by Daniel Quinn, 1992
Tyler’s book. He really wanted us to read it. It is about a young man who answers an ad, Teacher Seeks Pupil. The teacher ends up being a gorilla named Ishmael. They talk telepathically for months. Ishmael teaches him his theory of the Takers and the Leavers. The Leavers were hunter-gatherers that let others live their lives. They didn’t destroy species or the planet. They lived at peace with the gods. The Takers started about 10,000 years ago. They are the Cain who killed Abel. They do not want to live at peace in the hands of the gods. They want to take matters into their own hands and plant more and more and store up more and more. They are destroying our world.
Once Ishmael has imparted all his knowledge to the young man, he urges him to teach others. Teach 100 people and they’ll each teach 100, and that way we can save the planet, once most of the people think and believe like we do.
Somewhere in the book, the narrator says, “Now I see through a glass darkly.” That’s from Saint Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” We like to think we can figure it all out, but we can’t until Jesus comes again.
It’s all futility without Jesus. Man wants to go back to the garden, to make a paradise and live in it. We cannot do it. We will always screw it up somehow, some way. There is hope, though, and it is because of Jesus. He has conquered evil, sin, death, and one day, he will come back again and restore all things, but until then, we live with the frustration of the evil in the world.
Ishmael on page 28 says, “You’re captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.”
That reminds me of Romans 7:19 – For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. … 24 – Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25. Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Also, Ecclesiastes 3:11 – He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
On page 101, Ishmael is forcing him to think about laws, such as the law of gravity, the law of aerodynamics. He asks, “You’re certain that no laws can be discovered concerning how people ought to live?” He says there are laws against drug use, but they can be changed by a vote. “You can’t change the laws of aerodynamics by a vote–and there are no laws like that about how people should live.”
Jesus gives us the greatest commandment: Matthew 26:36-40 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. ‘ This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”
The problem is, we fail at this law. If we could follow it, it would be paradise on earth, it really would. But we fail. So Jesus takes all our failings on Himself and he suffers for us, so we can be holy and blameless like Him. What a love that blows our minds. All we have to do is believe and trust in Him. But people so want to do it themselves, reject the love, and Satan makes it look like a lie, because he wants people to reject God.
Romans 1:20-24 –
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”
I’m not saying Daniel Quinn was against Christianity, but he seemed to be saying that if only we think and believe the right way, we can save the world. That is a noble thought, but it will never work without Jesus. Without being connected to Jesus, all our good works come to naught. It just works that way.
Page 76, Ishmael says, “So now we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man and man was made to rule it.”
Page 87, Ishmael says, “Man was born to turn the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.”
Page 89, 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 like 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.”
Page 127, Ishmael says: “All the countless forms of life that you see here came into being following this law, and following this law, man too came into being. And only once in all the history of this planet has any species tried to live in defiance of this law–and it wasn’t an entire species, it was only one people, those I’ve named Takers. Ten thousand years ago, this one people said, ‘No more. Man was not meant to be bound by this law,’ and they began to live in a way that flouts the law at every point. Every single thing that is prohibited under the law they incorporated into their civilization as a fundamental policy. And now, after five hundred generations, they are about to pay the penalty that any other species would pay for living contrary to this law.”
Page 156-157: “If you go among the various peoples of your culture–if you go to China and Japan and Russia and England and India–each people will give you a completely different account of themselves, but they are nonetheless all enacting a single basic story, which is the story of the Takers. The same is true of the Leavers. The Bushmen of Africa, the Alawa of Australia, the Kreen-Akrore of Brazil, and the Navajo of the United States would each give you a different account of themselves, but they too are all enacting one basic story, which is the story of the Leavers.”
“I see what you’re getting at. It isn’t the tale you tell that counts, it’s the way you actually live.”
“That’s correct. The story the Takers have been enacting here for the past ten thousand years is not only disastrous for mankind and for the world, it’s fundamentally unhealthy and unsatisfying. It’s a megalomaniac’s fantasy, and enacting it has given the Takers a culture riddled with greed, cruelty, mental illness, crime, and drug addiction.”
“Yes, that seems to be so.”
“The story the Leavers have been enacting here for the past three million years isn’t a story of conquest and rule. Enacting it doesn’t give them power. Enacting it gives them lives that are satisfying and meaningful to them. This is what you’ll find if you go among them. They’re not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror of each other, not going crazy because their lives seem empty and pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through the days, not inventing a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make their lives worth living. And–I repeat–this is not because they live close to nature or have no formal government or because they’re innately noble. This is simply because they’re enacting a story that works well for people–a story that worked well for three million years and that still works well where the Takers haven’t yet managed to stamp it out.”
Page 164, Ishmael says: “About two thousand years ago, the Takers adopted as their own a story that had originated among Leavers many centuries before.” (This is the story of Cain and Able, where Cain, the Taker, kills Abel, the Leaver.)
Page 166 to 177, Ishmael tells a story of the gods. They couldn’t decide who should gain and who should lose, who should live and who should die. Should they let the locusts live, thereby favoring the lizards and birds that feed on them, at the expense of the deer and the gazelles and the goats and the rabbits going hungry (because the locusts eat all the grass). Should we let the mountain snow melt and flood the valleys killing many creatures, or if they don’t, the marshes and streams dry up, killing many creatures.
Page 169: “Well, the gods were sinking right into the slough of despond when one of them looked up and said, “Say, didn’t we make for the garden a certain tree whose fruit is the knowledge of good and evil?”
“Yes,” cried the others. “Lt’s find that tree and eat of it and see what this knowledge is.” And when the gods had found this tree and had tasted its fruit, their eyes were opened, and they said, “Now indeed we have the knowledge we need to tend the garden without becoming criminals and without earning the curses of all who live in our hands.”
So they decided after eating of this tree that one day the lion gets his kill and the next day he doesn’t and everything is fine. Now, one of the gods comes who hadn’t eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and says this isn’t right. It’s either wrong for the lion to kill or it isn’t. It can’t be right one day and wrong the next.
“The others nodded and said, “Yes this is just the way we would have reasoned before we ate of this tree of knowledge.”
“What knowledge is this?” the god asked, noticing the tree for the first time.
“Taste its fruit.” they told him. “Then you’ll know exactly what knowledge it is.”
“So the god tasted, and his eyes were opened. “Yes, I see,” he said. “This is indeed the proper knowledge of the gods: the knowledge of who shall live and who shall die.”
Then the gods talk about Adam and decide he shall live in the garden and they will take care of him “as they care for all others in the garden.” They worry, however, that Adam might get impatient looking for the Tree of Life and decide to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Page 172: “Nonsense,” the others replied [gods]. “You know very well that the fruit of this tree nourishes only the gods. It can no more nourish Adam than the grasses of the oxen. He might take it into his mouth and swallow it, but it would pass through his body without benefit. Surely you don’t imagine that he might actually gain our knowledge by eating of this tree?”
“Of course not,” the other replied. “The danger is not that he would gain our knowledge but rather that he might imagine that he’d gained it. Having tasted the fruit of this tree, he might say to himself, ‘I have eaten at the gods’ own tree of knowledge and therefore know as well as they how to rule the world. I may do as I will do.'”
Page 173: “If Adam should eat of our tree,” he persisted, “there’s no telling how he might deceive himself. Not knowing the truth, he might say to himself, ‘Whatever I can justify doing is good and whatever I cannot justify doing is evil.'” …
,,,”In his arrogance, he might look around the garden and say to himself, ‘This is all wrong. Why should I have to share the fire of life with all these creatures? Look here, the lions and the wolves and the foxes take the game I would have for myself…This is evil. I will kill all these creatures, and this will be good.”
Page 175: …”The gods wrote in the world a law for all to follow, but it cannot apply to me because I’m their equal. Therefore I will live outside this law and grow without limit. To be limited is evil. I will steal the fire of life from the hands of the gods and heap it up for my growth, and that will be good. I will destroy those kinds that do not serve my growth, and that will be good. I will wrest the garden from the hands of the gods and order it anew so that it serves only my growth, and that will be good. And because these things are good, they must be done at any cost. It may be that I’ll destroy the garden and make a ruin of it. It may be that my progeny will teem over the earth like locusts, stripping it bare, until they drown in their own filth and hate the very sight of one another and go mad. Still they must go on, because to grow without limit is good and to accept the limits of the law is evil. And if any say, “Let’s put off the burdens of the criminal life and live in the hands of the gods once again,” I will kill them, for what they say is evil…See how great we have become? Wielding the knowledge of good and evil, we have made ourselves the masters of the world, and the gods have no power over us. Though your groans fill the air, isn’t it sweeter to live in our own hands than in the hands of the gods?”‘”
“And when the gods heard all this, they saw that, of all the trees in the garden, only the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could destroy Adam. 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.”
Page 177: “The knowledge of good and evil is fundamentally the knowledge the rulers of the world must exercise, because every single thing they do is good for some but evil for others…”
“The gods ruled the world for billions of years, and it was doing just fine. After just a few thousand years of human rule, the world is at the point of death.”
Page 186 – the Cain and Abel story: “…I know it’s always been a mystery as to why God accepted Abel and his offering and rejected Cain and his offering. This explains it. With this story, the Semites were telling their children, ‘God is on our side. He loves us herders but hates those murderous tillers of the soil from the north.'”
The young man then assumes the mark God put on Cain was the same as his own fair face – Caucasians.
Page 187: “If the tillers of the soil from the north were Caucasians,” I said, “then the mark of Cain is this.” I pointed to my own fair or maggot-colored face.
“It could be. Obviously we’ll never know for sure what the authors of the story had in mind.”
“But it makes sense this way,” I insisted. “The mark was given to Cain as a warning to others: ‘Leave this man alone. This is a dangerous man, one who exacts a seven-fold vengeance.’ Certainly a lot of people all over the world have learned that it doesn’t pay to mess with people with white faces.”
Page 188: “It survived because the Takers never managed to overrun the Semites, and the Semites refused to take up the agricultural life. Even their eventual Taker descendants, the Hebrews, who preserved the story without fully understanding it [the tale of the ‘Fall of Adam and the slaughter of Abel by his brother Cain’], couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for the peasant life-style. And this is how it happened that, with the spread of Christianity and of the Old Testament, the Takers came to adopt as their own a story an enemy once told to denounce them.”
Page 189: “When the gods found out what they’d done, they said, “Okay, you wretched people, that’s it for you! We’re not taking care of you anymore. You’re out. We banish you from the garden.”
Page 196-197: “And the knowledge of good and evil?”
“Again, I’ve never heard an explanation that made any sense. I think the way most people understand it, the gods wanted to test Adam’s obedience by forbidding him something, and it didn’t much matter what it was. And that’s what the Fall essentially was–an act of disobedience.”…
“But the people of your culture have never been able to understand the explanation, because they’ve always assumed that it was formulated by people just like them–people who took it for granted that the world was made for man and man was made to conquer and rule it, people for whom the sweetest knowledge in the world is the knowledge of good and evil, people who consider tilling the soil the only noble and human way to live….”
“But when it’s read another way, the explanation makes perfectly good sense: Man can never have the wisdom the gods use to rule the world, and if he tries to preempt that wisdom, the result won’t be enlightenment, it will be death.”
Page 212: “You’d just finished showing me that the story in Genesis that begins with the Fall of Adam and ends with the murder of Abel is not what it’s conventionally understood to be by the people of my culture. It’s the story of our agricultural revolution as told by some of the earliest victims of that revolution.”
Then there are several pages of Ishmael playing the part of a Leaver trying to understand the logic of the Taker who wants to plant more and more, destroy more and more, to eventually have all the world in his hands, rather than having to rely on the gods to take care of him.
Page 246: “Far and away the most futile admonition Christ ever offered was when he said, ‘Have no care for tomorrow. Don’t worry about whether you’re going to have something to eat. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, but God takes perfect care of them. Don’t you think he’ll do the same for you?’ In our culture the overwhelming answer to that question is, ‘Hell no!’ Even the most dedicated monastics saw to their sowing and reaping and gathering into barns.”
Page 247: …”Mother Culture tells me–that living in the hands of the gods has got to be a never-ending nightmare of terror and anxiety.”
“And this is what your revolution does for you: It puts you beyond the reach of that appalling nightmare. It puts you beyond the reach of the gods.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“So. We have new pair of names for you. The Takers are those who know good and evil, and the Leavers are . . .?”
“The Leavers are those who live in the hands of the gods.”
Page 253: “People who live in the hands of the gods don’t make themselves rulers of the world and force everyone to live the way they live, and people who know good and evil do.”
Page 255: “What happens to people–to creatures in general–who live in the hands of the gods?”
“Ah. Yes, I see. They evolve.”
Page 260-261: “His [man’s] destiny is to be the first to learn that creatures like man have a choice: They can try to thwart the gods and perish in the attempt–or they can stand aside and make some room for all the rest. But it’s more than that. His destiny is to be the father of them all–I don’t mean by direct descent. By giving all the rest their chance–the whales and the dolphins and the chimps and the raccoons–he becomes in some sense their progenitor.”
Page 268 – 269: “What do I do?”
“What you do is to teach a hundred what I’ve taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That’s how it’s always done.”…
…”You can’t change these things with laws. You must change people’s minds….”
“What you’re saying is that someone has to stand up and become to the world of today what Saint Paul was to the Roman Empire.”
“Yes, basically. Is that so daunting?”
Page 272: “In your cultural prison, which inmates wield the power?”
“Ah,” I said. “The male inmates. Especially the white mail inmates.”
“Yes, that’s right. But you understand that these white male inmates are indeed inmates and not warders. For all their power and privilege–for all that they lord it over everyone else in the prison–not one of them has a key that will unlock the gate.”
“Yes, that’s true. Donald Trump can do a lot of things I can’t, but he can no more get out of the prison than I can. But what does this have to do with justice?”
“Justice demands that people other than white males have power in the prison.”
“Yes, I see. But what are you saing? That this isn’t true?”
“True? Of course it’s true that males–an, as you say;, especially white males–have called the shots inside the prison for thousands of years, perhaps even from the beginning. Of course it’s true that this is unjust. And of course it’s true that power and wealth within the prison should be equitably redistributed. But it should be noted that what is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself.”…
“I’m afraid it’s a cause to which almost none of humanity will subscribe. White or colored, male or female, what the people of this culture want is to have as much wealth and power in the Taker prison as they can get. They don’t give a damn that it’s a prison and they don’t give a damn that it’s destroying the world.”