Woodside, near San Francisco, CA
I have just finished reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. I’m was supposed to be working on writing my own book today but I simply couldn’t put this one down. It is one of those rare books that changes the way you look at the world.
It’s not a new book, but it is even more relevant now than it was when it was first published in 1977. A bit like Jonathan Livingstone Seagull it puts across some very profound concepts in a deceptively simple form.
It concerns man’s relationship to the world – how we set ourselves apart from the other animals, overruling the natural order of things in order to feed ourselves and thereby increase our population far above the level that the earth can comfortably support. It examines how we developed this attitude, and more disturbingly, looks at where this attitude may be taking us.
The book has had quite an effect on the way I look at so-called ‘civilization’, indigenous peoples, and the world as a whole. Powerful stuff, and now added to my list (right) of Favourite Books.