This is who I am.

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Well where to start? Way back to preschool I allready had a very well defined personality the teachers couldn't break, hated my birthday parties as they were for other kids, People who wernt my friend by society demanded as such just because we shared the same space for a few hours. After about, half of my gradeschool was over, I was put into a hospital to understand what was "wrong" with me, including brain scans Then finshed in a special school. I was smarter then many of the counslers there and while I didn't act out, I wouldn't back down, and pretty much tested their nevers by doing my homework technically correct if not how they envisioned it would be done. I hated anysport that required interaction and largly just wanted to be left alone. I would commute to a regul;ar school for science courses. Went to a special Middle School. Which I liked much better where they had science courses, robotics, and computers. I made some of my first true friends there. Had my first job at meals on wheels. Went to highschool. Which was a living nightmare. I was repeatedly abused there, while teachers and the principle did nothing. At one point I had several kids harrasing me in math class, so I was kicked out beaces it was easier to punish me instead of all the students causing it. I have no alligence to that place, have and will never go to a reunion or support it in any way. I did get a jobat MagiCarpets then. I did make one teacher cry thogh. Went to A Jefferson College where I got my assochiates in machine automation and worked as a libriarin, then went to Webster where I got my Bachlers in Computer Science. Learned that I liked web design. Worked as a libraien there. I was diagnosed there with Asperger's. After wards I went to a special job placment thing for one day where they had me do puzzles and junk, and had a big isue when they found out I didn't have my lunch with me. I never felt so insulted in my Life. I got a Job then at a company that builds those things that spits out coins after you feed it dollars, Then at a hotel, then at a parking lot, currentkly at an Air conditioner factory. I also own my own radio station.
I am way into science, robotics, gaming, modding, anime, and music. I would love to one day find a cute anime fanngirl (with glasses) for a girlfriend but who knows.
I belive in a Earth that's billions of years old, A universe even older, evolution, and al that wondeful stuff as well as God. I also am problly becoming a fallower of Ishmael the gorilla.
That's about it I think.

A lot of us here are into science, robotics, gaming, modding, anime, and music. I'm particularly keen on robotics, AI and anime but I'm far from cute

Nice to hear about you.

I always loved reading here about others. You people are so much more interesting than NTs. Most people are just boring. Eggman, thanks for sharing your story.

Wow, thats alot of info, but I like it. I like anime and sci-fi stuff too. I wish I could've done puzzles and have people figure out what job would suit me, but that doesn't exist around here. All we have is the unemployment office, good enough. Why would they care if you didn't have you're lunch? Well either way, awesome story.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

To WrongPlanet!! !

Glad to meet you, Eggman.

You've been here a while now, but welcome to the forum anyway.

Isn't that the truth about birthday parties though? It's always about the other kids when it should be about the one that's having the birthday. I had a friend that was always in charge of his and other kids' birthdays.

Hi Eggman

Your story sounds strangely familiar. Good to meet you

Yah sorry bout that, Just didnt put this in till I knew what this was all about.

Welcome, Eggman. Better late than never!

Who's Ishmael the gorilla?

He is one of the two main charecters in the book "Ishmeal" along with his human student. His subject is captivity. His teachings reveal how humans a hunter/gathering society came about to shape the world as it is now, and what can be done to fix things. He had put an ad in the paper looking for people to help him "save the world" There atre two groups of peaple, the "Takers" who use agriculture, and believe that through crationism or evolution, the world belongs to them, and the "Leavers" hunter gathers that believe they belong to the world. His teachings involve how oner group of leavers became takers, that the story of the Garden of Eden, and Cain and Able, are in fact Leaver stories, the first descrping how one group came to believe they had the knowledge of who shoul live and die, and thus no longer live in the hands of the gods, and the second describing how the Takers would kill the Leavers. ALso he said there are laws that allow orginisms to survive without extinction(not including natural disasters and sickness) And just like the laws of gravity may be observed. It came to be known as the law of limited competition." Ishmael slowly taeses the information to his student, making him discover and reason it out. At the end Ishmael said that to save the world, Takers must spit out the fruit, and thus give up the idea they have the knoweleged at what is best, Cain must stope killing Able, for the leavers each represent a way that man has learned to survive in harmony. This is the short synopsis, here is a better one if I havn't scared you away.


Ishmael is a novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability. Ishmael was awarded the $500,000 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award. The book is the first of a trilogy including The Story of B and My Ishmael.
Contents
[hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Major themes
2.1 Ishmael's interpretation of Genesis 2.4
3 Characters
4 Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
5 Influence in music
6 See also
7 External links
[edit]Plot summary

The story begins with a newspaper ad: "Teacher seeks pupil, must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." A nameless character responds to the ad out of nostalgia and upon arriving at the address, finds himself in a room with a gorilla.
To the man's surprise he finds that the gorilla can communicate telepathically. At first baffled by this, the man quickly learns the story of how the gorilla came to be this way and he accepts the gorilla, Ishmael, as his teacher. The novel continues from this point as a socratic dialogue between Ishmael and his student as they hash out what Ishmael refers to as "how things came to be this way" for mankind.
Ishmael's life, which began in the wild, was spent mostly in a zoo and a menagerie, and since had been spent in the gazebo of a man that extricated him from physical captivity. He tells his student that it was at the menagerie that he learned about human language and culture and began to think about things that he never would have pondered in the wild. Subsequently, Ishmael tells his student that the subject for this learning experience will be captivity, primarily the captivity of man under a civilizational system that forces him to exploit and destroy the world in order to live.
The narrator has a vague notion that he is living in some sort of captivity and being lied to in some way but he can not explain his feelings.
Ishmael uses the example of Nazi Germany as he attempts to show his student that the people of his culture are in much of the same situation. Either held captive with the mythology of being superior, or "an animal swept up in the stampede" of the captivity of those around them.
Before proceeding Ishmael lays some ground definitions for his student. He defines:
Takers as people often referred to as "civilized." Particularly, the culture born in an Agricultural Revolution that began about 10,000 years ago in the Near East; the culture of Ishmael's pupil.
Leavers as people of all other cultures; sometimes referred to as "primitive."
A story as an interrelation between the gods, man, and the Earth, with a beginning, middle, and end.
To enact is to strive to make a story come true.
A culture as a people who are enacting a story.
Ishmael proceeds to tease from his pupil the premises of the story being enacted by the Takers: that they are the pinnacle of evolution (or creation), that the world was made for man, and that man is here to conquer and rule the world. This rule is meant to bring about a paradise, as man increases his mastery of the world, however, he is always failing because he is flawed. Man doesn't know how to live and never will because that knowledge is unobtainable. So, however hard he labors to save the world, he is just going to go on defiling and spoiling it.
Ishmael points out to his student that when the Takers decided there is something fundamentally wrong with humans, they took as evidence only their own culture's history- "They were looking at a half of one-percent of the evidence taken from a single culture-- Not a reasonable sample on which to base such a sweeping conclusion."
Ishmael says:
"There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact, in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now."
Ishmael goes on to help his student discover that, contrary to what the Takers think, there are immutable laws that life is subject to and it is possible to discern them by studying the biological community. Together, Ishmael and his student identify one set of survival strategies which appear to be evolutionarily stable for all species (later dubbed the Law of Limited Competition): In short, "you may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war." All species inevitably follow this law, or as a consequence go extinct. The Takers believe themselves to be exempt from this Law and flout it at every point.
Ishmael goes on to help his pupil discover just how the Takers rendered themselves above the laws governing all of life. As an example, he brings up the story of The Fall of Man and tells a tale which explains why the fruit was forbidden to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: Eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil provides the gods with the knowledge they need to rule the world- the knowledge of who shall live and who shall die. The fruit nourishes only gods, however, the gods saw that if Adam ("man") were to eat from this tree, he might think that he gained the gods' wisdom and in his arrogance, destroy the world and himself. "And so they said to him, you may eat of every tree in the garden, save the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the day you eat of that tree, you will certainly die."
Ishmael makes the point that this story of the Fall of Man, which the Takers have adopted as their own, was in fact developed by Leavers to explain the origin of the Takers. If it were of Taker origin, the story would be of liberating ascent, and instead of being forbidden to Adam, the fruit of the Tree would have been thrust upon him.
Ishmael and his student go on to discuss how, for the ancient Semitic herders among whom the tale originated, the story of Cain killing Abel symbolizes the Leaver being killed off and their lands taken so that it could be put under cultivation. These ancient herders realized that the Takers were acting as if they were gods themselves, with all the wisdom of what is good and evil and how to rule the world. And as a result the gods banished these people from the Garden and they were brought from a life of bounty in the hands of the gods to one of being the accursed tillers of the soil.
To begin discerning the Leavers' story, Ishmael proposes to his student a hypothesis: the Takers' Agricultural Revolution was a revolution against the Leavers' story.
The Leavers take what they need from the world and leave the rest alone. Living in this manner ("in the hands of the gods"), Leavers thrive in times of abundance and dwindle in times of scarcity. The Takers however, practicing their unique form of agriculture (dubbed by Quinn, Totalitarian Agriculture) produce enormous food surpluses, which allows them to thwart the gods when they decide it's the Takers' time to go hungry. "When you have more food than you need, then the gods have no power over you." Thus, Ishmael points out that the Takers revolution was not just a technological change, but also serves a mythological function.
"So we have a new pair of names for you: The Takers are 'those who know good and evil' and the Leavers are 'those who live in the hands of the gods'."
Ishmael goes on to point out that by living in the hands of the gods, man is subject to the conditions under which evolution takes place. Australopithecus became Homo by living in the hands of the gods-- Man became man by living in the hands of the gods-- "by living the way the bushmen of Africa live; by living the way the Krenakarore of Brazil live... Not the way the Chicagoans live, not the way Londoners live." "In the hands of the gods is where evolution happens." According to the Takers' story, creation came to an end with man. "In order to make their story come true, the Takers have to put an end to creation itself-- and they're doing a damn good job of it!"
Ishmael brings together his synopsis on human culture by examining the story enacted by Leaver cultures, which provides a model of how to live-- an alternative story for the Takers to enact.
"The premise of the Takers' story is 'The world belongs to man.' ...The premise of the Leavers' story is 'Man belongs to the world.'"
"For three million years, man belonged to the world and because he belonged to the world, he grew and developed and became brighter and more dexterous until one day, he was so bright and so dexterous that we had to call him Homo sapiens sapiens-- which means he was us."
"The Leavers' story is 'the gods made man for the world, the same way they made salmon and sparrows for the world. This seems to have worked well so far so we can take it easy and leave the running of the world to the gods'."
Ishmael emphasizes that "not in any sense is the Takers story 'chapter two' of the story which was being enacted here during the first three million years of human life. The Leavers' story has its own 'chapter two'." In evolution, observes Ishmael's student, there seems to be a tendency toward complexity, and towards self-awareness and intelligence. Perhaps the gods intend the world to be filled with intelligent, self-aware creatures and man's destiny following the Leavers' story is "to be the first- without being the last"; to learn and then to be a role-model and teacher for all those capable of becoming what he's become.
Ishmael finishes with a summary of what his student can do if he earnestly desires to save the world:
"The story of Genesis must be undone. First, Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you're to survive. The Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world - not because they're humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is more than one right way to live. And then, of course, you must spit out the fruit of the forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet."
"Teach a hundred what I've taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred."
Follow-ups to Ishmael by Daniel Quinn include The Story of B, My Ishmael, and Beyond Civilization. Quinn's autobiography is entitled Providence: The Story of a 50 Year Vision Quest and details how the author arrived at the ideas behind Ishmael.
[edit]Major themes

[edit]Ishmael's interpretation of Genesis 2.4
Ishmael proposes that the story of Genesis was written by the Semites, and later adapted to work within Hebrew and Christian belief structures. Ishmael proposes that Abel and his extinction metaphorically represents the nomadic Semites and their losing conflict with agriculturalists. As they were driven further into the Arabian peninsula, the Semites became isolated from other herding cultures and, according to Ishmael, illustrated their plight through oral history, which was later adopted into the Hebrew book of Genesis.
Ishmael denies that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden of humans simply to test human's self-control. Instead, Ishmael proposes that the Tree represents the choice to bear the burden of responsibility of deciding which species may live and which should die. This is a necessary decision agricultural peoples must make when deciding which organisms to cultivate, which to displace, and which to kill in protection of the first.
Ishmael explains that the Fall of Adam represents the Semitic belief that once mankind usurps this responsibility - historically decided through natural ecology (i.e. food chains) - that mankind will perish. He cites as fulfillment of this prophecy contemporary environmental crises such as endangered or extinct species, global warming, and modern mental illnesses.
[edit]Characters

Ishmael
A gorilla who was captured from the wild when young and sent to the zoo. After the zoo sold him to a menagerie, an old Jewish man bought him and could communicate with him through his eyes. Ishmael teaches captivity to the unknown narrator (later revealed to be Alan Lomax).
Alan Lomax
A man who sought a teacher to teach him how to save the world when he was younger, during the turbulent 1960s. Now an adult, he finds an ad looking for a pupil who wants to save the world. Intrigued because his childhood question may be answered, but skeptical because he has never found answers in the past, he goes and finds Ishmael, who teaches him, as promised, about how to save the world.
[edit]Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The film Instinct starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Anthony Hopkins is inspired by Ishmael as indicated in the end credits.
[edit]Influence in music

Rise Against recommended it for listeners to read in the inside of the case of their 2006 album The Sufferer and the Witness. Other books recommended include Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, amongst others.
Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam has cited the book as an influence on their album, Yield. Quinn responds to the album's significance in relation to the book on his website [1]. The influence is readily apparent in the music video for the song "Do the Evolution" from Yield.
[edit]See also
C/o postperson c/o wikipedia)

You are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor!

Take him away!