Ishmael

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Postperson: Thank you for that summary, sounds like a great read.

Oh I don't know if it's clear, but that was the wikipaedia page on the book Ishmael. There was a problem with the link function so I had to do a copy and paste.

It does sound interesting though. It's actually eggman who deserves any credit as he created the topic, I was interested to hear of it.

Thanks anyway.

It really is a great book, it has easily been the most influential thing on my world views that I've ever read. It also eventually led to a paper I wrote about how feeding starving nations is overall a bad thing. Sounds horrible, I know, but the school keeps a copy of it on record to prove that you can actually argue the point well.

It's an interesting attempt to incorporate legend into a proposal for a survivable society but unfortunately it ignores huge sectors of possibility that technology has opened to humanity if humanity would use it wisely. You do not cure a lack of understanding by decimating further understanding. No doubt the people in control of the economic forces now driving the economy of the world have the instincts of termites destroying their habitation as they consume it but if humanity is to survive it must radically change its approach, not by subsiding into ignorance or adapting to the exquisite but random architecture created by the interlocking of the variously evolved species but by analyzing and adapting the possible new configurations opened up by innovative technology. It means taking intelligent control of the total Earth and incorporating what exists into new and integrated and sustaining patterns. We are just at the opening of this possibility and are making terrible cultural mistakes but if we correct ourselves we and the Earth may have a chance to survive. At the moment the outcome is very doubtful.

I saw the title of the thread and thought it was going to be about Islam. (Ishmael is considered the father of the Arab people and Muslims believe that he was almost sacrificed to God and that he built the Kaaba with Abraham.)

Thanks Postperson!

Be a leaver not a taker and dont be extinnt.

Ah, yes, the WISE use of technology, there's the rub. Technology is used (a. for profit, (b. for power, and (c. for the benefit of a small fraction of those who could bave benefitted provided it does not interfere with (a. or (b. Quinn was right, we made a wrong turn somewhere a long time ago and we cannot correct it without reversing course. Was it agriculture? I don't know but it was something that occurred about the same time, maybe power structures, maybe population growth, maybe inequality, maybe something else. Quinn's theory is about as good as any I've heard. Jared Diamond also seems to share it, Love and peace.

Maybe it was believing we own the land or that we are better then eeryone else?

Yeah, our arrogance! That must have had something to do with it. First peoples still tend to believe that sentient life is simply one sort of life among other life and human beings are simply one among many species.
This does not reduce their respect for humanity but merely increases their respect for the earth and everything in it.