Ishmael

by Daniel Quinn

  There was more to it than this, however, because I still felt depressed. A second bourbon helped me to it: I was making progress. That’s right. This was the source of my feeling of depression.

  Ishmael had a curriculum. Well, of course, why wouldn’t he? He’d developed his curriculum over a period of years, working with one pupil after another. Makes sense. You’ve got to have a plan. You start here, move to this point, then to this point, this point, and this point, and then, voila! One fine day you’re finished. Thanks for your attention, have a nice life, and close the door behind you when you leave.

  How far along was I, at this point? Halfway? A third of the way? A quarter? Whatever, every advance I made took me a step closer to being out of Ishmael’s life.

  What’s the best bad word that describes this way of taking the situation? Selfishness? Possessiveness? Stinginess? Whatever it is, I’ll own to it and make no excuses.

  I had to face it: I didn’t just want a teacher—I wanted a teacher for life.

  EIGHT

  1

  The search for the law took me four days.

  I spent one day telling myself I couldn’t do it, two days doing it, and one day making sure I’d done it. On the fifth day I went back. As I walked into Ishmael’s office, I was mentally rehearsing what I was going to say, which was, “I think I see why you insisted I do it myself.”

  I looked up from my thoughts and was momentarily disoriented. I had forgotten what was waiting for me there: the empty room, the lone chair, the slab of glass with a pair of glowing eyes behind it. Foolishly, I quavered a hello into the air.

  Then Ishmael did something he’d never done before. By way of greeting, he lifted his upper lip to give me a look at a row of amber teeth as massive as elbows. I scurried to my chair and waited like a schoolboy for his nod.

  “I think I see why you insisted I do it myself,” I told him. “If you had done the work for me and pointed out the things the Takers do that are never done in the natural community, I would have said, ‘Well, sure, so what, big deal.’”

  Ishmael grunted.

  “Okay. As I make it out, there are four things the Takers do that are never done in the rest of the community, and these are all fundamental to their civilizational system. First, they exterminate their competitors, which is something that never happens in the wild. In the wild, animals will defend their territories and their kills and they will invade their competitors’ territories and preempt their kills. Some species even include competitors among their prey, but they never hunt competitors down just to make them dead, the way ranchers and farmers do with coyotes and foxes and crows. What they hunt, they eat.”

  Ishmael nodded. “It should be noted, however, that animals will also kill in self-defense, or even when they merely feel threatened. For example, baboons may attack a leopard that hasn’t attacked them. The point to see is that, although baboons will go looking for food, they will never go looking for leopards.”

  “I’m not sure I see what you mean.”

  “I mean that in the absence of food, baboons will organize themselves to find a meal, but in the absence of leopards they will never organize themselves to find a leopard. In other words, it’s as you say: when animals go hunting—even extremely aggressive animals like baboons—it’s to obtain food, not to exterminate competitors or even animals that prey on them.”

  “Yes, I see what you’re getting at now.”

  “And how can you be sure this law is invariably followed? I mean, aside from the fact that competitors are never seen to be exterminating each other, in what you call the wild.”

  “If it weren’t invariably followed, then, as you say, things would not have come to be this way. If competitors hunted each other down just to make them dead, then there would be no competitors. There would simply be one species at each level of competition: the strongest.”

  “Go on.”

  “Next, the Takers systematically destroy their competitors’ food to make room for their own. Nothing like this occurs in the natural community. The rule there is: Take what you need, and leave the rest alone.”

  Ishmael nodded.

  “Next, the Takers deny their competitors access to food. In the wild, the rule is: You may deny your competitors access to what you’re eating, but you may not deny them access to food in general. In other words, you can say, ‘This gazelle is mine,’ but you can’t say, ‘All the gazelles are mine.’ The lion defends its kill as its own, but it doesn’t defend the herd as its own.”

  “Yes, that’s true. But suppose you raised up a herd of your own, from scratch, so to speak. Could you defend that herd as your own?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so, so long as it wasn’t your policy that all the herds in the world were your own.”

  “And what about denying competitors access to what you’re growing?”

  “Again … Our policy is: Every square foot of this planet belongs to us, so if we put it all under cultivation, then all our competitors are just plain out of luck and will have to become extinct. Our policy is to deny our competitors access to all the food in the world, and that’s something no other species does.”

  “Bees will deny you access to what’s inside their hive in the apple tree, but they won’t deny you access to the apples.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good. And you say there’s a fourth thing the Takers do that is never done in the wild, as you call it.”

  “Yes. In the wild, the lion kills a gazelle and eats it. It doesn’t kill a second gazelle to save for tomorrow. The deer eats the grass that’s there. It doesn’t cut the grass down and save it for the winter. But these are things the Takers do.”

  “You seem less certain about this one.”

  “Yes, I am less certain. There are species that store food, like bees, but most don’t.”

  “In this case, you’ve missed the obvious. Every living creature stores food. Most simply store it in their bodies, the way lions and deer and people do. For others, this would be inadequate to their adaptations, and they must store food externally as well.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “There’s no prohibition against food storage as such. There couldn’t be, because that’s what makes the whole system work: the green plants store food for the plant eaters, the plant eaters store food for the predators, and so on.”

  “True. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Is there anything else the Takers do that is never done in the rest of the community of life?”

  “Not that I can see. Not that seems relevant to what makes that community work.”

  2

  “This law that you have so admirably described defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war.”

  “Yes. As you said, it’s the peace-keeping law.”

  “And what’s the effect of the law? What does it promote?”

  “Well … it promotes order.”

  “Yes, but I’m after something else now. What would have happened if this law had been repealed ten million years ago? What would the community be like?”

  “Once again, I’d have to say there would only be one form of life at each level of competition. If all the competitors for the grasses had been waging war on each other for ten million years, I’d have to think an overall winner would have emerged by now. Or maybe there’d be one insect winner, one avian winner, one reptile winner, and so on. The same would be true at all levels.”

  “So the law promotes what? What’s the difference between this community and the community as it is?”

  “I suppose the community I’ve just described would consist of a few dozen or a few hundred different species. The community as it is consists of millions of species.”

  “So the law promotes what?”

  “Divers
ity.”

  “Of course. And what’s the good of diversity?”

  “I don’t know. It’s certainly more … interesting.”

  “What’s wrong with a global community that consists of nothing but grass, gazelles, and lions? Or a global community that consists of nothing but rice and humans?”

  I gazed into space for a while. “I’d have to think that a community like that would be ecologically fragile. It would be highly vulnerable. Any change at all in existing conditions, and the whole thing would collapse.”

  Ishmael nodded. “Diversity is a survival factor for the community itself A community of a hundred million species can survive almost anything short of total global catastrophe. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature drop of twenty degrees—which would be a lot more devastating than it sounds. Within that hundred million will be thousands that could survive a global temperature rise of twenty degrees. But a community of a hundred species or a thousand species has almost no survival value at all.”

  “True. And diversity is exactly what’s under attack here. Every day dozens of species disappear as a direct result of the way the Takers compete outside the law.”

  “Now that you know there’s a law involved, does it make a difference in the way you view what’s going on?”

  “Yes. I no longer think of what we’re doing as a blunder. We’re not destroying the world because we’re clumsy. We’re destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.”

  3

  “As you’ve explained, the community of life would be destroyed if all species exempted themselves from the rules of competition laid down by this law. But what would happen if only one species exempted itself?”

  “You mean other than man?”

  “Yes. Of course it would have to possess an almost human cunning and determination. Suppose that you’re a hyena. Why should you share the game with those lazy, domineering lions? It happens again and again: You kill a zebra, and a lion comes along, drives you off, and helps himself while you sit around waiting for the leavings. Is that fair?”

  “I thought it was the other way around—the lions make the kill and the hyenas do the harassing.”

  “Lions make their own kills, of course, but they’re perfectly content to appropriate someone else’s if they can.”

  “Okay.”

  “So you’re fed up. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Exterminate the lions.”

  “And what’s the effect of this?”

  “Well … no more hassles.”

  “What were the lions living on?”

  “The gazelles. The zebras. The game.”

  “Now the lions are gone. How does this affect you?”

  “I see what you’re getting at. There’s more game for us.”

  “And when there’s more game for you?”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “All right. I was assuming you knew the ABC’s of ecology. In the natural community, whenever a population’s food supply increases, that population increases. As that population increases, its food supply decreases, and as its food supply decreases, that population decreases. This interaction between food populations and feeder populations is what keeps everything in balance.”

  “I did know it. I just wasn’t thinking.”

  “Well,” Ishmael said with a baffled frown, “think.”

  I laughed. “Okay. So, with the lions gone, there’s more food for hyenas, and our population grows. It grows to the point where game becomes scarce, then it begins to shrink.”

  “It would in ordinary circumstances, but you’ve changed those circumstances. You’ve decided the law of limited competition doesn’t apply to hyenas.”

  “Right. So we kill off our other competitors.”

  “Don’t make me drag it out of you one word at a time. I want you to work it out.”

  “Okay. Let’s see. After we kill off our competitors for the game … our population grows until the game begins to get scarce. There are no more competitors to kill off, so we have to increase the game population…. I can’t see hyenas going in for animal husbandry.”

  “You’ve killed off your competitors for the game, but your game has competitors as well—competitors for the grasses. These are your competitors once removed. Kill them off and there’ll be more grass for your game.”

  “Right. More grass for the game means more game, more game means more hyenas, more hyenas means … What’s left to kill off?” Ishmael just raised his eyebrows at me. “There’s nothing left to kill off.”

  “Think.”

  I thought. “Okay. We’ve killed off our direct competitors and our competitors once removed. Now we can kill off our competitors twice removed—the plants that compete with the grasses for space and sunlight.”

  “That’s right. Then there will be more plants for your game and more game for you.”

  “Funny…. This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can’t eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn’t feed what you eat.”

  “It is holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated.”

  4

  “As you see, one species exempting itself from this law has the same ultimate effect as all species exempting themselves. You end up with a community in which diversity is progressively destroyed in order to support the expansion of a single species.”

  “Yes. You have to end up where the Takers have ended up—constantly eliminating competitors, constantly increasing your food supply, and constantly wondering what you’re going to do about the population explosion. How did you put it the other day? Something about increasing food production to feed an increased population.”

  “‘Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population.’ Peter Farb said it in Humankind.”

  “You said it was a paradox?”

  “No, he said it was a paradox.”

  “Why?”

  Ishmael shrugged. “I’m sure he knows that any species in the wild will invariably expand to the extent that its food supply expands. But, as you know, Mother Culture teaches that such laws do not apply to man.”

  5

  “I have a question,” I said. “As we’ve gone through these things, I keep wondering if agriculture itself is contrary to this law. I mean, it seems contrary to the law by definition.”

  “It is—if the only definition you have is the Taker definition. But there are other definitions. Agriculture doesn’t have to be a war waged on all life that doesn’t support your growth.”

  “I guess my problem is this. The biological community is an economy, isn’t it? I mean, if you start taking more for yourself, then there’s got to be less for someone else, for something else. Isn’t that so?”

  “Yes. But what are you getting at by taking more for yourself? Why do it?”

  “Well, this is the basis for settlement. I can’t have settlement unless I have agriculture.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  “What else would I want?”

  “Do you want to grow to the point where you can take over the world and put every square foot of it under cultivation and force everyone alive to be an agriculturalist?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what the Takers have been doing—and are still doing. That’s what their agricultural system is designed to support: not just settlement—growth. Unlimited growth.”

  “Okay. But all I want is settlement.”

  “Then you don’t have to go to war.”

  “But the problem remains. If I’m going to achieve settlement,
I have to have more than I had before, and that more has got to come from somewhere.”

  “Yes, that’s true, and I see your difficulty. In the first place, settlement is not by any means a uniquely human adaptation. Offhand I can’t think of any species that is an absolute nomad. There’s always a territory, a feeding ground, a spawning ground, a hive, a nest, a roost, a lair, a den, a hole, a burrow. And there are varying degrees of settlement among animals, and among humans as well. Even hunter-gatherers aren’t absolute nomads, and there are intermediate states between them and pure agriculturalists. There are hunter-gatherers who practice intensive collection, who collect and store food surpluses that enable them to be a bit more settled. Then there are semi-agriculturalists who grow a little and gather a lot. And then there are near-agriculturalists who grow a lot and gather a little. And so on.”

  “But this is not getting to the central problem,” I said.

  “It is getting to the central problem, but your vision is locked on seeing the problem in one way and one way only. The point you’re missing is this: When Homo habilis appeared on the scene—when that particular adaptation that we call Homo habilis appeared on the scene—something had to make way for him. I don’t mean that some other species had to become extinct. I mean simply that, with his very first bite, Homo habilis was in competition with something. And not with one thing, with a thousand things—which all had to be diminished in some small degree if Homo habilis was going to live. This is true of every single species that ever came into being on this planet.”

  “Okay. But I still don’t see what this has to do with settlement.”

  “You’re not listening. Settlement is a biological adaptation practiced to some degree by every species, including the human. And every adaptation supports itself in competition with the adaptations around it. In brief, human settlement isn’t against the laws of competition, it’s subject to the laws of competition.”