Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

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There are men and groups who take pride in our being the latest natural disaster, driving the 6th great extinction. Men who want to do it bigger and faster than ever before, who want to share a desert with Ozymandias. I am not one of them, even refusing to drop more than one Brody onto this planet.

Ishmael(1) was the first son of Abraham (but through the maid of his aging wife, Sara) and should have founded the tribes of Israel according to Abraham's plan. However, God issued a memorandum of correction to Abraham so Isaac, his second son (but the 1st through Sara), became the founder. Although Ishmael did well for himself (starting the Ishmaelites), he was still second in God's eyes and probably Abraham's even though older.

Quinn assigns Ishmael's modern role to a gorilla who is telepathic and recruits the angst-haunted narrator into a quest to save the world. In a Socratic format, Ishmael distinguishes "takers" from "leavers," in rough congruence with "farmers" and "hunter/gatherers." Agriculture is the spark that let us back into r-selection; that is, "Plant it, harvest it, and move on when the ground is barren." (Or, "Level it, build on it, sell it , and retire in Montana before people catch on." (2) H&Gs did not destroy their competition nor their competition's food supply and are represented as living within sustainable relationships with other species. They are the noble savages, dwelling in K-selection.

The "Takers" adopt a ethic that a) they are so special as to decide what else should live and die, b) they should impose their way on other people, and c) a deity will sanction what they do. Genesis is presented as an ancient tribal tale and reworked by the Takers. Abel is identified with pastoral peoples of 8000 BC, Cain with the agriculturists who ran over the nomads. Given the extra calories supplied by grain, more people lived and as the land filled, more was needed. The farmers pushed south; Cane (sic!) destroyed Abel.

Ishmael dies, just as the peoples he symbolizes, die. We Takers grow more food and extend our domains. We don't send birth control so that other creatures can live and that our own mass starvation can be avoided.

You can view these dilemmas as an outcome of genetic mechanisms (including their phenotypic expression as behaviors and beliefs) tuned for reproduction in times of higher infant and maternal mortality. The predictable response is to "grow more food"; a variation is the "develop more resources so that everyone gets too comfortable to breed." The cruel population biologists are the ones most apt to mention the strong certainty of ever more, starving, children while people from the less populated areas are most apt to plead that every child can be adopted. The r-selection mode is to "reproduce faster," a pattern endorsed by all major religions, themselves in an r-selection pattern of "occupy territory now before someone else does." Nonetheless, there is some encouragement. Even though population still increases, the RATE of increase is slowing; Italy may be actually in a negative position.

Whether we all listen to the warnings or not, K-selection is coming either before or after we exceed the carrying capacity of our setting. The irony is that we have so much foresight, perhaps more than any other species, yet continue to employ r-tactics for managing resources. If we are consistent with our heritage, we will to go to Mars now before we will exhaust the resources for so doing in the future. r continues (3).

NOTES:

1) Quinn D. (1992) Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. NY: Bantam. Thanks to Mark Waugh for alerting me to this work.

2) See Hardin G (1993) Living Within Limits. NY: Oxford, for an argument that contemporary financial and resource management practices underestimate true development costs by not including long term costs and undervaluing all replacement costs for resources that are used.

3) This is in response to an unsettling clip I recently saw about the next big meteor to hit earth. The report animated the strike of 65 million years ago that shrouded our world for a year and helped finish the dinosaur. It seems we need to put ourselves in order with the rest of earth's passengers and discover a means to protect all of us on five seconds' notice. Another option is to remain with r-selection tactics to get off Earth because it can be a highly unstable environment.

• K-selection vs. r-selection by Elizabeth Rose, 12/8/98