Ishmael revisited

In my life I have read only two books a second time.  The first was aeons ago and I cannot now recall what it was.  The second was Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, which I just finished a month ago.  This extraordinary book left my head reeling with a new perspective on our modern global culture. At one shot I gained a clear understanding of “how things came to be this way” and also a somewhat bleak glimpse at our future.  While the author attempts to apply a positive spin to the possibilities in our (the human race’s) future, I was left with a sense of helplessness and an absolute certainty of our folly and imminent demise.

The crux of the book is this:  we are recklessly consuming our planet and we will, with certainty, destroy ourselves unless we make a fundamental change in the way we think and act. The rationale for this perspective is surprisingly simple and truly compelling.  We have arrived at our current state owing to three primary factors acting in concert: 1) a complete lack of population control, 2) a near-exclusive reliance on agriculture, and 3) a policy of active extermination of our competitors.  The development of the mindset that has generated these factors is the preoccupation of most of the book in order to prove its assertions, and it does this admirably well.

Regarding the first factor, a short lesson on population cycles is in order.  Consider a population of rabbits and a population of foxes which preys upon them.  If the rabbit population rises, this creates a food source boon for the foxes.  The fox population will then rise.  As the number of foxes increases, predation on the rabbits becomes more intensive and the rabbit population declines.  With fewer rabbits to hunt, the fox population wanes owing to lack of food.  And as the foxes decline in number, the rabbits are able to grow in number again owing to a reduction in the predation by the foxes.  And so the cycle begins again.  If you were to graph the two population sizes against time, you would see two sine waves, the peaks and troughs of the fox population wave lagging slightly in time behind the peaks and troughs of the rabbit population.

This is the way any two interdependent populations interact in nature.  The important thing to note about this system is that each population is kept in check by the other.  That is, a state of homeostasis is automatically maintained and neither population is able to overcome the other, thereby allowing both populations to succeed and live on indefinitely in relative harmony.  Indeed, if the foxes managed to exterminate the rabbits outright, it would mean their own demise as well.

Ecosystems are replete with — or, rather, built upon — these very systems of natural feedback loops.  Everywhere you care to look in nature those systems exist in very complex interdependence, positively linking every living thing to every other living thing.  Even a rabbit population and the plants on which it feeds have such a relationship.

Which brings us to humans…

Let’s look at the relationship we have with our food.  What happens when our population gets to a size that outstrips our capacity for food production?  Do we succumb and die off until our food is able to recoup from our over-harvesting?  Not at all.  Instead, we create more food to support our burgeoning population.  We do this by converting more land to agriculture — displacing or exterminating the creatures that lived there or would feed on our food source — thereby allowing our population to grow once more until it again outstrips food production, whereupon the cycle begins again with ever-larger population growth and ever-larger requirements for food production.  A graph of this population cycle would show no cycle at all, but simply an ever steepening curve.

The problem with this scenario is two-fold.  In the first place there is no check on our population growth (yet).  In the second place, there is no check on our use of the land for our sole purpose, and as a quick examination of a globe will tell you, the land we have at our disposal for this is finite.  As well, of course, the detrimental side-effects of such a wanton land use policy on the rest of our planetary co-habitants (and thus ultimately ourselves) cannot be underestimated.

So, in short, the upshot of all of this is that we are on a path to certain destruction, because of our ability to grow unchecked.  The only way to avoid this fate, truly, is to change our view of the world and our place in it with due deference to the much larger contingent of other organisms that also inhabit it.  Is this likely to happen?  I should think not.  And I don’t say this in a disdainful or disparaging way as though I will change my ways even if the rest of you can’t. Unfortunately I am as much a part of this machinery as everyone else, and I cannot imagine myself making the changes required to save us even though I can see that they are clearly necessary. It is a brutally sad statement on the state we’ve gotten ourselves into, compelled to speed purposefully off the edge of a cliff, because we prefer the gas pedal to the brake, hoping to somehow land safely on the other side of the yawning chasm.

And in the end, I fear Ishmael was right in pointing out that none of this will much matter.  Whether we choose to accept our proper place in the world or not, the laws of nature that govern all living things will come to bear on us, too, and it is we, not nature, that will finally come to understand the way things must be.