Ishmael by Daniel Quinn Reflexion

Ishmael is a controversial novel but also one of those novels that contradicts itself. It explains that the world belongs to men. “The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.” (72) Through the first chapters of the book, it said that the world was made for man. Then later on in the book it says that the world doesn’t belong to man instead man belongs to the world. I do understand that as humans we try to conquer everything and we do whatever it takes to have all the commodities no matter the cost. Since the evolution of man kind and as we became rational, we created things (tools) to make our lives easier. Ever since we created and built more and more destroying anything that gets in the way. In order to obtain what we want we have been destroying, exploiting our environment and we don’t seem to care. We destroy trees because we need more wood or they are obstructing the creation of a new building. By this we are leaving a surplus amount of animals without a home in addition that we are destroying natural beauty. I do agree that we as Takers ―those who know the difference between good and evil, live under a system of domination, today’s way of living― try to reach perfection and us by trying to reach perfection we get rid of anything that blocks our path to perfection. The issue is that we are extremely hardheaded to understand that perfection can not be reached. In contrast I don’t think that the Leavers ―those who live in the hands of God, think of themselves as an earth community, primitive― have the better life or that their way of living is the correct one. We have the choice to live however we want to. We can not be forced to live a certain way just because somebody tells you that how you are supposed to live.Although the book makes you think and wonder if we can save the world or maybe is already too late. The only thing is that the novel tells you that by saving the world you have to live like the Leaver which I think that you don’t have to be a leaver to be able to save the world. Since the book has already its own theory and absolutely bias towards it, did not make a great impact in my way of thinking. It did not pursue me to save the world because maybe we are destroying the world but there is the other maybe that says hey the world is immense there is no way we are destroying it.I am sure that the intentions of Daniel Quinn were good and he is very worried about our environment. Also I know he wanted to give an idea on how we can safe the world since we are the causers of the earth’s collapse. As well as our ambition and desire to reach perfection is making our environment suffer.