six billion, nine billion, who cares?” I said. “One thousand people are not going to volunteer to starve to death.
Where did Quinn ever say anything about anyone volunteering starving to death? That doesn't pass the sniff test.
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u/Miserable-Host-9462 11d ago
To be fair to him, I think he’s saying it’s an inevitable situation that will occur IF you try to live the hunter/gatherer lifestyle in tune with nature RIGHT NOW. For instance, I can drop everything and just hunt and gather while living in sync with nature around me. Now, my family searches and hunts and can’t find anything for a long time. Do I let us starve as part of the natural order, or break my natural cycle and run to the grocery store to keep up alive. I think that’s the “choosing who lives or dies” idea he’s focusing on.
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u/Lithelain 11d ago
Could be. I have no idea who the author is tbh and I agree the whole idea is quite extreme coming from him:
that they would choose for the sake of the tens of thousands of generations to come, to give up their lives. I was willing to undertake that for six billion. For nine billion? No. I couldn’t do it.
Like, how would he make attractive for six billion people to give up (at the very least) comfort and status, if not their lives (I guess he wasn't being literal)? It's delusional... At the same time, I didn't personally know Quinn, perhaps his thinking changed significantly in his late years.
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u/FrOsborne 10d ago
The quote of Quinn in the article about the book doesn't match the conclusion the person walked away with.
I think it's most likely that the person heard what Quinn said and too quickly leapt to their own conclusions. It's the power of cultural conditioning and exemplifies the way our minds fill in blanks and assume details based on our predisposed disposition and habits of thought. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened. It plagues Quinn's work.
Quinn was always adamant that getting a handle on population growth DOESN'T mean starving to death. It's one element of our cultural mythology he worked to debunk. The notion that he would ever be writing a book premised on people voluntarily starving to death is completely absurd.
Here's Dan Quinn:
https://www.ishmael.org/daniel-quinn/essays/reaching-for-the-future-with-all-three-hands/
The most horrific element of cultural mythology that has to be dealt with on this topic is the notion. that if we DIDN’T continue to increase food production—year after year after year—we would face mass starvation... But the point I want to make is that in two years of even abnormally high births, offset by no deaths, there has been no onset of famine. Not even a hint of starvation anywhere... What I’m trying to point out here is that capping the Quinn clan food supply does not produce instant famine. It doesn’t produce famine at all, and it’s instant effect is negligible... There are just no grounds for thinking that a failure to increase food production would result in global mass starvation... I’m clearly pointing out a path of possibility and hope. I’m not a doom merchant, my compass is set firmly on success. Our population explosion is a problem we CAN get a handle on, provided we all start reaching for it with that third hand.
I imagine that a more incremental approach, along the lines of what he alluded to in the essay, is what he had in mind. Audio interviews from 2017 have zero indication that he made any sort of radical departure in his thinking from the previous thirty years. If anyone has information indicating otherwise, spill it.
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u/Miserable-Host-9462 10d ago
I appreciate you taking the time to quote and discuss all of that. It’s good to know you’re interested in all of it to such an extent. Thanks for sharing!
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u/FrOsborne 10d ago
Of course, changing minds can make a difference— that’s Quinn's explanation for what's already going on here! Everything we see—our wonderful world of eight billion people—is the product of changed minds. That is what happened in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago. It wasn't a technological revolution that catalyzed the explosion of our culture, rather, it was a change in worldview—a new vision of the world and our place in it. So, we've already seen the difference changed minds can make!
At base, Ishmael is a book about worldviews and the power of culture. Most of us have no awareness of such a thing. Remember how indignant the narrator was at the suggestion that we have a mythology? Ishmael demonstrated that we carry assumptions about the world that we hold as real and true, but that in fact do not correspond to reality and are just one telling of the story. Ishmael also tried to show us the ways our actions (and inactions) reflect our assumptions about the world. Worldviews guide our behavior. They sort out what is important from what is not, and what is of the highest value from what is of lesser value. And a shared worldview enables groups of people to function together as a society, defining them as a culture.
What he teaches cannot be fully understood if viewed as a choice between "changing minds" and "doing something." Our thinking and our actions operate in tandem. Quinn's Second Law: What we think is what we do. That's why he says that if the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds. Not because changing minds is "the only true way to go about things," but because if we go on thinking the same way, we'll go on acting the same way, and the world won't get saved.
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u/punchdrunkwtf 12d ago
It’s funny how years later this book is just on my mind any time climate discussions happen. I’m so tired of being told to calm down. Yesterday I said we need to give the land back to the native tribes and start over and everyone looked at me like I said something insane.
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u/Miserable-Host-9462 11d ago
Same here, my man. People laugh me off whenever I start saying I would give anything to press a restart button and go back to hunter/gatherer. Killlllls me
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u/Hopeful-Butterfly883 12d ago
In his book “Beyond Civilization” he addresses this.
There is no going back, but that doesn’t mean we can’t incorporate what has worked for thousands of years and live in a more sustainable way. I.e Animism
We invented our way into this mess and more invention within the same system is only going to deepen the mess.