Ishmael

Rating:
Summary: My Rocommendation-Don't Read This Book
Review: Reading this book was not fun at all. The book talks about nothing and I would never reccomend this book to anyone. This put me to sleep everytime i picked it up. I just wanted the book to end. And I was hapy when the book was all over. I had to read this book for a class I taking otherwise I would have never even picked it up after the first chapter. The only way I would reccomend this book is if it was for something so you could get to sleep at night. This book taught me one thing- how boring a book can be. I would rather sit in the corner of the room and have to stare at the wall for hours instead of reading this book. I don't recommend you to read this book and I am sorry for those of you who have to sit through it for any class.

Rating:
Summary: Philosophy for dummies
Review: While this is a fun, easy read, it falls short of the dazzling reviews often bestowed upon it.

This is a great book for anyone who has never had a basic thought about the nature of the universe and the divine in their lives. Perhaps this would be a lovely book to read early in adolescence when such questions really begin to poke at one's mind.
However, for anyone who has read anything even approaching philosophy or has ever done any serious soul searching, this book is probably far below you.

I kept turning pages hoping for some novel, surprising, or, at the very least, interesting insights that would allow the book to be deserving of the lauds it has received. Unfortunately, from cover to cover this book makes no conclusions worthy of such praise.

My advice: Skip it and find a more sophisticated, or at least, engaging read.

Rating:
Summary: Best Book I Ever Read
Review: This book is the best book I ever read. Ishmael warns us that the world is presently in danger by human expansion, but it also comforts us by explaining that there can be another way. Ishmael is fiction, but through the story Daniel Quinn has found an excellent way to explain his world changing ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: After seeing a few negative reviews, I began to wonder how one could not like this book? Then I figured it out. They are either totally stupid, lack any vision whatsoever, don't care that we're killing the world, or Mother Culture is screaming in their ears and they won't accept it. Anywho, this is the best book I have ever read, and I've read a lot of books. It doesn't matter that the dialogue is between a man and a gorilla, just as little as if the doctor in another book in a man or a woman. They are just two characters. So full of fabulous revelations that you never think of or can't stop thinking about... Best book ever. Get it.

Rating:
Summary: BEST BOOK I EVER READ
Review: Want to save the world? Read Ishmael. OK, so I consider myself intelligent, open minded, and I read everything with a skeptical eye. But never has a book changed my world view like Ishmael did. Call me idealistic, but I want to help save the world and Ishmael has shown me how its done. Oh, and if you don't think the world needs to be saved I suggest you pick up a newspaper sometime. People are starving, wars are happening, kids are working in sweatshops, and the environment is going down the toilet. Either you're going to help the world become a better place or you're not. For starters I suggest reading Ishmael.

Rating:
Summary: BEST BOOK I EVER READ
Review: OK, I consider myself an intelligent person and I read everything with a skeptical eye. There is no other book I've read which has changed my world view as much as Ishmael. Call me idealistic, but I want to save the world and I think reading Ishmael has given me the best idea on how to go about doing it. Oh, and if you don't think the world needs to be saved I suggest reading a newspaper sometime. Things may get worse before they get any better, but I'm ready to start now.

Rating:
Summary: Turn Your World Upside-Down
Review: The mission of 'Ishmael' is to reveal our collective modern mythology, to peel back the layers of assumptions and 'truisms' so we can stare the culture of maximum harm, our culture, straight in the face.

Some cry, some laugh, and some scoff, but the appeal of this book cannot be denied: used in thousands of classrooms across the U.S., in subjects ranging from biology to history, literature to math. The message of 'Ishmael'is so fundamental, it seems to apply everywhere. Yet it is not an appeal to our spiritual salvation... it gives no perfect prescription for a utopian world... it is not a call for the 'uplifting' of a 'flawed' human race... rather it is a down-to-earth reckoning with what we are: human animals, born into the community of life on this planet, and facing extinction within this community (and very possibly dragging down a host of neighboring species with us). It is this reckoning that allows us to see our choices clearly, and to embark in a new direction, expressed a million different ways.

Rating:
Summary: Saving the World
Review: One central premise of Ishmael is that ideas are to culture what genes are to an organism--the core ideas determine the culture's growth and direction. It's sometimes called memetic's, sometimes shared vision and mental model, but you won't read those words in the book. Quinn calls it story. Quinn explores the stories of our culture, where they have led us, and why. That's either the mind-blowing part of the book, or the part you don't get and think the book is a dud.

If your mind is blown you come away with a better understanding of why we are more or less trapped in a system that compels us to destroy the world in our daily actions and why, if the world is to be saved, it won't be saved by programs like recycling, or birth control, or legislation to cut emissions--only a change in vision will work, a change in the story we are, as a culture enacting.

When the book works, you can suddenly see our cultural story everywhere, transmitted in news stories, in advertisements, lectures at school, fairy tales, religion, songs. You become tuned into the transmission of our culture. When you can do this, you can more easily change your own story.

When the book doesn't work, readers don't get the point at all. It seems a half baked noble-savage argument. They think Quinn is saying we should go back to living in the stone age, or they get caught up in Quinn's explanation of food-population dynamics, and they read into it things Quinn doesn't say. Sometimes they just can't endure the poor storyline. For all that the book is about stories, there is little storyline in this book. Quinn's storytelling improves in Ishmael's sequels Story of B, or My Ishmael. Quinn did a better job with them. Quinn particularly shines when telling parables, and you will find more of these in his latter books.

Taken individually, Quinn's ideas are not really new. Most of what he says has been said better by others. Quinn's genius isn't so much in presenting new ideas, but in drawing connections between existing ideas. It's the connections that are new. Some criticize Quinn for not covering the details of the ideas themselves, but those details can be found in his sources. Quinn keeps a list of the books he read in preparing to write his own on his web site... For those with an earnest desire to save the world, Ishmael is just a beginning.

Rating:
Summary: The Bars of the Cage Revealed!
Review: Back in the 60's and 70's people wanted to be free of all the things in our culture that kept them trapped in lives they just didn't like. Unfortunately, they gave up and decided to work in the prison industries of our culture. A lot of us still yearn to be free. Daniel Quinn has said that part of his task in writing this book was to show the counter-culture the bars of the cage. They new they were in some sense captive. But they didn't know what it was that made them so. Ishmael reveals the bars!

The book is not written as a philosophical treatise meant to be critiqued with every method of critical analysis and logic. Even so, you can verify all Quinn's evidence for yourself by spending a couple days in a good library. A lot of people look for things in Ishmael to disagree with or prove wrong. I don't think there's a whole lot in Ishmael that CAN be proven wrong. What I think people do is twist Quinn's words around so that they can argue against things he never really said but that some people might get the impression that he said in the book.

There is also a huge misconception about Quinn's ideas on food production and population growth. What he really says can be found on his website in the speech "Reaching for the Future With All Three Hands" and in his videos with biologist Dr. Alan Thornhill.

Ishmael is a book that re-arranges the way you think about history, religion, and just about everything else. It's used in thousands of classrooms all over the world. It's that good a book. Don't wait, read it now!

Rating:
Summary: False Analogy Part Deux
Review: First off, does the book deserve 1 star? In my humble opinion no it does not. It deserves maybe 3. Why only the one? Shear force of weight. I am simply trying to be somewhat of a counter balance. I approached this book expecting great things or at least substantial things. And let us begin and end there. No substance. Many arguments are arguments of False Analogy, but there are other fallacies in there too. False Dichotomy, Begging the Question, False Cause, Hasty Generalization... Just to name a few. I urge you to look up the definitions of these fallacies and then reread the book. The book appeals to common sense, elucidated via analogy. Unfortunately the analogies themselves are flawed. I want so much to embrace a proverbial smack down on pop culture, but this book does not even begin to give real ammunition to do so. Many things in this book are over simplified. And there is an air of absolutism, but this is somewhat begging the question; what mechanism does one use to discern the absolute nature of what Ishmael is teaching? Do we use the "myth" of "Mother Culture" to absolutely discern the flaws of "Mother Culture"? The same mechanism we used to create this culture is the mechanism we are appealing to to dismiss it. Perhaps the method is flawed. Maybe we weren't asking the right questions. Maybe the sum of our knowledge is incomplete and thus appealing to known laws, like gravity, is incomplete. This book is food for the masses. To question just one simple Ishmael analogy. If building civilization out of accordance with the Natural Law of Competition is parallel to attempting to defy the Law of Gravity, then by following the analogy thus are there corollary Laws in civilization to the Laws of Aerodynamics which allow us to circumvent the Law of Gravity. If modern civilization is akin to a non flight worthy aircraft what represents the pilot? What represents the controls? Who built the machine? Based on what model? What represents the cliff we jumped off of? Are some cliffs bigger than others? What is the exact force that is propelling us to which analogous ground? What is the amount of energy produced from the collision between our non flight worthy craft and the proverbial ground? What is the proverbial ground? Now maybe your immediate reaction is that I am picking nits. I agree. That is the problem with analogy though. For elucidation great, but you can't base an argument on analogy without embracing the whole analogy. We need more substance. We need more reliable methods of achieving answers. I love every chance to bash cultural myth, but I need more meat than this. Also the book mentions a reference to Zero Sum Economics, fallacy. In economics if I take more it does not mean less for others. Wealth is created not merely existing and redistributed.

Remember all you people who claim to love it. You are basically making the same argument that Scrooge was making in Dickens. "Why not let them starve and decrease the surplus population." I'm not saying that's a bad idea. I'm just saying if you wanted to beat up Scrooge so he could smell the festive truth of humanity when you read or saw A Christmas Carol then try to be at least a little consistent. And for those of you who say Quinn was not saying that. pg 138 "...Because the population is never allowed to decline to the point at which it can be supported by it's own resources..." Allowed to decline means starving to death.