With Neo-Malthusian gorilla gone, is there hope for The Third Chimpanzee?

"Ishmael" is a political pamphlet written in the form of a novel. The main character is a defrocked hippie who answers a strange ad in a magazine, apparently an ad placed by yet another phoney guru. Much to his surprise, the "guru" turns out to be a gorilla with telepathic abilities. The gorilla is named Ishmael.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is essentially the entire plot!

The rest of the book consists of Ishmael's teachings, which are of course identical to those of Daniel Quinn, the author. Ishmael turns out to be a dark Green primitivist, who criticizes civilization and calls for a return to a tribal lifestyle of hunting and gathering. The root of our present troubles is the turn from hunting-gathering to sedentary agriculture and state-building, taking place around 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. This eventually led to overpopulation, resource depletion and the threat of imminent collapse so obvious today. Ishmael also attacks traditional religion and turns out to have a strong Neo-Malthusian bent. More food inevitably leads to more humans, and hence overpopulation. The solution? Less food.

Thus, despite its new agey-hippie flavour, "Ishmael" is actually a quite disturbing book. Essentially, the peaceful gorilla in the cage calls for genocide of Third World peoples. I didn't know gorillas were Neo-Malthusians! The book also contains a number of other oddities and absurdities. Societies based on agriculture were peaceful for millennia, while pastoralists were prone to violence. Also, Neolithic cultures were probably "matriarchal", while pastoralists virtually always are patriarchal. Yet, Quinn claims that the agriculturalists were the bad guys and the pastoralists the good guys. The author also seems to think that humans are like mice, unable to control their own reproduction except by naturally occurring or artificially induced "food control". His attempt to compare humans to jellyfish has to be read to be believed. And so on. I wonder what on earth made this book so popular? Are hippies Nazis?

And yet...

And yet, we cannot simply dismiss Ishmael in his circus cage. A few years ago I would have thrown away this book ASAP due to all the factual errors and the "reactionary" perspective. A psychological defence mechanism I presumably share with many other advanced primates of the genus Homo.

In reality, the problems mentioned by Quinn are real. We *can* end starvation and poverty by a world government sharing the available resources equally, but we are rapidly approaching a situation where not even this would put and end to environmental destruction. And in the future, the available resources will plummet, making it very problematic indeed to feed six or eight billion people. The only solution is to show that we are indeed not mice, and combine birth control with food availability way above subsistence level. How's that for a new "vision", to use Quinn's terminology? If humanity cannot begin a rapid transition to a sustainable economy, there will be a population crash exactly as described in "Ishmael".

Don't let the gorilla-guru have the last word. Show that we aren't jellyfish!

With Neo-Malthusian gorilla gone, is there hope for The Third Chimpanzee?

The challenge of the Anti-Christ

"The Story of B" is a sequel to Daniel Quinn's best selling and near-classical "Ishmael". Both books are written in the form of novels, but the plot (which is very thin) is simply a vehicle to get across the author's political and philosophical ideas. Thus, Quinn's books belong to the same genre as James Redfield's "The Celestine Prophecy" and (perhaps) Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code".

The main character of "The Story of B" is a Catholic priest working for the Laurentians. The Laurentians don't really exist, but they seem to be loosely based on the Jesuits. The priest, named Jared Osborne, infiltrates the inner circle of a strange character known simply as B, whom the Laurentians suspect of being the Anti-Christ. In one of several unexpected twists, B exposes Osborne but nevertheless agrees to take him on board as a student. Eventually, he turns Osborne into a disciple.

Or so he thinks...

I won't disclose more of the plot, but, frankly, it's very weak. Quinn is a bad writer of fiction. The real point of the book is the political and philosophical message, which expands on the ideas found in "Ishmael". Just like Ishmael the talking gorilla, B has a Green message critical of modern civilization, and indeed civilization in general. He also attacks the established world religions, including Christianity, in favour of animism or pantheism. If read carefully, the message of B is actually quite disturbing. It has Malthusian, Social Darwinist and fascistic traits. His "animism" is really a form of materialism, a kind of spiritualized Neo-Darwinism.

"The Story of B" contains many pseudo-erudite claims that turns out to be oversimplified or plain wrong when researched more closely. Agriculture wasn't originally about "power", since agricultural societies were peaceful for millennia. Even peaceful high cultures have existed: the Indus Valley Civilization, the Norte Chico culture, and (arguably) Minoan Crete. Pastoralists, on the other hand, were violent and probably destroyed some of the peaceful Neolithic cultures in Europe. Yet, Quinn paints pastoralists as the good guys, and agriculturalists as the bad guys. He also has major problems with the fact that Palaeolithic hunters exterminated the large land mammals of Eurasia, Australia and the Americas. This disproves his theory that tribal peoples always lived in harmony with nature. (Perhaps humans are flawed and hence in need a saviour, after all?) And what about modern tribal peoples who exterminate their own game animals when given access to firearms?

The most annoying part of the book is Quinn's insistence that humans are like mice, automatically breeding out of control when there is enough food. He talks about "new visions", but never calls for a new vision which combines birth control with a stable food production way above starvation level, a situation he apparently considers impossible (or undesirable?). Instead, he calls for "food control", i.e. artificially induced starvation in the Third World. I wonder whether Daniel Quinn's fans understand the implications of the message? The Laurentians are right. Quinn a.k.a. B is indeed the Anti-Christ!

Still, "The Story of B" cannot be lightly dismissed either. Starvation and poverty can be abolished, but it would probably take a world government to make sure that the resources are evenly distributed across the globe. It's difficult to see how such a government could be controlled democratically (or created at all). But even if it could be, we are rapidly approaching a situation where re-distribution of the available resources won't solve the ecological crisis. The "available resources" are diminishing, and it's difficult to see how six to eight billion people can be fed, clothed and housed at reasonable standards short of even more environmental destruction. If humanity doesn't start practising birth control, we will soon be subject to "food control", whether we like it or not.

In that sense, Quinn a.k.a. B a.k.a. Ishmael might still get the last word. It won't be pretty. "The Story of B" could be seen as the Anti-Christ's challenge to the primate known as Homo sapiens. Are we men or humans enough to take it up?

The Anti-Christ comes of age

Daniel Quinn is the author of best-selling novels "Ishmael", "The Story of B" and "My Ishmael". This book, by contrast, is non-fiction.

In his novels, Quinn came across as something of a dangerous radical. Not so in "Beyond Civilization".

Here, he is simply calling on people to start underfunded business ventures, accept low wages with no health coverage, drop out, join the circus or become homeless vagabonds. He doesn't want to overthrow the government, explicitly wants it to stay in place, and even smugly tells his readers that they have to pay their income taxes...

We also learn that this high apostle of primitivism live in Houston, Texas and is quite comfortable with it.

Ha ha ha. Daniel Quinn is a fraud. It seems the Anti-Christ has come of age. Instead of a Dark Green Revolution, we are left with...more of the same, plus more freedom for the few who want to opt out of the system (the system will allow it, trust me, as long as they pay the taxes for the next bank bail-out).

Ok, I admit it. I live in Stockholm, Sweden and I'm quite comfortable with that, too. Sometimes I show up above Houston in my flying saucer!

But hey, don't tell me this is a radical.

Tribe of vultures

I readily admit that I'm sick and tired of Daniel Quinn and his gorilla. Quinn tries to pass himself off as some kind of liberal. He is not. His program is deeply reactionary and misanthropic.

In this book, "My Ishmael", he proposes that homeless kids drifting in Seattle should be given official recognition as "The Tribe of Crow" and get permission to scavenge rubbish bins for food. In other words, instead of actually *solving* the problem of homelessness, high society should simply manage it, so it becomes less threatening to the middle classes. And since homeless kids presumably love drifting around in Seattle, that's liberal, right?

Wrong. What Quinn proposes is a strategy known as "harm reduction". It's usually used to "aid" drug addicts by giving them free needles, special parks where they can take their dope, or even free drugs. A similar kind of policy is to legalize prostitution, while making the prostitutes pay taxes, get free health controls, and so on. Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands are notorious seedbeds for "liberal" policies of this kind, which actually have the support of the entire political establishment, from left to right. This way, the governments can save money while letting the addicts and prostitutes go under - the real idea behind harm "reduction".

Quinn doesn't say anything about addicts and prostitution in his book, but I can well imagine...

Another proposal in "My Ishmael" is to abolish public schools. The only important school subjects are the three R's, and kids can learn how to read even without schools. All other subjects are useless, but those who wish can study them in their spare time. That's "liberal", right?

Wrong again.

The idea that public schools should be abolished is a far right-wing idea, always couched in "humanitarian" language about "working class kids who don't really want to study, why not be merciful and let them get a job" blah-blah-blah. Of course, the hidden agenda is that the middle class and upper class should have their own very own private schools with tuition fees. *They* wont simply learn the three R's. In this manner, they will remain in charge, while the working class kids are busy finding lousy jobs (or scavenging in Seattle).

And yes, Ishmael wants Third World peoples to starve to death ("food control").

A picture is beginning to emerge, a picture based on all Quinn's books. The Third World, the domestic poor and the workers should be dumped. Those who wish to drop out, should be allowed to do so. However, they should continue to pay their taxes! (Explicitly stated by Quinn in "Beyond Civilization").

If stripped of all the high sounding "Green" and "primitivist" phrases, this sounds like a Neo-Con dreamland. The tribe of vultures, as it were.

Not recommended.