Preview

Mother Culture In Ishmael

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
545 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Mother Culture In Ishmael
Ishmael, Mother Culture, and Earth in the Twenty-First Century Ishmael is the most relevant environmental novel of the twentieth century, and it continues to be relevant today. Ishmael throws light upon the fact – hushed, to humanity by cultural conditioning - that human supremacy is a false idea. People need to read Ishmael because without the crucial knowledge that “we have much to learn from indigenous hunter/gatherer societies about who we are as humans and how to coexist sustainably with nature,” consumerist society will continue the annihilation and devastation of everything in its wake until there is nothing left for it to destroy and it is left with only one option: to consume itself. Out of necessity, environmental issues are …show more content…
Ishmael teaches that humanity is not exempt from these natural laws, even if one chooses to ignore them. Mother Culture (which is consumerist culture, in this instance) preaches more, more, more in all areas of life. She whispers about exponential growth, and exponential gain, saying nothing of sustainability, or harming future generations. Mother Culture whispers that just as they always have, someone someday will invent something that will fix the problems humanity has created, and that there is no need to stop growth; to stop production. Mother Culture teaches that humans are not subject to the laws of the natural world; that they have such power and knowledge to be gods, or they have the capacity for the world to be in their grip and under their control. This is a fallacy. Ishmael is an essential piece of literature if turning around this destruction that consumerist society has created will be feasible. The truth remains that the human race is running out of time. Capitalism and consumerism will be the downfall of the world as it's known today if humanity can't reverse the damage it has done. The good news is that if humanity as a whole can work together, they can end this. The world can be a healthier, better, place for all who inhabit

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the three articles, we are exposed to a dilemma of this false ideology that we, citizens in this western culture, have placed on nature. We have caused a division between us and nature, a dualism. This is a recent development that has resulted from the development of a modern world. We don’t see nature in the cities and towns that most of us spend our lives in, we have an illusion that the uninhabited nature is pure and desirable. In Trouble with Wilderness, Cronon educates us about the term wilderness. Per Cronon, wilderness is a term that is a result of social construction that we have made and modified for our desire. For what was once a term for undesirable land that proposed challenges in stories of Jesus and Moses, we now have wilderness…

    • 357 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass, she makes a compelling argument for the planet’s sustainability. Through several chapters, she illustrates how, despite how the Earth provides for all of our needs, we do not repay the favour and instead destroy the life it has left. We are not realizing the value of preserving the environment; instead, we are adapting to the thought that the extended use of fossil fuels is typical, climate change is irreversible, environmental pollution is an unfixable problem, endangered species are beyond salvation, and society has become increasingly disconnected to the planet as it once was. Kimmerer articulates this throughout multiple chapters.…

    • 1049 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    * Ishmael helps the narrator understand his cultural history. Ishmael divides humans into two groups: Leavers and Takers.…

    • 3036 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Daniel Quinn's Ishmael

    • 547 Words
    • 3 Pages

    During the Ishmael novel, the author Daniel Quinn demonstrates how humans ought to live. According to Daniel Quinn this world is habited by two types of human. Depends on what he said, this worls is habited by Takers and Leavers, each one had their own way to live and they had different cultures. During this novel Daniel Quinn show us, if humanity still living in the same conditions they were, probably is that humans are going to destroy the whole world, causing death to all living things.…

    • 547 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Oryx and Crake

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The human species has defined itself as one driven towards consumption and exploitation of natural resources. Our rapid evolutionary success and our seemingly relentless appetite for advancement, and utilization, have developed many associated problems, one such problem being the issue of reality. For the purpose of this essay, reality will be defined as “The state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them” and consumption shall be defined as “the action of using up a resource” (Oxford University Press). Population growth rates are remaining stagnant globally, and in the United States there’s has been a decline of a mere three hundredth percent, as released by the World Bank in two thousand eleven. (World Bank Statistics Center) Adding to our success, since the industrial revolution life expectancy rates have increased exponentially. (Silvers, Desnoyers, and Stow 802) As a result we are consuming resources at a rate that is not renewable, or feasible for the future. It is plausible that we will have to rely on scientific advancement to sustain our species. The novel, Oryx and Crake, written by Margaret Atwood, displays the aftermath of these events as an overpopulated earth advances to meet our needs. In this essay I will examine how human consumption could create a world of false reality, as developed in the main theme of the novel, Oryx and Crake.…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Mind and Quinn

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the past few centuries there have been a handful of books written that offer up ideas about humanity that are so completely new to a reader but are so completely convincing that they can force a reader to take a step back and assess all that they know to be true about their life and their purpose. Daniel Quinn has succeeded in creating such a book in Ishmael, a collection of new ideas about man, his evolution, and the "destiny" that keeps him captive.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Snow Falling on Cedars

    • 900 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “Ishmael……. Understood this too: that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart”…

    • 900 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Humanity has immensely impacted the environment both in negative and positive ways. In order to grasp the ecological crisis our Earth is experiencing we must revisit the way humans have viewed our relationship with through technological, religious and scientific lenses. The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis, an article published in the journal Science in 1967 and written by Lynn White Jr, looks back through the history and the ways in which “all forms of life modify their context” (The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis, White, Lynn…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Reflection On Ishmael

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages

    After reading the book Ishmael, my mind has been expanding on the main topic of the book which is evolution, and why we can’t change society because whatever we try to advance change just adds onto the destruction we are causing to our world. While I was reading this book, I began to learn more about how we are destroying our world even more. When humans lived in a simple manner, believing that they lived in the “hands of the gods,” evolution was destined to happen because humans had to adapt to their environment. This evolution sparked the problems that would come later in history, like deforestation, social inequality and pollution.…

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Finite Earth

    • 1682 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Henry David Thoreau once said “wildness is the preservation of the world” (Cronon.1). Since Thoreau many great minds have gazed upon nature searching for ways to define such perfection. For Thoreau it was absolute beauty, while for Cronon it was man’s creation (Cronon.1). Yet, for me nature is the place where humanity lives in harmony with the natural environment. Environmental discourses in the 20th century have been conceptualized and articulated by many scholars in a wide range of differing viewpoints, each of them offering different accounts on the relationship between humans and nature.…

    • 1682 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Humans’ relationship towards nature is complicated. Phyllis Trible, a well known scholar, mentions in her paper A Tempest in a Text : Ecological Soundings in the Book of Jonah that “Theological language is ecological language” (Trible 189). It suggests that widespread religion has a reflection on the relationship between humans’ belief and nature. Besides, the two main characters, Arab and Jonah, from the movie Moby Dick and the religious book The book of Jonah, their different views of God are shown in their opposite actions towards nature.…

    • 1375 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Essay on Anthropocentrism

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages

    I believe that the most critical ecological issue today is population growth and the anthropocentric self-interest centered life-style that human beings engage in. The combination of these two human qualities is detrimental to the environment.…

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Mother Culture

    • 1850 Words
    • 8 Pages

    When, have we as humans decided that what was to be considered good, and evil, what is being done and what is tolerated? Mother culture, is what we as humans make it. This sense of how we are to live, what things in life we are to value. Who counts in the world, and who does not. Who rather as a voice and who cannot speak, this representation is one part of mother culture. This illusion that greatly influences how we categorize the world is mother culture. What is it that differentiates us humans from our environment? This notation that we can control everything around us for our own benefit, benefit as a whole society, as an individual and what we show worth towards, this potency mother culture has on our lives.…

    • 1850 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Our earthly habitat is not an unexpected occurrence of little worth, but rather, it is one to be highly valued and preserved. The biblical doctrine of creation helps the Christian to understand the true significance of the world in order to deal with the environmental crisis. The Bible says, “For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited…” (King James Version, Isaiah 45:18). In Christian teaching, God not only created Heavens and Earth, but expressed His delight in His creation. This creation meant, everything encompassing the trees, the rivers and all kinds of elements that go into preserving the environment (Genesis 1:31). Therefore, the destruction of the environment is against God’s will. The main problem in the stewardship model is the fall of mankind into a state of sin and depravity (Genesis 3). As a result of the fall, we are in rebellion against God. We no longer act as the stewards we ought to be regarding the earth and its resources. Therefore, we tend towards exploitation and abuse. In addition, the earth has been cursed as a result of the fall (Romans 8:20; Genesis 3:17-18). Action Institute expressed it this way; “Nature now produces floods, fires, earthquakes, weeds, and crop destroying insects (“A Biblical Perspective on Environmental Stewardship”). This makes proper stewardship even more difficult; we are not only fighting our natural tendency to exploit and abuse, but also fighting against an earth that is cursed (Genesis 3:17).…

    • 1356 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    deforestation

    • 1154 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Man is surrounded by greed or lust to earn more. Industrialization induces vacating the land and fixing rocks of industry or towers for industrial offices. This process is rightly described by the people, who visited New York and saw the high building with no trees near about, ‘This city of rocks’, dwells and exposed to all roots of danger for humanity’. In the same way land grabbers are capturing the forests and making big buildings. Deforestation not only involves the tree destruction but also manages the wild animals. They as much block the natural circle and this ultimately results into race destruction. This action has long-lasting effect on the survival of human race.…

    • 1154 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays