selfishness.

After reading your post, B, I was listening to the Decemberists' "Angels and Angles" and started thinking.

Let me just say this beforehand: I am not a Biblical literalist, and I believe in evolution. I understand that our views may differ, my readers, but please be tolerant of me. Also, bear with me; I'm going to explain the book in depth in order to make you see the significance of my post.

This year, as a requirement for my HL European History class, I had to read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It's the story of a man who genuinely wants to change the world, and, upon finding an ad asking for students who want to change the world, he responds. He attends the class to find a gorilla in a class cage, with a poster with a koan reading "When man is gone, will there be hope for gorilla?" (The other side of the poster is revealed, at the end, to say, "When gorilla is gone, will there be hope for man?") Somehow, the man is able to communicate telepathically with the gorilla (named Ishmael) and partakes in a socratic dialogue with him; perhaps it is just the man's thoughts upon seeing the koan? Regardless, the man comes to the conclusion that man's cultural myth is that man is the pinnacle of evolution, and that society split at the time of the Agricultural Revolution, into two groups: the Takers (those who practice agriculture) and the Leavers (hunter-gatherers).

Quinn is not a Biblical literalist, nor am I, and he uses the story of Cain and Abel to explain agriculture's murder of man's evolution. Basically, Quinn sets up that man took part in the evolutionary process until the onset of the Agricultural Revolution. By setting himself above the other creatures of the earth in claiming land his, man removed himself from evolution and all other creatures must suffer the consequences.

He believes that man is by no means the pinnacle of evolution, and that we must detach ourselves from the thoughts "Mother culture" puts in our minds--those our entire culture as man has been built upon. In order to stop the decay of our species, of other species, of the planet, we must revert to hunter-gatherer societies and live in harmony with the other inhabitants of our earth--which may mean being eaten or being left behind, of infanticide and matricide to maintain population.

The point is, I believe this to be man's natural state. The confusions of our world--the murderers and suicidal people, those who are depressed or suffer from substance abuse, the morbidly obese and the anorexic--were created by our society. This prozac-induced globe is built on fake ideals and goals that have no true meaning or end result.

And until today, I hurt inside with the knowledge that man can do nothing to reverse this--that we're simply going to keep destroying the planet and running our species into the ground until we leave and our poor earth can grow over our cities and start over. And I guess I still do, but I realized today that, were the population to come down to a vote (to continue our wreckage or to revert to hunter-gatherer society), I'd be selfish. I would want to keep my music, my loves, my art. Though our society is completely fucking the evolutionary process and is possibly creating the decay of our planet, though it fosters murder and self-loathing, it also has created the goodness in the world. Though we have to deal with this shit, we can listen to music that makes us cry because of its sheer force, we can feel in every tendon (spiritual and physical), we can love another or even several individuals with more passion than we can fathom giving ourselves.

I'd identify with Maslow, which is maybe why I'd come to that conclusion. There's this struggle within me, between believing that man is nothing special and being inspired and in love with the great human capabilities, that is driving me crazy. I realize that I probably sound like a fool, but this is truly all I've been able to think about this evening. Ishmael was such an eye-opening experience for me, but I have this human inability to give up what I have. Everyone does, but in some way that seems selfish to me. I don't know. I'm only in high school. At this point, I just want to get through my senior year. And for some reason, I'm aching for the death of our world. I don't want to be so obsessive on this topic, but it's truly all I can think about.

Which, I guess, favors my humanistic side. I am enamored with man's ability to think on such levels.

I think this is just cognitive dissonance I'm going to have to put up with.



Opinions?
Thanks for reading my rant, if you made it this far.

<3LA