Ishmael Ch. 5-8

I found chapters 5-8 of Ishmael full of interesting philosophies regarding people and the way they live and perceive the world. Several quotes and segments of the book stuck out to me, but I’m just going to list a few and follow them up with why I thought they were significant.

“We’ve poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit— and we go on pouring our poisons into the world. We’ve gobbled up irreplaceable resources as though they would never run out— and we go on gobbling them up.” (p. 80)

An ironic picture of a gorilla reading "The Origin of Man"

This one makes it pretty blatantly clear that humans are ruining our world, and we know this, but I found it relevant because we talked a lot about using up all our resources and what we would do after that while reading Eaarth. While we in this class know it’s a problem, it makes me wonder just how far using non-renewable resources will go before everyone else realizes the issue we have at hand. (However, Michigan’s not doing too bad with this concept. Read more about it here).

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people.” (p. 84) was a simple line that also stuck out to me. The idea that religion and laws (which are both human constructs) run our lives is really interesting and thought-provoking to me. I totally agree that we live our lives based on these constructs because it’s scary to think about living on Earth with no blueprints or any idea of what to do to make life successful.

Ishmael also states “Trial and error isn’t a bad way to learn how to build an aircraft, but it can be a disastrous way to learn how to build a civilization.” While I feel we are currently going through a giant “error” phase, I also think once you’re into a phase this deep, it’s hard to reverse it especially when it’s all you know. That shouldn’t be an excuse for us, but I can definitely see how it’s hard to change the Taker mindset when it has been instilled in us.

These few chapters were very interesting to me, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of Ishmael has in store.