Ishmael

“Okay.”

“So, do you press the button?”

“I don’t know. I have to doubt it.”

“Why? It isn’t that you’d be giving up a wonderful life here. According to this hypothesis, the life you’ve got here is wretched, and it’s not likely to improve. So it has to be that the other life seems even worse. It isn’t that you couldn’t bear giving up the life you’ve got—it’s that you couldn’t bear embracing that other life.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What is it that makes that life so horrifying to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“It seems that Mother Culture has done a good job on you.”

“Yes.”

“All right. Let’s try this. Wherever the Takers have come up against some hunter–gatherers taking up space they wanted for themselves, they’ve tried to explain to them why they should abandon their life–style and become Takers. They’ve said, ‘This life of yours is not only wretched, it’s wrong. Man was not meant to live this way. So don’t fight us. Join our revolution and help us turn the world into a paradise for man.’ ”

“Right.”

“You take that part—the part of the cultural missionary—and I’ll take the part of a hunter–gatherer. Explain to me why the life that I and my people have found satisfying for thousands of years is grim and revolting and repulsive.”

“Good lord.”

“Look, I’ll get you started…. Bwana, you tell us that the way we live is wretched and wrong and shameful. You tell us that it’s not the way people are meant to live. This puzzles us, Bwana, because for thousands of years it has seemed to us a good way to live. But if you, who ride to the stars and send your words around the world at the speed of thought, tell us that it isn’t, then we must in all prudence listen to what you have to say.”

“Well… I realize it seems good to you. This is because you’re ignorant and uneducated and stupid.”

“Exactly so, Bwana. We await your enlightenment. Tell us why our life is wretched and squalid and shameful.”

“Your life is wretched and squalid and shameful because you live like animals.”

Ishmael frowned, puzzled. “I don’t understand, Bwana. We live as all others live. We take what we need from the world and leave the rest alone, just as the lion and the deer do. Do the lion and the deer lead shameful lives?”

“No, but that’s because they’re just animals. It’s not right for humans to live that way.”

“Ah,” Ishmael said, “this we did not know. And why is it not right to live that way?”

“It’s because, living that way… you have no control over your lives.”

Ishmael cocked his head at me. “In what sense do we have no control over our lives, Bwana?”

“You have no control over the most basic necessity of all, your food supply.”

“You puzzle me greatly, Bwana. When we’re hungry, we go off and find something to eat. What more control is needed?”

“You’d have more control if you planted it yourself.”

“How so, Bwana? What does it matter who plants the food?”

“If you plant it yourself, then you know positively that it’s going to be there.”

Ishmael cackled delightedly. “Truly you astonish me, Bwana! We already know positively that it’s going to be there. The whole world of life is food. Do you think it’s going to sneak away during the night? Where would it go? It’s always there, day after day, season after season, year after year. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to talk to you about it.”

“Yes, but if you planted it yourself, you could control how much food there was. You’d be able to say, ‘Well, this year we’ll have more yams, this year we’ll have more beans, this year we’ll have more strawberries.’ ”

“Bwana, these things grow in abundance without the slightest effort on our part. Why should we trouble ourselves to plant what is already growing?”

“Yes, but… don’t you ever run out? Don’t you ever wish you had a yam but find there are no more growing wild?”

“Yes, I suppose so. But isn’t it the same for you? Don’t you ever wish you had a yam but find there are no more growing in your fields?”

“No, because if we wish we had a yam, we can go to the store and buy a can of them.”

“Yes, I have heard something of this system. Tell me this, Bwana. The can of yams that you buy in the store—how many of you labored to put that can there for you?”

“Oh, hundreds, I suppose. Growers, harvesters, truckers, cleaners at the canning plant, people to run the equipment, people to pack the cans in cases, truckers to distribute the cases, people at the store to unpack them, and so on.”

“Forgive me, but you sound like lunatics, Bwana, to do all this work just to ensure that you can never be disappointed over the matter of a yam. Among my people, when we want a yam, we simply go and dig one up—and if there are none to be found, we find something else just as good, and hundreds of people don’t need to labor to put it into our hands.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“I certainly am, Bwana.”

I stifled a sigh. “Look, here’s the point. Unless you control your own food supply, you live at the mercy of the world. It doesn’t matter that there’s always been enough. That’s not the point. You can’t live at the whim of the gods. That’s just not a human way to live.”

“Why is that, Bwana?”

“Well… look. One day you go out hunting, and you catch a deer. Okay, that’s fine. That’s terrific. But you didn’t have any control over the deer’s being there, did you?”

“No, Bwana.”

“Okay. The next day you go out hunting and there’s no deer to be caught. Hasn’t that ever happened?”

“Assuredly, Bwana.”

“Well, there you are. Because you have no control over the deer, you have no deer. So what do you do?”

Ishmael shrugged. “We snare a couple of rabbits.”

“Exactly. You shouldn’t have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer.”

“And this is why we lead shameful lives, Bwana? This is why we should set aside a life we love and go to work in one of your factories? Because we eat rabbits when it happens that no deer presents itself to us?”

“No. Let me finish. You have no control over the deer—and no control over the rabbits either. Suppose you go out hunting one day, and there are no deer and no rabbits? What do you do then?”

“Then we eat something else, Bwana. The world is full of food.”

“Yes, but look. If you have no control over any of it…” I bared my teeth at him. “Look, there’s no guarantee that the world is always going to be full of food, is there? Haven’t you ever had a drought?”

“Certainly, Bwana.”

“Well, what happens then?”

“The grasses wither, all the plants wither. The trees bear no fruit. The game disappears. The predators dwindle.”

“And what happens to you?”

“If the drought is very bad, then we too dwindle.”

“You mean you die, don’t you?”

“Yes, Bwana.”

“Ha! That’s the point!”

“It’s shameful to die, Bwana?”

“No…. I’ve got it. Look, this is the point. You die because you live at the mercy of the gods. You die because