Ishmael

“I don’t see how you can lump everyone else in the world into one category like that.”
“This is the way it’s done in your own culture, except that you use a pair of heavily loaded terms
instead of these relatively neutral terms. You call yourselves civilized and all the rest primitive. You
are universally agreed on these terms; I mean that the people of London and Paris and Baghdad and
Seoul and Detroit and Buenos Aires and Toronto all know that—whatever else separates them—
they are united in being civilized and distinct from Stone Age peoples scattered all over the world;
you consider or recognize that, whatever their differences, these Stone Age peoples are likewise
united in being primitive.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Would you be more comfortable if we used these terms, civilized and primitive?”
“Yes, I suppose I would be, but only because I’m used to them. Takers and Leavers is fine with
me.”
4
“Second: the map. I have it. You don’t have to memorize the route. In other words, don’t worry if,
at the end of any day, you suddenly realize that you can’t remember a word I’ve said. That doesn’t
matter. It’s the journey itself that’s going to change you. Do you see what I mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
Ishmael thought for a moment. “I’ll give you a general idea of where we’re heading, then you’ll
understand.”
“Okay.”
“Mother Culture, whose voice has been in your ear since the day of your birth, has given you an
explanation of how things came to be this way. You know it well; everyone in your culture knows it
well. But this explanation wasn’t given to you all at once. No one ever sat you down and said, ‘Here
is how things came to be this way, beginning ten or fifteen billion years ago right up to the present.’
Rather, you assembled this explanation like a mosaic: from a million bits of information presented
to you in various ways by others who share that explanation. You assembled it from the table talk of
your parents, from cartoons you watched on... [continues]

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