strange days

I endorse it as food for thought, first and foremost. I think that's its value. What you get out of it will depend on who you are and where you're at I figure.

I can forgive the characterisation of the student as the entire book is intended as the formulation of an idea that can't be explained in a few sentences. So he's more of a device than a character, really.

And like you said, while the obvious is stated occasionally what's obvious for us isnt so obvious for many others.

Fact is the book did change how I saw the world, to a reasonable degree. Not the sum total of the book, as such, but a few key ideas that I came away with.

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PS: Very cool of you to just go out and read it like that.

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The 'student' characterisation is an old one, and it works. I found Our Narrator to be frustratingly slow, too, but then without blowing my own trumpet too much I also read (and flatter myself that I 'got') The Invisibles, and have been thinking about this stuff, well, since I can remember. The way I've always sold this book to people is that it isn't necessarily telling you anying new, it's just putting it in a sequential order that *makes extra sense*. To a certain extent if you or I or Patchworkkid read it, it's preaching to the converted. But say a teenager in middle America reads it, or a housewife in Caroline Springs, or a politician in Canberra (Okay, I admit that one's a little far-fetched). Say they read it and it changes them, even a little, forever. I can think of a bunch of people I *know* that I wish would read this. You don't have to subscribe to everything about a thing like for it to be useful; making you think is one of the best things about it.

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Even a day after finishing it, i must admit that i'm finding ideas from it already popping into my head when thinking about other things. i might read it again next week before returning it, rather than wait a month or two.

i still have doubts about a lot of the points, but there are just as many interesting ideas in there worth mulling over.

(i think the student's density bothered me because it made him a device, not a believeable character. Plus it also made it seem the author was talking down to us, since that's who the student was standing in for. But mostly it's an aesthetic objection).

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Mmm, the preaching to the converted factor is a big thing. After years of immersion in lefty/greenie magazines and the like (not to mention my tendency to surround myself with like-minded people) it seemed almost nonsensical to think that anyone but religious fundamentalists really believed that 'the world belongs to man' and it being our 'destiny' to rule it. Generally, i'd filed that idea under "they know the world isn't our property but don't give a rats" cynicism. But i was forgetting that that is exactly the thinking that's in operation in how things like natural resources are figured in economic terms.

i think it was a passage talking about the 'Taker' culture forcing its One True Way onto 'Leaver' culture that made me realise this. i was in the middle of a skeptical thought when i suddenly realised that, rather than the overt slavery and plunder of the Conquistadores that i was picturing, that was actually a perfect description of the economic orthodoxy that's being forced onto *everyone* in the world *right now* via all the 'Structural Adjustment' and 'Free Trade' demands that the whole 'globalisation' debate is about.

i think, on that point at least, i may have gotten hung up on the idea of our culture *literally* believing the myths in those precise terms, rather than *acting* as if they were true (or even practising 'doublethink' in Orwell's terms). Hell, i only have to look at a dodgy teen-angst poem of my own from a decade ago to see myself putting it in the exact same language.

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i still have doubts about a lot of the points, but there are just as many interesting ideas in there worth mulling over.

I suspect I've forgotten the points that did nothing for me and I've retained the stuff that keeps me thinking. It's added something to my life, certainly.

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I swear to God you're much better at spur-of-the-moment articulation than I am. This is pretty much everything I wanted to say, but couldn't.

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it seemed almost nonsensical to think that anyone but religious fundamentalists really believed that 'the world belongs to man' and it being our 'destiny' to rule it.

See, this is one of the things that it really lit up for me. It was something I'd always known about how humanity sees itself in relation to the planet, but never actually thought about or articulated. And I daresay if it's true for me then it'd be true for a great many others that read the book. And that's just one point of many. The Taker and Leaver thing is one of the points that really catalysed a whole bunch of stuff for me, along with the hypothesis about the Cain and Abel myth.

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I guess i'd come to see it not that the world belonged to humans by right, but that we'd taken it by force simply because we could. Ours by might, not right, if you like. What i often forget is that just because i see things one way, that doesn't mean everyone else does (or, perhaps, that you don't have to believe something literally to act as if it were true).

The Cane and Abel thing fascinated me, though as to whether that's how it actually happened in prehistory can only be speculated. Still, when you look at recorded history, from the 'globalisation' of today back through the Conquistadors and Romans even to legends of Osiris bringing civilisation to the Nubian barbarians by force, the circumstantial evidence is pretty damning (just thinking all this out as i type, with surprising conclusions).

You know, the more i think on it the more sense some of it makes.

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Okay, one more.

I realised another reason some of the ideas on civilisation seemed familiar. Years ago i corresponded for a while with a guy from a pagan group called Midnight Fire Arena, whose writings had a very similar thrust to Ishmael. One piece that stuck in my mind compared the rise of civilisation to a malignant tumour metastasising and spreading across the world as a disease. I thought it a bit extreme, but it has stayed in my mind over the years.

Ah, found it:

http://www.midnight-fire.net/civilization/tumor.html

Reading it again, the similarities are quite striking (though not wound into as coherent a theory as Ishmael's).

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:)
Yeah, now if only I could write a novel that made people's hearts detonate, and made them want to carry it round Europe 'cause they simply couldn't allow it out of their sight....

Still, I just gave a *kick ARSE* presentation at uni with absolutely no preparation at all, so this spur-of-the-moment-waffling talent has to be useful for something.:)

Sorry for bragging; I'm just pathetically relieved it went off without a hitch.:)

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Grant Morrison touches on the ideas of the city-as-virus in the first volume of The Invisibles. I think it's a fairly commonly held idea, mostly because it's such a good analogy.

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It's easy to get caught up in the dichotomy? paradox? that while you don't want to fall into the trap of thinking of 'ideology' as an anthropomorphic - and often 'evil' entity, it's still important to realise that it does often embody a lot of the characteristics of aforementioned anthropomorphic 'evil' whatsit. The trick is walking that thin line.:)

American culture in general is a good example of that second point you made.

3.Which is what Ishamel is all about: making you understand that what was previously cultural 'evolution' or 'common sense' is in fact based on mythology as much as anything containing gods and monsters.

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Yeah; that Cain/Abel thing had my head lighting up like a switchboard - that's something that had never occurred to me before.

We may not overtly state any more that we rule the world and that our lives are more valuable than the lives of other things, and that nature is ours to dispense with as we see fit....but millions of animals still die yearly in medical experimentation(I'm not opening up discussion about whether or not this is good, bad, or whatever, by the way...it's too thorny and personal an issue, especially when

strang_er I *know* is more of a humanist than I am:)) to save human lives. The basic ideology behind this is that the life of a mouse is *worth less* than the life of a human. Whatever you may personally believe the value lies in challenging *why* it is you have come to believe that, and the complex, cultural-and-religious influences that have combined to create such a philosophy.

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Interestingly, one of the gaps that just filled in for me also concerns animals. When i was initally reading about Midnight Fire and their longing for a return to the ways of the nomadic hunter, the necessity of killing animals was one aspect of that lifestyle that seemed particularly unappealing. More recently, i read an article on the number of animals killed in the harvest of grain under industrial agriculture. Leaving aside the peurile "ha ha stupid vegetarian hypocrites" thrust of the post in question, thinking about it in the current perpective, it's even more obvious how it all fits - a vegetarian diet from industrial scale agriculture still would have a higher body count than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, even if the latter involved killing animals to eat. Another connection i never quite managed to make between two ideas i was already aware of (if an unpleasant one).

Maybe that's where this book works best - putting you in a headspace where you can fill in gaps for yourself.

(Putting the theory into practise would be another question altogether)

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I'm not quite sure what information has led you to this conclusion, but I'm always willing to learn more, so fill me in!
Basically, you're saying that for today's population, a vegetarian lifestyle has a higher bodycount that a meat-eating hunter-gatherer lifestyle? I assume you're addressing animal deaths from clearfelling forests for crops, that sort of thing. But the fact is today's society is a) too overpopulated to be able to support a 'hunter-gatherer' lifestyle for everyone, and b)-it's simply not going to happen. You're never going to persuade suits who work for accounting firms, lawyers, garbos, you-name-it, to become hunter-gatherers and give up their Lean Cuisine and pizza. So it's just an impractical fantasy you're measuring an 'urban' vegetarian lifestyle against. You may as well be comparing it to a world in which we get all our nutritional needs from the air. Because it's not going to happen. I'd *love* to live the hunter-gatherer lifestyle - and in fact I said to

patchworkkid while we were in Cairns that if I could live the h-g dream, I'd be happy to eat meat, because I'd be taking no more than I needed and be part of a working food chain.To the best of my knowledge, vegetarianism on the population-scale we have today, is a *lot* kinder to both the environment and the body-count (more land is felled for meat production than grain/crops) than a meat-eating lifestyle. The basic dislike of killing any animal is a tiny proportion of my reason for being vegetarian, compared to a much larger proportion which is a problem with the *way* in which animals are produced for the world's meat supply.

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Hmmm, i'm having difficulty even explaining to myself what i'm getting at here.

The article i was thinking of is this one:

http://www.maddox.xmission.com/grill.html

Apart from being infuriated by the smug veggo-bashing tone, i was also well aware that industrial scale meat-production is even more destructive than the grain harvesting that feeds me. Even visually-challenged Freddy can see that industrial agriculture of *any* sort is the problem (along with most of the other indstries that support our lifestyle). This should be no great revelation to anybody.

But i guess what i'm really thinking about is the fact that i would be (and often am) quite horrified at the sight of, say, a Bedouin or Mongol herdsman slitting the throat of some sheep or horse for dinner. What's bothering me is the realisation of how much lower a body count is attached to that act of slaughter than is probably attached to the vegetarian pasta i just finished eating.

i guess what i'm really wrestling with is the old idea of a need to live within the 'laws of nature' (for want of a better term) weighed against the feeling that the 'laws of nature' would have no allowance for such human concepts as 'mercy' (this is stuff i've been pondering for some time, long before reading Ishmael). Perhaps 'mercy' is something that's harder to apply than it seems.

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Oops, i didn't actually answer your question.

No, i wasn't factoring population into it - it was more a comparison of 'then' vs 'now' (even though i know the Midnight Fire guys were talking about living the old way now). Though, as you point out, population is as much the issue as a less destructive lifestyle (or two sides of the coin). Which is a difficult problem.

Sorry if i'm going on about this - i'm just fascinated with some of the ideas this has brought up, moreso than i first thought. i've just finished reading that book a second time, and it made a lot more sense the second time around. The first time through i spent a lot of it saying: "okay, i'm not sure i agree with that but let's see where he's going with it" and was ultimately unsatisfied, whereas this time i was able to stop and debate the ideas (if debating with a book makes any sense) and make him convince me. It ironed out a lot of things for me, answered some of my objections and there were quite a few ideas i already had that i could now see fitting in with his model. It was actually a lot more eye-opening than the first read.

One key thing that still didn't ring true for me, that i can put a better finger on now, has to do with population. He spends a lot of time discussing the fact that increased food production is inevitably answered by increase in population. Without researching it thoroughly, it does seem to make sense in that we have seen exactly such a population growth in reality. So i'm happy to accept that premise on face value (though i'd factor in medicine and other life-prolonging developments too). But what does contradict that is the idyllic picture he paints of the affluent life of plenty that characterises 'Leaver' lifestlyes. If life 'in the hands of the gods' is so bountiful and easy, then surely by his other reasoning the 'Leavers' should also have a population explosion on their hands. The most simple explanation is that that lifestyle is not really as easy as he makes out, and they do starve or otherwise die at a higher rate (since he hasn't suggested they use any other form of population control) or that any time of plenty like that is just a rising part of the cycle that will be balanced by a period of famine, scarcity and death.

Not that that is necessarily a problem, as the whole question of 'how we should live' is being phrased here in biological terms, where we're talking about survival of species, not individuals. Nature doesn't care about the life and death of an individual, or even a million individuals, as long as the survival of the species is assured. Any problems i have with that are ethical/emotional, not with the logic of the argument. But it does cast a doubt on the rosy picture he painted of a 'Leaver' lifestyle and, perhaps more importantly, makes the quest for a sustainable model of civilisation more complicated, since it would have to include opening ourselves up to a higher death rate (unless you have better faith in birth control than he does). That would be a huge psychological obstacle to overcome.

Still, if the alternative was death on an even bigger scale - ecological collapse, famine, extinction of species - as is predicted, then it might be the lesser of two evils after all (perhaps that's the real appliction of the 'body count' question i was pondering). Though i can't help feeling there must be another way, a 'third way' or 'middle path', which Mr Quinn's 'Leaver' model has only half the story for.

More thought needed.

Answers to the world's problems still to be advised..

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Sorry this has taken so long to get back to you – it required some thought.:)

I still have to look at that article…apologies; this week has been a little fraught. For that reason, too, further apologies that this response isn’t as coherent as I’d like. We’re handling *huge* ideas here, and my enfeebled brain hasn’t been forming the words as well as it might.

Sorry if i'm going on about this - i'm just fascinated with some of the ideas this has brought up, moreso than i first thought.

No; this rocks. Please don’t mistake my tardiness for lack of interest; I was just thinking today about how ace lj is, because I can have conversations like this with people like you.:)

i've just finished reading that book a second time, and it made a lot more sense the second time around.

Now that is cool.:)

It was actually a lot more eye-opening than the first read.

It’s rather like that, isn’t it? I’ve read it twice as well – the first time I read it, when I’d just bought it (about four years ago), I was going through a particularly crap part of my life, and it didn’t all quite sink in. Most of it did (and it fuelled a lot of my passion at the Sept. 11 protests, I can tell you), but a lot of what I got was the fact that it articulated a lot of the things I’d been thinking for years, but much, much better. When I re-read it, (just before I started forcing it on everyone I know), I’d been at uni for three years and studied a lot of history – especially pre-to-post enlightenment and industrial revolution history – and cultural studies. I had a much better historical overview, and so much that he said slotted into place in a way it just didn’t before, and in a way in which I was able to see the ripples of Quinn’s arguments spreading outwards into the territory of the pure theory I’m dealing with, as well as just a ‘practical’ level. And they all inform each other. Someone I know once said, “All beautiful things look the same”, and I think this applies to thinking, too. When it has that ring of truth

One key thing that still didn't ring true for me, that i can put a better finger on now, has to do with population….

But I believe he does explain that – there’s the metaphor he uses for the ‘b’s being eaten by ‘a’, etc, the fact he does bring up starvation and war as natural forms of population control. What he also mentions is that leaver societies are more at ease with natural cycles than ‘we’ are, and that they co-exist alongside these things, rather than attempting to control them. He does say that while it’s a hard life, it’s a sustainable one. If you’re interested in what happens when a population increases, Lyall Watson’s Dark Nature is a good book to read. Aside from being just plain interesting (it’s a natural history of ‘evil’) it raises a lot of interesting points about why an overpopulated urban society is so fraught with problems. It’s a god book to read alongside Ishmael.
or that any time of plenty like that is just a rising part of the cycle that will be balanced by a period of famine, scarcity and death.
What he doesn’t mention, but which I’m fairly confident of extrapolating through a (short!) lifetime’s interest in mythology and religion, is that to the best of my knowledge, most polytheistic, earth-based, and shamanic cultural belief systems account for these fluctuating times of plenty and famine (the most obvious one being that of the British Celts, but even the ancient Greeks had legends which explained why nothing edible grew for a period of the year). You can see the awareness of this natural phenomenon throughout human history. Therefore, it stands to reason, we can say, yes, starvation, illness, war, etc. did keep populations down. I think he mentions this with an example of native American tribes expanding beyond their tribal borders. I don’t believe that Quinn is suggesting that the leaver societies were a happy, fluffy bundle of eternal joy; I do believe he’s just saying that they were sustainable and ‘natural’.

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Not that that is necessarily a problem, as the whole question of 'how we should live' is being phrased here in biological terms, where we're talking about survival of species, not individuals. Nature doesn't care about the life and death of an individual, or even a million individuals, as long as the survival of the species is assured. Any problems i have with that are ethical/emotional, not with the logic of the argument. But it does cast a doubt on the rosy picture he painted of a 'Leaver' lifestyle and, perhaps more importantly, makes the quest for a sustainable model of civilization more complicated, since it would have to include opening ourselves up to a higher death rate (unless you have better faith in birth control than he does). That would be a huge psychological obstacle to overcome.

I think population control *does* mean a higher death rate, as well as a lower birth rate. On of Quinn’s key points though is the mental transformation that needs to take place within the brain of man, which can encompass the idea of man being subject to the same natural laws as everything else. It’s a huge psychological obstacle for Our Narrator to overcome as well, if you recall.:)

Still, if the alternative was death on an even bigger scale - ecological collapse, famine, extinction of species - as is predicted, then it might be the lesser of two evils after all (perhaps that's the real application of the 'body count' question i was pondering). Though i can't help feeling there must be another way, a 'third way' or 'middle path', which Mr Quinn's 'Leaver' model has only half the story for.

Quinn postulates redemption with total control – that we actually assume the position of the gods, and regulate everything *fairly*. I don’t know. Maybe I’m too cynical, or maybe I’m just not imaginative enough, but I cannot conceive of a world in which we humans relinquish their individual creature comforts for the betterment of everyone else. Hell, my own sister wouldn’t, most of my friends wouldn’t. I know this as fact. One of the ways in which a Capitalism works as a model is that it’s self-sustaining in a way no-one could have predicted; a consumer society not only produces more consumers, it has separated us from each other to the point that we no longer experience a sense of community, with other people, the species, or the earth. Since the Enlightenment, this is where we’ve been heading.
A knowledge of history applied to Quinn’s novel is an eye-opening thing. I have pages and pages of half-formed theories and ideas based on historical examples that I scribbled down while I was reading, based on ideas about gender, philosophy, notions of individuality and kingship. Doing this arts degree has shown me without a doubt that all study, in whatever field, is the study of the same thing.

More thought needed.
Oh, aye. A lifetime of it, methinks.:)

Answers to the world's problems still to be advised..
Let me know when you’ve solved it. We can sort this sorry world out.:)

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Hmmm. His model certainly recognises all that, but his picture of what 'Leaver' life might actually be like seems to gloss over it (eg that little roleplaying scenario toward the end, where life seems all yams, deer and rabbits for the taking). His basic thrust still stands up, but i was just left with a feeling he was being a little 'Michael Moore' in selling it to us.

Still, as a way to present a theory and provoke some thought, i can see how a little honey-coating might be useful to help us swallow some large and difficult ideas.

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"One of Quinn’s key points though is the mental transformation that needs to take place within the brain of man, which can encompass the idea of man being subject to the same natural laws as everything else. It’s a huge psychological obstacle for Our Narrator to overcome as well, if you recall.:)"

Some points were a big obstacle for me too. Put it this way - i once nearly wrote someone off for describing people starving in Africa as "Darwin in action" (with the 'almost' bit due only to the fact he was probably only shit-stirring). The ideas in that book make sense logically, but i find some of them very difficult philosophically.

"Maybe I’m too cynical, or maybe I’m just not imaginative enough, but I cannot conceive of a world in which we humans relinquish their individual creature comforts for the betterment of everyone else. Hell, my own sister wouldn’t, most of my friends wouldn’t."

Indeed. In fact, i couldn't do it either. Even knowing that the life i live is based not only on destroying the natural world but also the economic power structures keeping millions of people in poverty, i'm still utterly infatuated with the lifestyle and its trimmings that all of that buys me. But beyond pissy little things like not driving a car or buying 'fair trade' coffee (or certain donations that would be exacerbating the problem in Mr Quinn's terms) i wouldn't even know what to relinquish that would make a tangible difference anyway. Sometimes i think the lack of a clear alternative is the biggest 'out' that our culture provides us.

"A knowledge of history applied to Quinn’s novel is an eye-opening thing. I have pages and pages of half-formed theories and ideas based on historical examples that I scribbled down while I was reading, based on ideas about gender, philosophy, notions of individuality and kingship. "

i have to admit i'm seeing examples of his ideas everywhere, just like Cam described. i've even had to stop myself using some of his terminology in unrelated discussions. There's obviously a lot of observation and analysis that's gone into the ideas in that book.

"Doing this arts degree has shown me without a doubt that all study, in whatever field, is the study of the same thing."

The interconnectedness of things, or human nature itself?

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PPS Thanks for recommending it.

Reading it a second time, i found it more eye-opening than the first read (got past the stage of "don't know if i agree with that but let's see where he's going with it" to actually analyse the points raised and see how they stand up).

The points still don't all ring true, but the core ideas hold up remarkably well. And like you said, i'm seeing examples of those ideas in action everywhere, and old thoughts of my own fitting in the picture.

A neatly packaged and painless solution to all the world's problems would be nicer, but this'll do for starters..

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I think 'starters' was the half the point of it, somehow. The other half being a refusal to absolve you of the responsibility for fixing the world.

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Before I reply to this properly, which might take a while with my second-day-with-no-sleep fried brain, I urge you to hire a movie called Instinct (mid-90s drama starring Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding), and watch it, and see how much you recognise....:)

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i'm reading a sci-fi book from the '60s at the moment, in which they've just discovered a gateway to a parallel, barely inhabited Earth. Within a day, a presidential candidate has announced a colonisation programme to relieve population problems here, while the CEO of the company that discovered it is jetting about the new world he considers his property, looking at all the virgin forest and landscape, drooling at all the timber and mining resources they represent. Meanwhile, the discovery of a small civilisation there has mambers of the campaign team pondering genocide, since we 'need' the space at any cost.

Sounds familiar somehow..

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