I am done with the book as well, and right now around chapter 6 at skimming it again for the arguments and interesting points.
(To what is being talked about right now)
[spoiler] But still, isn’t the special place for the humans well-earned after all? They’re the first known species on Earth with “Taker” and “Leaver” characteristics, although the current knowledge might also be similar to the “University of New Heidelberg in Tokyo” example given by the narrator.
This example is also the thought I’ve gotten from this book that makes me approach skeptically to everything. I mean, I didn’t take everything for true the moment I heard/read/seen/etc. them, but right now, nothing is correct to me. [/spoiler]
Going through the book once more to remember what I thought at the time or to consider those points again left me with the following thoughts, questions and Ishmael’s teachings:
(Chapter 1, Part 1)
SPOILER - Click to view
The first few sentences do draw attention, I admit. But I also felt like the author was trying to disclose some of the personality of the narrator, which I think he hasn’t been able to do effectively enough. So he did seek a teacher for a long time, but why? What pushed him to it?
(Chapter 1, Part 2)
[spoiler] What is the glass for? The narrator says that with his power, the gorilla could easily break it to pieces. So the glass exists to give the narrator an illusion of being safe?
I also didn’t understand how “WITH MAN GONE/WILL THERE/BE HOPE/FOR GORILLA?” could imply that hope for gorillas lay in the extinction of the human race.[/spoiler]
(Chapter 1, Part 4)
SPOILER - Click to view
Walter Sokolow says (when his wife is pregnant) “I anticipated nothing like this when I named you Ishmael,”. Then why had he named the gorilla Ishmael at first?
(Chapter 1, Part 6)
[spoiler] This is around when the lessons actually start. The main point here is this:
The world is a captive of humans, while humans are the captives of a civilizational system that bounds them to destroy the world.
This idea and all is repeated everywhere nowadays that I think that it is now both something we need to get real notice of and something being inculcated to us by Mother Culture.[/spoiler]
(Chapter 1, Part 7)
[spoiler] This is the part with the epistemology assignment with Hitler taking over the world instead of the reality.
I really like the example, and agree with the narrator when he says that it actually doesn’t really matter because it affects nothing. [/spoiler]
(Chapter 2, Part 3)
[spoiler] This is the part with the definitions of Takers and Leavers.
I don’t really agree (considering the rest of the novel as well) that Takers equal civilized and Leavers equal primitive. At least not with the meanings I have for them. [/spoiler]
(Chapter 2, Part 6)
[spoiler] This is when Mother Culture says that the time of Leavers ended and then the time of the Takers began, and Ishmael disagrees.
I may be thinking in a non-commendable way right now, but this is something that’s bugging me: Is it necessary for every little Leaver society to go extinct in order to be able to say that they no longer actually enact a story? Their effect is quite minor that it is not really common knowledge how many societies of Leavers actually exist today. [/spoiler]
(Chapter 3, Part 2)
[spoiler] This is when the beginning of the human creation myth is explained.
What comes to my attention here is the fact that the myth explained here is evolution, not any “creation” myths (I mean as in: “creation needs a higher being as a creator, therefore evolution could not be a creation myth but a “come-to-being” myth instead.” kind of thought process.) that are still believed by many people today. Which takes me to the point that the Mother Culture speaking here is only one of the Mother Cultures that talk to Taker societies. [/spoiler]
(Chapter 4, Part 1)
[spoiler] The novel says here: “The middle of story is when humans move up from being hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists and then civilize.”
I have nothing to question or comment here. [/spoiler]
(Chapter 4, Part 5)
[spoiler] Directly quoting: “I’m saying that the price you’ve paid is not the price of becoming human. It’s not even the price of having the things you just mentioned. It’s the price of enacting a story that casts mankind as the enemy of the world.”
(about Leavers “evolving” into Takers)
I think this is very strong, and also not necessarily correct. I think being a Taker does not exactly mean to be the enemy of the world or to be destroying the world. [/spoiler]
(Chapter 5, part 1)
[spoiler] This is when the novel states that the Takers need absolute control over everything, and that humankind’s ultimate destiny might be to conquer and rule the entire universe.
This might be my “not-being-able-to-see-far-into-the-future”, but I think those will never happen. [/spoiler]
(Chapter 5, Part 2)
[spoiler] Once again direct quoting: “Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into a paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.”
(Mother Culture’s inculcations)
Apparently I’m not from the same culture as the narrator in the novel, because I don’t remember ever being told this by Mother Culture. I’ve been, however, told by Mother Culture that she told this to other people, but I (and other people from my culture) always knew it for what it was. [/spoiler]
(Chapter 5, Part 3)
[spoiler] Quoting once more: “There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in
which they are the lords of the world, they willac t like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.”
I agree, and have not much to add. BUT, this is where the rare inscriptions in my copy of the novel begin. (I took it from the school library, and many of the English books there used to belong to former teachers.) It says here “that’s why we teach, to give them better stories to enact”. [/spoiler]
(Chapter 5, Part 4)
[spoiler] This is the part that says that Takers need prophets to tell them how they ought to live.
And I guess what the book is actually hinting at around here is that the prophets should actually tell them to live like Leavers.[/spoiler]
(Chapter 5, Part 5)
[spoiler] Says that the flaw in man that made him spoil the paradise could as well be the fact that he doesn’t know how he ought to live.
I don’t have much to think or say here because I don’t relate much. But the part with “how he ought to live” still bothers me (even after the following chapters). I will write about that when the relevant part comes. [/spoiler]
Then comes chapter 6, which I haven’t fully gone over yet. Therefore I stop now.