Ishmael blog #1

In Global Ethics class for the past few weeks we have been reading the book, Ishmael. In a nutshell the novel is about a gorilla named Ishmael that presents an alternative view of human history to a pupil who is looking to save the world. This alternative view is a proposal for a different program for human lifestyle change. We are at the point now where Ishmael introduces the presence of a law. More specifically, it is the Law of life.

“It is the peace-keeping law, the law that keeps the community from turning into the howling chaos the Takers imagine it to be. It’s the law that fosters life for all---life for grasses, life for the grasshopper that feeds on the grasses, life for the quail that feeds on the grasshopper, life for the fox that feeds on the quail, life for the crows that feed on the dead fox.”

This quote makes me think back to E.O. Wilson’s ted talk about interconnectedness. In his ted talk he talked about how all things are connected and if one thing gets disconnected a catastrophe is bound to happen. That’s exactly what this law is stating. We all must follow this law or else death is inevitable. Take for example the A,B and C society. You would look at their way of doing things as inhumane and horrible but in reality it is working. They have a law that they follow invariably and they are a successful society. The only problem is that this example is not in any way real. We have this problem in our own society. There are rules that we must abide by and if we don’t we are inevitably going to become extinct. One thing we know is that Man is subject to unalterable Laws of life. This meaning that we have a Law for life just like we do for aerodynamics and gravity. We must follow this law or we will be forced to pay major consequences. We takers are assured that these laws don’t apply to us. What we don’t know is that whoever and whatever violates the laws will become extinct. We tend to be ignorant towards the whole idea that we have a law. We have gotten to the point where we think we are better than everything else and that it doesn’t need to apply to us. Ignorance of these laws does not in any way lessen their effects. I like the analogy about how we’ve jumped off a cliff in our civilizational aircraft and that although we believe we’re flying, we are actually accelerating at a constant rate and are bound for collision with the earth. A crash is imminent but we tend to avoid that and say that there is no problem. We think we will be OK if we just keep pedaling harder. There are many things that the Takers do that native people or natural systems would not. We exterminate our enemies. We don’t just kill because we need food. We kill because we want vengeance for something that has happened. We are the only species on earth that will purposely kill another living creature because we can. Hitler is a prime example of how we exterminate our enemies. We also destroy our enemies’ food supply. The rule we are following right now is that every square foot of this planet belongs to us. We can put it all under cultivation, which means that our opponents are out of luck and are forced to become extinct. We need to take what we need, and leave the rest alone. This leads me to the last thing that takers do that is never done in the rest of the community. We store excess food when we don’t need it. We are greedy and take as much of a certain something as we can because we can. You don’t see a lion kill 2 gazelles in hopes of saving one for the next day. One of the main ideas that I have drawn from this reading is that with diversity of species we are ensuring ourselves survival and peace for all. One species exempting itself from these laws would undoubtedly threaten all other species. We would end up with a community in which diversity is destroyed in order to support the expansion of one species. This again goes back to the few ted talks that we watched. Right now it seems that the takers are at war with the world. This seems kind of strange because we are actually trying to make the world a better place. How can so many people think we are making the world better when we are really making it worse? I don’t think we would necessarily have to be at war with the world if we would just give up on trying to reach unlimited growth. I think if we had to define the biggest problem with our society(taker society) it would have to be Competition. Competition is the lead cause for almost all of our problems. We compete for so many things and its hurting us in the long run. I will talk more about this problem in a later blog entry. The law of life is not optional. “Any species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.” There’s one thing we need to remember. If we all obey the laws of life we can live in a nice, peaceful and diverse community where everybody and everything is happy just like the A, B and C community.