Takers and Leavers- Ishmael

First of all, I just wanted to say it feels good to be back on the ol' blog.  While I've been busy over the winter break, it's nice to sit down and give my brain a chance to think on more global issues.  I hope everyone else is feeling the same way.

Now on to business.

"Aside from these, there is no tradition whatever of prophets rising up among the Leavers to straighten out their lives and give them new sets of laws or principles to live by." (85)

I found this statement a bit unnerving in it's accuracy.  For some reason, people of "Taker" (or more commonly called Western) culture believe they need someone to tell them what to do and how to do it.  Just go into any book store and take a look at the self-help section.  It's filled with advice and programs and plans to "put your life on track."  But on track for what?  And what makes these people writing the books such experts?  Is it just because they can get their ideas down in a persuasive way?  I can understand searching for advice such as which car would be best for a family of five or something like that.  And in truth, the "Leaver" culture has a person who functions much the same way.  All human societies have had some form of a Chief or Head Honcho who was the primary source of advice.  There is no such thing as a perfectly anarchistic system.  So maybe the problem today isn't that we have leaders or experts.  I think the real problem is that we have too many people telling us what to do.  And that range of too much  knowledge is so vast that it makes you feel paralyzed and unable to make any kind of decision at all.

I'm not sure if this is a self help for writing self help books, or just self-help for life in general.

http://absentmindedoracle.blogspot.com/

"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." (80)

When I first read this dialogue of Ishmael,  his mocking reference to how Takers think the world needs to be.  And while I can see his point, I think his statement is actually rather true- at least for a portion of human history.  Just think back to the industrial revolution.  Although we didn't quite understand what air pollution or water pollution was, we were highly engaged in producing both.  Factories just dumped waste products into the rivers, believing the planet was inexhaustible and would simply take care of our poisonous wastes.  When we did finally start seeing the effects of our careless expansion, governments finally started getting involved with regulations, restrictions, and policies to protect our natural resources. At that time, new technology was needed to clean up the mess that we so callously caused.  So Ishmael's attempt to demonize technology depends on the era.

This was a common sight during the booming industrial revolution

http://www.liv.ac.uk/researchintelligence/issue38/hitchhiking.htm

On a last note, I found Ishmael's reference to Hitler's story of the Aryan race to be quite intriguing.  Because, as we discussed last semester, Hitler did have a story of how the Germans came to be oppressed and how they could rise to glory once again.  And most of his power came from his ability to tell this story extremely convincingly.  I always knew Hitler was a master of speech but a recent movie release, The King's Speech, enhanced my understanding of his power.  As King George the Sixth said in the movie, "I don't know what he's saying but he seems to be saying it very well."