Leila Barber- Ishmael

The book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn makes some good points on human culture and society throughout our existence. Although the book is fictional and based on his opinion, I can agree with it. He states “you’re captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live” (25). We have become the most prominent and dominant beings on our planet and in order to have accomplished that, as well as continue it, we destroy the lives of other species and our planet that are in our way. We kill the beauty of nature that has survived for x amount of years in order to satisfy our selfish necessities and gain technological growth. We are now focused on the advances of technology and new inventions that our intelligence can create rather than the beauty and salvage of our planet. Quinn also says that with hunting-gathering methods we were limited in life but the rise of agriculture gave rise to everything else. We established a system that gave us our power to destroy for our needs. Agriculture is good, yes, but so many other beings have developed ways of surviving in harmony with their environment that doesn’t make it detrimental to the rest of the area that they occupy.