Ishmael

At the recommendation of a follower of mine, who shall remain nameless to protect his/her identity, I read the novel, Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn. Ishmael is a book about a man who sees an ad in the paper for a teacher seeking a student with an earnest desire to change the world. The man goes to see this teacher, and finds himself in an office building room looking through a large glass window at a gorilla. The gorilla then begins to communicate with the man through thoughts, and it becomes clear that the gorilla himself is the teacher. The gorilla, named Ishmael(hence the book title), begins to work with the man by questioning him in order to teach him how to save the world. Through their dialogue, Ishmael and his student systematically figure out the difference between taker(modern culture) and leaver(animals and non-agriculturalists) cultures, and why the taker is destined to fail based on the laws of how one should live. The plot of Ishmael is insignificant, as it serves only as a device by which Daniel Quinn expresses his beliefs and ideas. I found the way Daniel Quinn explained his point of view to be both entertaining to read, and quite effective from the point of view of making a persuasive argument. Daniel Quinn illustrates use of the Socratic method quite masterfully, as Ishmael probes at the beliefs of our culture in order to show their flaws.

Although Daniel Quinn explains his argument brilliantly, I do have a few problems with the argument itself. Firstly I believe that his argument contains a few logical fallacies. The first fallacy is that Daniel Quinn "poisons the well" by saying that anyone who belongs to the "taker" culture is unable to argue against him because their opinions are so distorted by "mother culture". This amounts to saying that anyone who would disagree with him is incapable of thinking rationally. Another fallacy which I believe Quinn uses is the appeal to nature fallacy. Quinn presupposes that what is natural is what is moral or correct, however the two are not necessarily always connected. A third fallacy is the doomsday fallacy; Quinn presupposes that things are getting progressively worse for mankind, and that they will continue to do so, when in fact there is a great deal of evidence to support the opposite of both. People are a great deal wealthier today than they were ever before, in the late eighteenth century, nearly all of the world lived on just under what equals $1000 today(Landsberg S.-27). Incomes adjusted for inflation have been rising at an average rate of 2.3% each year; meaning at this pace in under 400 years, the average income will be about 1,000,000$ a day in uninflated value (Landsberg-S.-28). Additionally, not only are we making more, we're working less; 100 years ago, the average workweek in America was around 60 hours, currently it is around 35(Landsberg-S.-29). Additionally, people are living for longer; the probability that a 20-year old today has a living grandmother is higher than the probability that someone of the same age 100 years ago had a living mother(Landsberg S.-30).

Quinn points to population growth as one of the serious and eminent threats facing mankind because they produce to much and thus their population grows to meet this food supply. However, as I(well mostly Steven Landsberg) have shown, as our population has increased(as it has been doing over time) our quality of life has increased. Quinn points to overcrowding as a possible result of this, however this isn't a an eminent threat to mankind. If you take Texas and split it up into 5,000 square foot lots, and then place a house with a family of four in each, you will have housed the entire population of the world (Landsberg S.-37).


Works Cited
Landsberg, Steven. More Sex Is Safer Sex (The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2008.