by Reason Wilken
The Gorilla From Another Angle
My Ishmael is a sequel to the original novel, and reveals another side of the philosophizing gorilla that author Daniel Quinn’s readers have come to know and love. The book is set in the same time frame as the original, and centers on the relationship between Ishmael and another yet-unknown pupil. Twelve-year old Julie Gerchack is a good deal younger than the typical student, but possesses a logical power that is way beyond her years.
Unlike the previously documented pupil Alan Lomax (of Ishmael), Julie is drawn to this teacher not so much for enlightenment as for escape. A child of divorce, Julie has to singlehandedly deal with her overweight, alcoholic, full-time working mother. As a result, she assumes the role of “dutiful daughter” and preoccupies herself with school and maintaining the household. When she glimpses Ishmael’s ad, Julie feels that she might be able to be “useful to someone” and can’t resist answering it.
At their first meeting, Julie’s pessimism about the general state of affairs in the world is clear. When asked her reason for coming there, she replies that she just wants to “run for her life”. Ishmael asks what she is running from, and she replies “From everything. From people walking into schoolrooms with machine guns. From people bombing airplanes and hospitals. From people pumping nerve gas into subways. From people cutting down the forests…”. Unlike Alan Lomax, Julie seems to be acutely aware of just what is going wrong in the world. During her education with Ishmael, she will learn why.
Ishmael began his course with Julie in his usual fashion, by teasing out her version of “the story”. “The story”, of course, refers to the tale of human evolution as told by ‘Mother Culture’. Julie herself tells Ishmael that she thinks humans are “cursed” and incapable of living to their potential without destroying the Earth in the process. In short, humans are depicted as being at an awkward stage of intelligence: smarter than other animals such as the insect or the earthworm, but not quite as smart as the gods that rule the world. As a result, humans are intelligent enough to develop new technologies (such as the automobile) but not intelligent enough to recognize the negative consequences (air pollution) until it is too late. The whole situation is simply beyond humans ability to solve it, so Mother Culture proposes that we just go on living this way for as long as we can (which at this rate is not very long).
Ishmael proposes that the crux of Taker (that is, industrialized) culture is based on one practice: the storage of food under lock and key. Taking control of necessary resources into the hands of a few forces the rest of the population to work to get their share. Ishmael illustrates this system by telling Julie the story of Terpischore (a planet named after the muse of dancing). Early on, all the inhabitants lived off of the land by foraging and hunting the available food sources. They lived in the “hands of the gods” and left their livelihood up to them (thus they were called Leavers). Eventually, a few of the people began to “dance” (farm) a few days per month in order to grow the foods they liked to eat. As time went on, some thought that it would be better to have even more of the foods they liked, so they danced a few days per week. Eventually, some of the people were dancing every day. Not only did they now have more control over their lives, but their lives had more control over them.
The Takers that led the dance were firmly convinced that it was the best way to live, and so they decided that everyone should dance like they did. If they had to work for their food, so should everyone else. In order to force the Leavers to dance, the Takers put the food under lock and key. This of course caused dissention among the Leavers, who had gotten along well without having to grow their food. In order to control the uprising, the Takers had to develop more powerful weapons (such as guns). Thus began the “Great Dancing Revolution”, which is better known as the Agricultural Revolution.
Aside from merely growing and storing food, the Agricultural Revolution brought with it a variety of new laws and practices. Whenever there is power of some kind to control (such as the possession of money, land or stored food), there needs to be a system of government. The Takers created laws in order to provide legal protection to those individuals who have valuable possessions. Jobs were created in order to provide motivated individuals with a means to earn a living and secure food for themselves. An educational system was put together in order to prepare children for the workforce. In comparison to Leavers, Takers seem to be working very hard in order to scrape by on the basic necessities of life.
The educational system is one aspect of the Taker culture that Ishmael particularly detests. As most students know, school is not the idyllic learning experience that it is cracked up to be. Ishmael remarks: “What one sees first is how far short real schooling falls from the ideal of ‘young minds being awakened’”. Nor does school thoroughly prepare students for the workforce. The average college student takes many courses that, while interesting, most likely won’t come in handy during a job interview. Examples of this might include calculus of three dimensions, chemical thermodynamics or advanced conversational Latin.
According to Ishmael, the main purpose of school is to keep people out of the job market so it won’t overflow with candidates. Moreover, when a student finally does graduate from college, a good job is far from guaranteed. A new graduate today starts at the bottom of the ladder, much like a person without any education would have fifty years ago. The number of people competing for jobs is always increasing, so the bar has to be raised. College and graduate degrees are no longer rare achievements among the job-seeking population, they have become par for the course.
Finally, the school system is also designed to “turn out graduates with zero survival value”—meaning that they would not be able to survive without income to purchase food. If graduates could truly take care of themselves, it would turn the whole Taker plan on its head. Individuals would not have to get jobs in order to have some of the food that was locked away because they would be able to grow their own. They would no longer have to work their lives away as captives in the “Taker Prison”.
As this story is unfolding in front of Julie, she is reminded why she sought to meet with Ishmael in the first place—she wanted to get out and “run for her life”. Up until now, she hadn’t been sure what she was running away from. Deep down Julie had felt confused and somewhat ashamed of the despair she felt about the world, as if her cloudy outlook was her problem alone. Her work with Ishmael helped to wipe some of the tears off of her mind’s eye and allowed her to view their place in this “ ‘wonderful program’ ” more clearly. Julie came in thinking that human nature was to blame for much of the world’s problems, but left feeling the opposite way. Listening to the various aspects of the Taker cultural system and realizing their weaknesses, Julie had a startling revelation: it wasn’t just her. And for once in her short life, this piece of information came as welcome news.