1.3.11

A "new year" entry is on the way, but first I wanted to post a book review - I just finished the book Ishmael and what follows is my review. As the book is largely one of theory and philosophy, I thought it fitting to discuss here. My apologies; this review is a little long-winded - a bit uncharacteristic of me, I know ;)

First of all, Ishmael is well-written enough and the language and characters are enjoyable. It is an easy read in content and style and can be read leisurely in a couple of days. It centers around two unlikely characters: a teacher and a pupil - unlikely because the teacher is actually a gorilla. The teacher's task is to teach his pupil how to save the world and this "curriculum" is the entire content of the book.

The basic premise of the book is that mankind, to ensure survival (i.e. to "save the world"), should live in harmony with nature. Not such a fantastically new revelation, but, in teaching it, Ishmael brings up some other interesting points and perspectives. The causal story follows thus: man was made the same way as the animals were (through evolution) and so should live in the same natural system. However, at some point (the agricultural revolution) man began to think of himself as exempt from this system because of his superior intelligence and so started to wage war on the natural system in favor of his own dominion. The author posits that man's dominion is doomed to fail and so abandoning this quest is the only way to save the world. A bold and interesting claim, and again, the author brings up several interesting points and examples to support his hypotheses, but the book is not without its inconsistencies and limits. The author contradicts himself frequently and makes several unfounded assumptions, two of which I will discuss here. I will then discuss a mistake that comes as a corollary to these assumptions, two principles that the author overlooks, and the disappointing gap that closes the book and the principles outlined therein.

The first unfounded assumption that the author makes is that the right way to live in a civilization has never been revealed to man, thus implying that divine truth, as it relates to human society, does not exist beyond that which nature has revealed through evolution. Underlying this assumption is the position that religion's role in human history has been that of an institution built to justify man's attempts at civilization. Though this may be slightly supported in the extremes, religion in its true form needs no justification and justifies nothing - it is the entirety and transmission of all divine truth. The author makes no consideration of religion in this role, or in any role besides one of an institution inferior to nature. He, therefore, puts no thought into the idea that the correct way to live has been revealed to men and has been followed frequently in periods of true religious prosperity; nature was not and is not the source of it.

The second unfounded assumption is that, in the aggregate, mankind's developments since the agricultural revolution have been a result of the negative connotation of man's superiority complex. That is, although the world was not created for man, he, at one point, decided to assume that it was. However, he never considers a positive connotation of the counterpoint: what if this world was made for man and to man was revealed how to create, given such a system, a perfect social order? The author assumes that man's relationship to God is the same as that of the lamb and lion, but he does not consider mortal relationships to the divine - neither lion nor lamb is the literal offspring of our Heavenly Father, nor can they claim to be heirs to the same divine destiny: man's purpose is to be like our Heavenly Father; to be joint heirs with Christ as the scriptures reveal. Therefore, man's purpose is superior, not in value, but in responsibility (principles which I discuss more in detail later on).

As a corollary, the author makes an additional mistake in his assumptions ex ante: the Malthusian mistake (ironic considering that the author actually mentions Malthus in the text). To explain, Malthus was an economist in the early 19th century that predicted that the world population would increase to such a degree as to, basically, obliterate the human race. However, literally only a couple years after Malthus published his hypotheses, the industrial revolution hit England and completely changed the dynamics of the world entire; thus rendering Malthus' hypotheses obsolete. However, Malthus' mistake was not that his theories and models were wrong - they were and are mathematically sound, but that he assumed that trends in macro-level variables such as population growth rates would continue invariably according to data current to his time. That is, he thought that population growth would continue indefinitely in the same manner that he observed. The truth: it didn't. Ishmael makes this same mistake in his assumptions - his worries about population growth, deforestation, and specie extinction assume that the same trends we observe now will continue exponentially into the future. In short, he is making outrageous predictions that extend far beyond the range of his data.

As mentioned, I would also like to discuss two principles that the author mentions often, but consequently overlooks. The first is that of superiority and the second is that of responsibility. Although the author dances around the dichotomy, he ultimately confuses the difference between superiority of value and superiority of intelligence: the difference between being better than another species (i.e. of greater value) and simply being higher within the hierarchy of intelligence. Both of these principles have been apparent in human history, but they are certainly not the same: Adam and Eve were not the same as Hitler. Adam and Eve considered themselves higher in intelligence than any other organism by which they were surrounded and were right in so observing. However, there position in the hierarchy of intelligence did not make them of greater value, it simply gave them greater responsibilities as to the species and other people lower within the hierarchy - it made them rulers in the sense of teachers. Hitler, on the other hand, believed (or at least preached) that the Aryan race was superior in value and therefore had the right to rule - their development and well-being was more important than any other race or specie. However, although the author mentions both sides of the dichotomy, the Hitler mentality is ultimately what he assigns to the human race, thus completely overlooking those people and civilizations that have exhibited the opposite societal perspective.

This ties in beautifully to the second principle: responsibility. Ishmael's utopia ultimately positions man in a situation without responsibility except for himself; that is, except for his own specie. This overlooks the capacity that the human race can have for good in the application of its divinely instituted responsibility to rule - to be lords over the whole earth. The author would find such a notion disastrous. To him, no specie was ever meant to represent the gods, but what if the truth is that we have been? What if we are meant to be stewards over this earth and our problem is, perhaps, not that of creating new kinds of order, but of pride? Perhaps what the author is really seeking to explain is our human tendency to create an order that facilitates a lack of responsibility.

As a final point, I wish to bring up perhaps the most disappointing gap in the story. The author's final solution, the one by which mankind can leave its destructive lifestyle and save itself, is but a single word: invention. The author identifies the ideal society as one that lives "in the hands of the gods," but his only examples of this society include hunter-gatherers and nomads. Thus, he makes the possibility of human invention his only extension into the realm of a utopian reality. This again points back to his neglect of divine revelation which has taught, since the beginning, the possibilities of such through the principles of human responsibility.

So, as a brief conclusion, Ishmael would probably do better on an environmentalist's coffee table than on a shelf among comparable ventures into philosophy - it takes the idea of "don't take more than you need" and stretches it far beyond its capacity to explain human ideals. To be even more brief: the book is interesting, but its hypotheses are ultimately unsupported and ungrounded (no pun intended).