With Gorilla Gone is there Hope for Man?

I've been rereading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn over the last week or so. Yeah, you're probably sitting there thinking, "Geez, Andrew, Ishmael is a pretty short book! It's taking you several weeks to read it?" All I can offer you in that regards is a hearty STFU! I rode the short bus to school, okay?

Ishmael, if you've never read it, is a philosophical guide to life, environmental responsibility and eco-social understanding, sort of packaged up as a fictional novel. Ishmael is a highly educated lowland gorilla whose purpose in life is to educate human beings as to "the way things came to be this way". The actual character of Ishmael is non-descript. We discover little about his history or how he learned to communicate (telepathically) with his pupils. All of that is superficial at best, as it lends nothing to the real meat and bones of the book. What is important though, is that Ishmael is a non-human habitant of Earth, witnessing and relating the story of mankind's history and it's relationship to the rest of biodiversity. His viewpoint is essential to understanding our story, as told from the outside looking in.

Ishmael divides mankind into two distinct historic tribes. One he calls the Leavers, or decedents of the biblical Able. The Leavers were living man's cultural story prior to the expansion of the Fertile Crescent. They thrived off of what they were given by their environment without taking what wasn't needed to contently exist. The Incas and American Indians were notable examples of this culture.

The Takers, on the other hand, culturally evolved with an entirely different worldview. As the descendants of Cain, their culture evolved into one of greed and consumption. Their cultural story heralded man as the one true master of the Earth. Just as man had once insisted that the universe revolved around the Earth, the Takers believed that man is the end product of evolution, and that process had stopped at Homo Sapiens.

The Taker culture however, also disregarded laws that helped govern and bring balance to the ecology and environment of the planet. The Takers allowed their population to grow without restraint or regard to borders. They grew more than they could consume, stockpiling excess food. When faced with the Earth’s natural population balancing controls such as drought or famine, the Takers simply grew more food, which resulted in another population increase. When one Taker tribe outgrew their territory or depleted their natural resources, they would wage war on other tribes in order to acquire what they lacked. They cleared the forests, scorched the earth and polluted the waters and skies. They destroyed ecosystems and thousands of animal species in the name of progress. In the end, the Taker society had only one possible end game. Extinction.

While I feel that Quinn over-simplified the very complex nature of our existence, I think he correctly defined man’s underlying mentality. Every culture and civilization has a beginning, an apex, and a decent. Given the nature of our consumption driven lifestyle, it is difficult to believe that man can continue on this path as it offers less and less sustainability in the long run. The signs are growing clearer that we are in a path of decent. Global warming has become a reality. Our rivers and oceans have been poisoned with the waste of our own production. Diseases and pandemics are increasing, despite major advances in medicine over the past century. The oil left from the bones the extinct has now become the foundation of our modern existence, one that looks to tumble like a house of cards once that oil is gone. I often think it’s ironic that our very livelihood depends so much on the remains of the dinosaurs, yet our consumption of their leftover energy may eventually lead to our own demise. The question is, how long have we given ourselves and is there a way to stop it? Are we to look back at the Leaver culture? Can we live in peaceful and satisfactory existance with the rest of Earth's species? Hell, can we even find a way to live peacefully with those of our own species? All relevant questions, given the times we are living in.