Ishmael

“We have the beginning and middle of the story together,” Ishmael said when we started the next day. “Man is finally beginning to fulfill his destiny. The conquest of the world is under way. And how does the story end?”

“I guess I should have kept on going yesterday. I’ve sort of lost the thread.”

“Perhaps it would help to listen to the way the second part ends.”

“Good idea.” I rewound a minute or so of tape and let it play: “Man was at last free of all those restraints that…. The limitations of the hunting–gathering life had kept man in check for three million years. With agriculture, those limitations vanished, and his rise was meteoric. Settlement gave rise to division of labor. Division of labor gave rise to technology. With the rise of technology came trade and commerce. With trade and commerce came mathematics and literacy and science, and all the rest. The whole thing was under way at last, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“Right,” I said. “Okay. Man’s destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he’s done—almost. He hasn’t quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man’s conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we’ve attained, we don’t have enough mastery to stop devastating the world—or to repair the devastation we’ve already wrought. We’ve poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit—and we go on pouring our poisons into the world. We’ve gobbled up irreplaceable resources as though they could never run out— and we go on gobbling them up. It’s hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody’s really doing anything about it. It’s a problem our children will have to solve, or their children.

“Only one thing can save us. We have to increase our mastery of the world. All this damage has come about through our conquest of the world, but we have to go on conquering it until our rule is absolute. Then, when we’re in complete control, everything will be fine. We’ll have fusion power. No pollution. We’ll turn the rain on and off. We’ll grow a bushel of wheat in a square centimeter. We’ll turn the oceans into farms. We’ll control the weather—no more hurricanes, no more tornadoes, no more droughts, no more untimely frosts. We’ll make the clouds release their water over the land instead of dumping it uselessly into the oceans. All the life processes of this planet will be where they belong—where the gods meant them to be—in our hands. And we’ll manipulate them the way a programmer manipulates a computer.

“And that’s where it stands right now. We have to carry the conquest forward. And carrying it forward is either going to destroy the world or turn it into a paradise—into the paradise it was meant to be under human rule.

“And if we manage to do this—if we finally manage to make ourselves the absolute rulers of the world—then nothing can stop us. Then we move into the Star Trek era. Man moves out into space to conquer and rule the entire universe. And that may be the ultimate destiny of man: to conquer and rule the entire universe. That’s how wonderful man is.”

2

To my astonishment, Ishmael picked up a wand from his pile and waved it at me in an enthusiastic gesture of approval. “Once again, that was excellent,” he said, neatly biting off its leafy head.

“But you realize, of course, that if you’d been telling this part of the story a hundred years ago—or even fifty years ago—you would have spoken only of the paradise to come. The idea that man’s conquest of the world could be anything but beneficial would have been unthinkable to you. Until the last three or four decades, the people of your culture had no doubt that things were just going to go on getting better and better and better forever. There was no conceivable end in sight.”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“There is, however, one element of the story that you’ve left out, and we need it to complete your culture’s explanation of how things came to be this way.”

“What element is that?”

“I think you can figure it out. So far we have this much: The world was made for man to conquer and rule, and under human rule it was meant to become a paradise. This clearly has to be followed by a ‘but.’ It has always been followed by a ‘but.’ This is because the Takers have always perceived that the world was far short of the paradise it was meant to be.”

“True. Let me see… How’s this: The world was made for man to conquer and rule, but his conquest turned out to be more destructive than was anticipated.”

“You’re not listening. The ‘but’ was part of the story long before your conquest became globally destructive. The ‘but’ was there to explain all the flaws in your paradise—warfare and brutality and poverty and injustice and corruption and tyranny. It’s still there today to explain famine and oppression and nuclear proliferation and pollution. It explained World War II, and if it ever has to, it will explain World War III.”

I looked at him blankly.

“This is a commonplace. Any third–grader could supply it.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but I don’t see it yet.”

“Come, think. What went wrong here? What has always gone wrong here? Under human rule, the world should have become a paradise, but…”

“But people screwed it up.”

“Of course. And why did they screw it up?”

“Why?”

“Did they screw it up because they didn’t want a paradise?”

“No. The way it’s seen is… they were bound to screw it up. They wanted to turn the world into a paradise, but, being human, they were bound to screw it up.”

“But why? Why, being human, were they bound to screw it up?”

“It’s because there’s something fundamentally wrong with humans. Something that definitely works against paradise. Something that makes people stupid and destructive and greedy and shortsighted.”

“Of course. Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.”

“That’s right.”

3

Having second thoughts, I gave him a long incredulous stare. “Are you suggesting that this explanation is false?”

Ishmael shook his head. “It’s pointless to argue with mythology. Once upon a time, the people of your culture believed that man’s home was the center of the universe. Man was the reason the universe had been created in the first place, so it made sense that his home should be its capital. The followers of Copernicus didn’t argue with this. They didn’t point at people and say, ‘You’re wrong.’ They pointed at the heavens and said, ‘Look at what’s actually there.’ ”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“How did the Takers come to the conclusion that there’s something fundamentally wrong with humans? What evidence were they looking at?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you’re being purposely dense. They were looking at the evidence of human history.”

“True.”

“And when did human history begin?”