Reflection About Ishmael

Sabena Vilaysom

Professor Coe

Biol 1108

13 August 2015

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn was a good book, however I found it hard to get through because there is not a plot or storyline, there is just a bunch of teaching. It was basically like a long lecture. I had to re-read some parts to completely understand what was being said. However, after finally getting through this book, it turned out to be a real eye opener; it made me reflect on topics that I never thought about. At first, I did not like how Ishmael used a lot of questions to teach the narrator. I wanted him to just explain everything all at once. Later on in the book I realized that if he just explained everything at once and did not question the narrator, then the narrator would not have

The way the passage was in a story telling dialogue between the narrator and Ishmael really helped me get a better understanding of the point he was trying to get across. The creation of life theory is something we have all learned when we were little in science class. The same story is told over and over ending with the arrival of humans. Ishmael then tells his story which is the same way, however it ends with the arrival of jellyfish. A point that Ishmael’s story makes is that the time line for creation abruptly ends at human life; this shows that we believe that earth was created for our existence and nothing else is created after. We believe that we were born to conquer the world, and that this world only serves our needs. This is the basis of why our culture acts the way that they do. I never really thought about things that way. Everyone knows the same story and that it ends with the arrival of humans but we do not really think about it, we never questioned why creation ends with humans. We do not think about the meaning of things or question why things happen to be the way they are. What I loved about this book is that Ishmael questioned the narrator to think about why things are the way they are because we never really question it, we just go with what we are

Life before the agricultural revolution was made out to be awful. It was a huge advancement that let us keep up with our population increase. What I did not think about is what agriculture is doing to other species. Agriculture is not our downfall; the extent to which man takes it is our downfall. It is stated that agriculture supports population growth, and that can damage diversity. The more our species expands, the more of a threat it poses to other species. Ishmael states that Takers and Leavers pass down different types of knowledge from generation to generation. Takers pass down knowledge of knowledge and how to grow crops where as the Leavers pass down ways to live a better life. In Takers culture we want to keep advancing so we discard old ideas and keep creating new ones to replace the old ones. In Leavers culture, each generation learns ways to live from the previous and so on. We are taught to believe that technology advancements are great successes and that before it life was not as great, when in fact they could be our downfall. I had a Pre-calculus teacher in high school that believes this as well, he believes technology is our greatest downfall and claims it is dumbing us down. He would always yell at our class and say that back in the day they did not have calculators and everyone was smarter back then because they all had to think for themselves.