'Ishmael' Trilogy by Daniel Quinn

[AxelHeyst]

Fair enough. I'm honestly skeptical about the notion that any academic field is in agreement with itself, having dated an academic for half a decade who had a multi-disciplinary toe in anthropology. Those folks live to disagree with everyone (including themselves).

Also, if I'm remembering my "Civilized to Death" correctly, there is a big disagreement over primate studies and their relevance on human society, just for one example. (Long story short, studies of warlike chimpanzees have been used to support the idea that life in nature is nasty and brutish, and we need civilization to keep us all in line. But those studies have been drawn in to question due to the circumstances of the studies, the fact that bonobos are basically happy hippie monkeys but the pro-civ people never mention them, etc). But, I'm out of my depth here, so I'm going to drop back to lurker status on this topic.

[theanimal]

@C_L

No offense taken. I disagree with that definition of work. By that definition almost everything we do is work. I believe h/g were more in line with this mentality:

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

I also disagree that number of hours worked is all opinion. There have been observations/studies of hunter gatherers in modern times. From my understanding, that is where the number comes from, at least in the case of Marshall Sahlin's book (avg 16 hrs) IIRC. To extrapolate that to all cultures in the past may not be entirely accurate but I'd say it paints a good picture. Marshall Sahlins is the only one I know who actually computed this number. If someone knows of others, I'd be happy to read about them. But I'm not so sure there is a large disagreement within the field. I haven't looked at this stuff in 4 years or so, so I could be off base but I don't recall much diversion.

[steveo73]

If anti-civ people didn't think pre-civ life was better... why are they anti-civ? No one holds an opinion just because they want to be an irritating dbag. (Well, except for trolls. But we wouldn't know anything about those people, would we?)

I think they put anti-civ life up on a glorified pedestal and do the opposite to post-civ life. I simply don't believe that anyone suggesting going back to ant-civ life is being rational.

If you are struggling with loneliness etc why do you believe it would have been better if we were living in a cave scavenging for food or at your ideal pre-civ time. What do you think you can do to improve your situation ? Why not face that and try and do something about it. What in particular about pre-civ life do you think would help you ? Why can't you get a similar experience now ?

[steveo73]

Community, competence, culture and resiliency exist in far higher forms than what is found in almost any community today.

This is exactly my point. Why do you believe (and it is a subjective belief) that those positive components of life that you mentioned were better than what is found today.

I'd suggest those things are so much better today it's not funny.

But to dismiss the notion that there were any positives from the life that most humans lived for most of our species history is foolish.

Not really. This is missing my point above. You can get those same things that I believe that you are romanticizing today. I just went to the gym and wrestled with a bunch of guys. They aren't my mates in that we catch up outside of the gym but geez there are a bunch of guys I'm friends with. That is community and competency. As for resiliency I'm not sure what you mean there. I have a lot of support. As for competency I also don't get that. I work in IT. I work with this lovely young Chinese girl. She works on Hadoop and she is brilliant. Could she develop that level of competency in a pre-civ environment. I doubt it.

[steveo73]

For an anti-civ socialist anthropologists (ie all of them), it's whatever they want it to be to push their agenda. The entire idea that h/g only "worked" 20 hours a week is speculation and opinion, not science. Everyone is entitled to this, but they need to label it as such, particularly when they have letters like PhD after their name.

Exactly. The work idea just doesn't make sense.

[theanimal]

This is exactly my point. Why do you believe (and it is a subjective belief) that those positive components of life that you mentioned were better than what is found today.

I'd suggest those things are so much better today it's not funny.

If you look at the native people of your home (Aboriginal Australians) and mine (Alaska Natives) you will find communities struggling with problems that they never faced before. High incidences of violent crime with an emphasis on sexual assault, poverty, unemployment and numerous health issues such as obesity and diabetes.

Both of these cultures (Aborigines and Native Alaskans) were extensively studied as they transitioned into the white economy, with much of it happening within the past century. Even more recently in Alaska.

Most of those issues (if not all) didn't occur as chronic issues previously. It's not subjective.

[steveo73]

@theanimal - I agree with where you are coming from. There are definitely various sub cultures that are really struggling with modernization/civilization.

To me that is though a very different discussion and even then it's a tough subjective judgement call. I think that there is still a high chance of romanticizing pre-civ conditions and demonizing post-civ conditions.

Lot's of aboriginals live pretty average lives today which to me means they are so much better off post-civ. There is also the question about what constitutes an aboriginal. It's a tough discussion albeit I recognize a higher percentage of Aboriginal people have not done as well post-civ. We should even be careful here though because the situation has improved out of sight compared to what it was in the past. Aboriginals in Australia have had an extremely rough time.

I wonder though are those specific examples really a pre-civ or post-civ discussion. The Australian Aborigines were treated terribly by basically an invading force that took their land. It was more a post-civ conquest of a pre-civ culture. It was freaken terrible. I assume the same thing happened in America but I don't know the details. I also assume how you came to be civilized (however that is defined) makes a difference to your experience of civilization.

[jennypenny]

By that definition almost everything we do is work.

The distinction between 'work' where we are selling our time to someone and the 'work' we do during a normal day to sustain our lifestyle is that the former can be stored. The category of 'work for compensation' was added after the time of H/Gs (joining work for sustainment and rest/relaxation), therefore it's really hard to compare the two lifestyles.

The ability to store wealth (of any kind) completely changes how we can live because it gives us choices, slack, and flexibility. H/Gs OTOH didn't have any choices.* I'm not arguing that the H/G lifestyle was good or bad since the lifestyle was probably best-suited to the meat suit and social aspects of humans, yet also came with a rigidity that didn't allow for intellectual or technological development. As was said upthread, everyone has the ability to choose from the best of both worlds instead of slamming either as an unmitigated failure.


*This is always my argument against anyone who's gone all in on any one approach like FIRE or Suelo or whatever ... too rigid/limited to be resilient unless you guess exactly right about the type(s) of challenges you'll face.

[jacob]

@jp - "H/G's store their wealth in the environment". However explaining this framework to a H/G would be difficult(*). The word environment as separate from humans, the idea of storing (as if the future was a thing, only the present is conceptually relevant) and wealth (in terms of ownership) would be difficult concepts to convey. H/G didn't create those choices because they didn't need them. Similar to how the sufficiently rich don't need to think about investment allocation because they have enough money to just let it sit in a checking account and so some do. Of course today, H/G living would be very difficult since the environment is more or less destroyed, relatively speaking. That is, it is no longer teeming with food.

(*) Indeed any explanation/comprehension of frameworks outside one's one framework and experience is difficult. Remember the wars with the Internet Retirement Police ten years ago over the proper definition of the word "retirement". Everybody had their own definition and rules for what constituted "work" and "retirement". It wasn't even possible to agree over that. Much effort was expended in protecting various egos which had been thoroughly invested into their respective frameworks. Outside the FIRE-tribe, these skirmishes still occur when the tribe runs into "modern/consumer people".

It was also hard to grok life-concepts w/o actual experience. Boyle is doing an interesting experience living without linear time. No clocks. No calendars. After a while perceptions change. I did something similar once not knowing what day of the week it is. I can't say it was nicer or worse, just different. Different enough that people thought it was odd that I didn't know what day of the week it was.

[jennypenny]

H/G didn't create those choices because they didn't need them.

But they did create them didn't they? Who created agriculture if not the hunter gatherers? Present-day humans are the result of human history, both good choices and bad.

It was also hard to grok life-concepts w/o actual experience. Boyle is doing an interesting experience living without linear time.

I agree and think those kinds of pilot lifestyles are admirable and necessary for change. It's just that I think they are best viewed as gateway drugs to more holistic lifestyles. Wasn't that the underlying purpose of ERE? To lead people down the path to a brook-no-harm, bear-no-harm lifestyle?

------

Please don't misunderstand. I ache for the H/G days where a person could drink from almost any water source they came across and find food if they were willing to walk long enough. I'm not a techno-optimist either who thinks the only way to solve environmental problems is to hack our way to a better planet. I'm willing to play the long game and let the earth heal itself over generations while humans dial back their lifestyles (WAY back).

I worry, though, that the then vs. now or high-tech vs. low tech arguments are no different than any us vs. them argument that pervades society at the moment. I'd rather make each choice individually and without bias, and craft a lifestyle from that. I don't want to wear anyone's team shirt and feel beholden to it.

[classical_Liberal]

@JP
Yes, you're right, yes again, and I agree.

If you look at the native people of your home (Aboriginal Australians) and mine (Alaska Natives) you will find communities struggling with problems that they never faced before. High incidences of violent crime with an emphasis on sexual assault, poverty, unemployment and numerous health issues such as obesity and diabetes.

I have quite a bit of experience with Native American populations in the Dakota's. I think this is a really bad example for the topic. First off, their plight in Civ vs h/g is very much related to systemic racism and economic policies. Did you know children were still being forced into boarding schools that made them cut their hair and not speak native languages in the 1970's? Like, these people are not much older than me and experienced racism at a level we cannot even imagine today. This has profound impact on the culture. Sure, you can argue racism is Civ's fault, but I'm not sure that's true, and it's possible to have Civ without systemic racism. Obviously I highly favor that type of Civ.

Secondly economic, their culture has experienced a situation in which their ability to provide for themselves was forcibly taken away. Eventually, after further horrific racist based policies, it was replaced with almost a UBI scenerio. Free or low cost housing, free or very low cost food, etc. Providing necessities for people without a cultural change that allows for some other life purpose never works. It creates a low slack situation in which the people feel dependant on the system that destroyed them. This is a proud culture that has been put into an untenable situation.

Obviously it's very fair to say these people were better off in h/g than Civ. However, the way in which they were integrated into Civ isn't representative of the natural evolution that took place historically. Where a slow process of h/g, to agriculture, to cities, to commerce, to nation states, to industrialization occured. This is also why Natives are more susceptible to lifestyle diseases like diabetes and alcoholism. It's not a moral, or choice issue. They have simply been exposed to new diets and substances too quickly and in too much abundance. They do not have the generations of genetic adaptations that evolved in more natural Civ development.

[Lemur]

Just finished Ishmael. What a paradigm shifting book. Looking forward to picking up 'The Story of B.'

[Jin+Guice]

However explaining this framework to a H/G would be difficult(*).

(*) Indeed any explanation/comprehension of frameworks outside one's one framework and experience is difficult.

The interesting part is just trying to imagine the framework and how it differs from our own. Thinking about which parts of the h/g lifestyle we think are better and which parts are worse and what we'd like to move towards. We can do this for other frames too. Pre-industrialization. Post-agriculture but pre-State.

This why I still think Ishmael is the best in this genre, because it focuses on ideas and broad arguments rather than inventing history (though as discussed it is occasionally factual incorrect or incomplete) and demanding particular solutions.

The other interesting part is not viewing human history since the advent of agriculture as a linear progression where things are almost uniformly getting better. Before reading Ishmael the idea that people existed without agriculture and in stateless societies for most of human history hadn't crossed my mind and the idea that these societies could be better in any attribute had never occured to me.

The usual reaction to these ideas is the same as ERE, "but why would I want to do that?" If my experience had been dealing with anthropologists who, using the flimsiest of evidence, insisted that h/g society was unequivocally better and demanded that we return to it, I'd be pretty skeptical too. But, my experience of these ideas is almost exactly the opposite.

I was unaware that the entire field of anthropology was dedicated to the narrative that h/g society is better on all attributes, in fact I was totally unaware of this narrative at all.

I think people like Boyle who pick a specific set of rules for deviating from society, stick to them and then publish the results of their experiments are interesting and important for change. I agree with @jp that, as interested readers of these experiments we need to follow in their footsteps, but can interpret their experiences through our own lens, taking what we like and discarding what we don't.

[jennypenny]

I think people like Boyle who pick a specific set of rules for deviating from society, stick to them and then publish the results of their experiments are interesting and important for change. I agree with @jp that, as interested readers of these experiments we need to follow in their footsteps, but can interpret their experiences through our own lens, taking what we like and discarding what we don't.

The one thing I didn't make clear in my post that I should have is that you have to be qualified to make those distinctions/choices. A noob who adopts an extreme lifestyle may not know enough to understand why certain aspects that they may have discarded were important. You see this a lot in investing -- people adopt the parts of an investing strategy they like not understanding that the other parts were integral to the strategy's success.

/PSA

[C40]

Thanks for starting this thread and the book recommendations. I'm reading Ismael now. I expect I'll have some thoughts, experiences, and questions to share once I get caught up on reading this entire thread and the rest of the book. I've been on a stint of reading books like this, and also information along the lines of 'how to live well in actual human ways (rather than 'takers' society success criteria) in the current world/society

[C40]

I've finished reading Ismael. I found it useful, learned some new things, and simple ways to consider the subject.

It has been interesting reading the book after this thread. Particularly the gut reaction of people set in "taker" culture, or those thinking too simply about the subject - misunderstanding the message and blurting out straw-man responses along the lines of "oh, so you want to live like cave-men? lol, no thanks" (while NONE of the anti-civ/post-civ type material I've read is suggesting that)

I didn't really enjoy the writing style of Ismael (as a novel, as communication between two 'people') and I think the same points could be made with better clarity in about a third of the length.

The book basically ends with a prompt to go convince other people of the book's message and change the beliefs of all humanity.... but, I'm looking for understanding and lessons to use for living well myself within the world/civilization ('taker culture') as it is.

So.. do the other books by Quinn continue/rehash the same message of "here's the problem, now go convince everyone, and we can improve our civilization", or do they contain other information that would be useful when developing a personal strategy for a good life now, in my own lifetime?

Edit - it looks like "Beyond Civilization" has some more of what I want. Here is the blurb from the inner book flap:

In Beyond Civilization, Daniel Quinn thinks the unthinkable. We all know there's no one right way to build a bicycle, no one right way to design an automobile, no one right way to make a pair of shoes, but we're convinced that there must be only one right way to live -- and the one we have is it, no matter what.
Beyond Civilization makes practical sense of the vision of Daniel Quinn's best-selling novel Ishmael. Examining ancient civilizations such as the Maya and the Olmec, as well as modern-day microcosms of alternative living like circus societies, Quinn guides us on a quest for a new model for society, one that is forward-thinking and encourages diversity instead of suppressing it. Beyond Civilization is not about a "New World Order" but a "New Personal World Order" that would allow people to assert control over their own destiny and grant them the freedom to create their own way of life right now -- not in some distant utopian future.

[classical_Liberal]

Particularly the gut reaction of people set in "taker" culture, or those thinking too simply about the subject - misunderstanding the message and blurting out straw-man responses along the lines of "oh, so you want to live like cave-men? lol, no thanks" (while NONE of the anti-civ/post-civ type material I've read is suggesting that)

Attacking a strawman with a strawman. Nice approach, maybe they can debate each other. In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to more specific about who and what you disagree with?

[jacob]

Edit - it looks like "Beyond Civilization" has some more of what I want. Here is the blurb from the inner book flap:

viewtopic.php?p=196688#p196688

[C40]

Attacking a strawman with a strawman. Nice approach, maybe they can debate each other. In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to more specific about who and what you disagree with?

I'd noted in my post initially that I was referring to Steve, though I thought that would be obvious (at least to folks who have read the book), and I edited it out. I think that response is fairly common when discussing this subject. In some cases (maybe including Steve) they may not really be making a true straw-man argument, but more-so be misunderstanding what is actually being discussed, or the actual content and message of the ideas/philosophy being discussed. One reason for this is that the discussion doesn't always get past problem statements and to proposed ~solutions. Also, the names used for the subject, like "anti-civilization are poor and misleading.


@Jacob - ahh. Thanks.

[classical_Liberal]

@C40
Anytime someone is confronted with ideas that indicate the life they have been leading my be extremely harmful to... well... anything, there will likely be a quick backlash. This is natural as people tend to cling to their culture and don't want to be accused of doing bad things. IMO the reason there has been less than stellar movement towards compromise lifestyles of more sustainability, is because one side of the fence continues to use verbiage with very negative connotations towards the other( this in addition to the above). This immediately cuts off the potential of any real communication. Personally, I was irritated with your statement not because of the strawman comment (I actually think generalizations like strawman arguments can be useful in discussions of this magnitude sometimes), rather because of the term "taker culture" and it's negative connotations. I assumed that phrase was from the book (you are correct I have not read it), not you, so didn't address it directly. However, if it is used in the book, I think it highlights the communication problems I express above.