Ishmael Ch. 3

On page 58, Ishmael says about the Taker creation myth, “That’s the way it’s told among the Takers. It’s certainly not the only way it can be told.” My thought on this was that there are two sides to every story, sometimes more. History is written by the “winners”.

“Man’s appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish.” –Page 58
That’s practically a slap in humanity’s face, but if you think about it, it’s true. I wonder how different the world would be if we all accepted that, and lived in a way that realized that statement.

Also in chapter 3, Ishmael points out the premise of the Taker culture and he says the world was made for man. Ishmael also talks about the influence of the premise in the way Takers treat the world.
If humans keep treating the world like it belongs to them, the world is going to break down and die, just like a car breaks down. If you don’t maintain a car, change the oil, fill the gas tank, make sure tires are inflated etc. it will break down and die. It’ll become useless. If we do not maintain the planet, it’s going to break down and become useless to humans.


Later on in chapter 3, it’s said that the premise is a sneaky way or blaming the gods. Blame and the refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions is a huge problem in today’s world, I can’t imagine how extremely different the world would be if people could go without playing the blame game.

Stop Train Before Climate Wreck

-Stop Train Before Climate Wreck-

"As an entire species we're huddled together on a train heading 100 miles an hour toward a brick wall. Our children know it. It even haunts our dreams at night.
Suddenly the engine begins to sputter, and the train slows down. But our response is incomprehensible. Do we look around and collectively think, 'What a blessing, we have a chance to rethink this whole seemingly unavoidable collision we'd set up?' Do we ponder what it means for our human actions to cause the melting of the Arctic ice and tundra? Do we ask ourselves how continued climate change created by our current economic model will impact water supplies, food production, insect borne disease, immigration, species extinction or the future of our own children?
If public and media discourse is any indication, we apparently do not. Instead we seem content to desperately throw more fuel into that engine boiler. Thinking what? 'We must get this train moving again, so it can again speed toward that brick wall, a wall we must all pretend with all out might doesn't exist.'
Is ours a functional economic system if it can only survive by turning our grandchildren into indentured servants and our planet into a raved ghost of itself?"

"Stop Train Before Climate Wreck" is a letter to the editor I found while reading the ADN. I found this letter, written by Gary Weglarz from Barrow and thought it made a really good point, and in my opinion illustrated our current world situation perfectly. My favorite sections of the letter included the comparison between a train wreck and our current economic model, and the last paragraph of the letter. Calling our future grandchildren "indentured servants" says a lot!

Crude Impact

So in my in Sociology class on Friday, we watched a movie/documentary/film called Crude Impact. The movie included a lot of information that I thought was interesting and the film was definitely an eye opener for me. I wrote down some information from the film:

• 40% of our energy comes from oil
• in 1 year, the worldwide consumption for oil is 1.3 trillion barrels, compared with 1.3 trillion barrels of natural gas and coal combined.
• Within 150 years of finding and drilling oil, we(the world) have extracted more than half the oil in the ground
• Oil production peaked in 1970-71, and at least half of the 30 largest oil producing countries have peaked in oil production meaning that those 15 countries are producing less and less oil
• Before agriculture there was virtually no population growth
• Countries with no oil reserves have less poverty -Whoa
• The US has 4.5% of the world's population, but uses 25% of the world's fuel

Those are just a few of the examples I wrote down. Part of the movie also talked about oil, agriculture and population and how they were all related. Before agriculture, there was virtually no population growth, probably because sources of food were unpredictable. After the birth of agriculture, humans changed the landscape around them so that they could plant food. The human population also exploded reaching its first billion people by 1800, 2 billion in 1930 3 billion by 1960, and so on. Agriculture made a huge difference, but with the help of fossil fueled farming equipment that didn't require as much manual labor, agriculture made a huge impact on population again. It's overwhelming how intertwined things are in the world. If you change one thing, it influences all the other parts. Like an organ system or something. It's going to take A LOT of work to change things in the world.

Ishmael Ch.2

Chapter 2 of Ishmael was sort of jarring. There were a few points in the chapter that really stuck in my mind and made me think.

1) The story of Germany and Hitler made me think about our situation, and I began trying to compare the two situations. A couple quotes on that subject that especially meant something to me:

• "I'm telling you this because the people of your culture are in much the same situation"
  

• "Even if you privately thought the whole thing was madness, you had to play your part, you had to take your place in the story"

The second quote I thought is very true. There are so many people who know we are destroying the world, yet do nothing to attempt to stop it. They are unable to change the story they are playing in. It sort of reminds me of that saying "If you can beat them, join them."

2) Takers and Leavers are enacting 2 different stories

3) "They put their shoulders to the wheel during the day, stupefy themselves with drugs or TV at night, and try not to think too searchingly about the world they're leaving their children to cope with."
If you look at the world today, that quote is true for so many people. It seems really selfish to me. Everyone knows the world is wasting away, yet no one does anything about it. So many people distract themselves from whats going on and leave it for someone else to deal with.

#3 In my opinion was the most meaningful quote in the chapter. It says so much about society and the impact "Mother Culture" has on it. Mother Culture must have a HUGE impact if she can convince parents not to care about the world they are leaving for their children.

Ishmael Ch.1

While reading the first chapter of Ishmael, some of the thoughts, points and questions I had were:



1) What does "With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla" mean?



2) I felt bad for the tiger in the zoo Ishmael used as an example.



3) Even if we don't want to, each one of us is destroying the world



4) If we're aware that we're destroying the world, then why hasn't it stopped? You'd think that people would see that dead earth means dead people and then do something about it



5) "You're captives of a civilizations system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live"....."So. You are captives-and have made a captive of the world itself." wow. How do we escape from this "captivity"?

6) "I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity" "...they're unable to find the bars of the cage." That makes sense.

6) The story of Kurt and Hans was interesting. It gave me another view of what Ishmael was talking about with humans being captive and taking the world captive, especially in the ending when Kurt says he has the feeling that they're being lied to.

7) Ishmael said "If you alone found out what the lie was, then your'e probably right-it would make no great difference. But if you all found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed." I wonder what the lie is?