Rating: 
Summary: Read Moby Dick after this....
Review: I read this book in one day. It is good. See for yourself. So now everyone can stop fussin. I cleared it all up. Next stop, Melville....
Rating:
Summary: Exactly What We Need!
Review: I simply love this book. It's not a hard read, nor is it meant to be. It's meant to make the average person stop and think about the consequences of their actions and whether or not things are the way they should be. And, the average person does not stop and think about the things this book speaks of. If they did, things would already be a bit different. This book does exactly what it's supposed to do and it does it well. Some of the other reviews state that it's to simplified and does not challenge the intelligent reader....not true. The truths need to be stated as they are so that they can be understood and hopefully inspire the masses.
Thank you Mr. Quinn
Rating: 
Summary: A riveting description of a tragedy in the making
Review: Ishmael offers some thought-provoking and profound insights. I especially found interesting his interpretation of the story of Genesis. Some of the negative reviews seem to be in response to the heavy-handed and pedantic tone of the novel.I was struck most by the book's depressing message. Ishmael is essentially a tragedy, the tragedy of modern human civilization. All species, humans included, are ultimately doomed to extinction; moving from a leaver society to a taker society simply speeds up the process. Short of a nuclear holocaust blowing mankind back to the stone age, I think it is highly unlikely that we can return to a leaver society. For one, to quote a lyric, "anti-technology is an impossibility". Secondly, simply spreading the Ishmael doctrine will never be enough as long as cultivating the mind of the "messenger" is disregarded. Ishmael's students included a disenchanted writer and an ex-convict; how effectively would they spread the doctrine? If taker society cannot be converted, then at least it can be improved by mindful, compassionate individual acts. I follow the Buddhist concept that one can make the world better by first improving oneself. My viewpoint may turn out to be equally faulty, but at least it is an optimistic and hopeful response to all the terrible things in this world today.
Rating:
Summary: Read This Book Carefully
Review: This book is not terribly difficult to understand. It is highly engrossing, which says a lot considering that it has little plot and consists mainly of a series of dialogues between the narrator and Ishmael, a telepathic gorilla. This is not as silly as it seems, and the main reason for Quinn's choice of a gorilla as narrator is for the outsider's perspective such a being offers.
Quinn is concerned with modern environmental degredation, but rather than examining superficial manifestations he looks at the roots of the problem in our culture and comes up with some very interesting conclusions.
Without going into too much detail, Quinn feels the dilemma is basically a result of the agricultural revolution. With a stunning, and convnincing, interpretation of Genesis, he argues to the reader that civilized man's basic problem is his relationship to himself and to the rest of the world. Quinn frames it in religious terms, basically saying that man, since the dawn of time, has been content to live in the hands of the gods, surviving as a hunter-gatherer or semiagriculturalist. But at some point, known to us as the agricultural revolution, man decided this was not acceptable, and decided to take his destiny into his own hands. It really is much more nuanced than this, but the ultimate result of this decision is a world overrun with man, where nearly every square mile of the planet has been coopted for human use or habitation.
I agree with Quinn's premise, but I'm not sure it's really so cut and dried a case of a bad meme. He notes that agriculture began in multiple locations, not just the Fertile Crescent, but he fails, in my view, to account for the large, aggressive, agricultural civilizations of Mesoamerica, East Asia, and the Andes. China, Mesoamerica, and Andean civilizations all have natural geographical borders to contain them, but that doesn't mean they would've have pursued aggressive expansion given the opportunity. Might the problem not also be framed as the overcompetition of a species not aware that it was exceeding safe limits?
In any case, Quinn's argument that a more rational, humble civilization is possible and indeed necessary is not controversial. He makes the interesting analogy that, just as aircraft who do not take into account the laws of aerodynamics cannot maintain flight, so to civilizations who do not take into account the negative effects of overcompetition cannot survive. (He does not argue that civilization should be abandoned, as some other reviewers have erroneously asserted. Indeed, he specifically rebuts this towards the end.) Rather, Quinn believes we need to accept that 1) other species have a right to exist, 2) diversity is a good thing, and 3) we are not inherently better than other species and do not have the right to cover the earth like a plague. If we can incorporate these ideals into our civilization, we may retain it, but he believes that failing to do so will result in our demise.
In any case, the arguments are much more developed in the book itself, and if any of this intrigues you, I encourage you to read it.
|
