My Ishmael Read online

  “In order to work as well as mushrooms and turtles and worms.”

  I laughed and said, “Yeah, that’s funny. But that’s the perception, I think. We don’t work as well as mushrooms and turtles and worms because we’re too intelligent, and we don’t work as well as angels and gods because we’re not intelligent enough. We’re in an awkward stage. We were all right when we were less than human and we’ll be all right when we’re more than human, but we’re washouts as we are right now. Humans are just no good. The form itself is no good. I think that’s what Mother Culture has to say.”

  “So the flaw is intelligence itself, then—according to Mother Culture.”

  “That’s right. Intelligence is what makes us special, isn’t it? Moths can’t screw up the world. Catfish can’t screw up the world. It takes intelligence to do that.”

  “In that case, what do you make of your daydream quest? As you head into the universe to learn how to live, are you looking for angels?”

  “No. That’s funny.”

  Ishmael cocked his head on one side and gave me a quizzical look.

  “I’m looking for intelligent races just like us—but they know how to live without destroying their worlds. We’re even more special than I thought.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s like we’re specially cursed. The people of this one planet.”

  Ishmael nodded. “This is how it’s generally understood, among the people of your culture, that humanity is specially cursed—somehow badly made or fundamentally flawed or even literally divinely cursed.”

  “That’s right.”

  “This is why, in your daydream, it’s necessary to look elsewhere in the universe for the knowledge you seek. You can’t find it amongst yourselves, because you’re a cursed race. To find the knowledge you need to live sustainably, you need to find a race that isn’t cursed. And there’s no reason to suppose that everyone’s cursed. You feel that someone out there must know how to live sustainably.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you see, Julie, your daydream was very far from being twaddle. And I’m sure that the journey you dreamed of, if it could be taken, would in fact put you in contact with thousands of peoples who live sustainably without difficulty.”

  “You are? Why?”

  “Because the curse under which you operate is very, very localized—despite what Mother Culture teaches. It doesn’t even remotely extend to the whole of humanity. Thousands of peoples have lived here sustainably, Julie. Without difficulty. Without effort.”

  Well, naturally I blinked at that one. “You mean like … Atlantis?”

  “I mean nothing remotely like Atlantis, Julie. Atlantis is a fairy tale.”

  “Then I have no idea what you’re talking about. None.”

  Ishmael nodded slowly. “I realize that. Very few of you would know what I’m talking about.”

  I waited for him to drop the other shoe, and when it didn’t drop, I said, “Aren’t you going to tell me who these people are?”

  “I’d rather not, Julie. You see, you definitely have this information, and if I were to reach inside you and drag it out, then you’d be impressed, but you’d learn nothing. The midwife is there to help her client bring forth the child, not to bring it forth herself.”

  “You’re saying I already know who these people are?”

  “I haven’t the slightest doubt of it, Julie.”

  I shrugged and crossed my eyes and did all the usual things, then told him to go ahead.

  “Your Culture”

  Ishmael said, “It is your culture’s deep-seated perception that wisdom is not to be found among you. This is what your daydream reveals. You know how to build marvelous electronic gadgets, you know how to send ships into space, you know how to peer into the depths of atoms. But the simplest and most needful knowledge of all—the knowledge of how to live—simply doesn’t exist among you.”

  “Yes, that’s the way it seems.”

  “This isn’t a new perception by any means, Julie. It’s been extant in your culture for millennia.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “You keep saying that—‘the people of your culture’—and I keep not being sure what you mean by it. Why don’t you just say ‘you humans’ or ‘you Americans’?”

  “Because I’m not talking about humans or Americans. I’m talking about the people of your culture.”

  “Well, I guess you’re going to have to explain that.”

  “Do you know what a culture is?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure.”

  “The word culture is like a chameleon, Julie. It has no color of its own but rather takes color from its setting. It means one thing when you talk about the culture of chimpanzees, another when you talk about the culture of General Motors. It’s valid to say there are only two fundamentally different human cultures. It’s also valid to say there are thousands of human cultures. Instead of trying to explain what culture means when it’s all by itself (which is almost impossible), I’m just going to explain what I mean when I say ‘your culture.’ All right?”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  “In fact, I’m going to make it even easier than that. I’m going to give you two rules of thumb by which you can identify the people of your culture. Here’s one of them. You’ll know you’re among the people of your culture if the food is all owned, if it’s all under lock and key.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine it being any other way.”

  “But of course it once was another way. It was once no more owned than the air or the sunshine are owned. I’m sure you must realize that.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You seem unimpressed, Julie, but putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key—and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy.”

  “How is that?” I asked. “Why is it the cornerstone?”

  “Because, if the food wasn’t under lock and key, Julie, who would work?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Right. Wow.”

  “If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you’ll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, in their religious rituals, and so on, but they all expect the food to be under lock and key. It’s all owned, and if you want some, you’ll have to buy it.”

  “I see. So you’re saying these people all belong to one culture.”

  “Clearly I’m talking about fundamentals, and nothing is more fundamental than food. I’m sure it’s difficult for you to realize how very bizarre you are in this respect. You think it makes complete sense to have to work for what’s free for the taking to every other creature on earth. You alone lock food away from yourselves and then toil to get it back—and imagine that nothing could possibly make better sense.”

  “Yes, it is bizarre if you put it like that. But it isn’t just our culture that has done that. It’s humanity, isn’t it?”

  “No, Julie. I know Mother Culture teaches that this is something humanity did, but that’s a lie. It was only you, a single culture, not the whole of humanity. By the time we’re finished, you’ll have no doubt about that at all.”

  “Okay.”

  “Another rule of thumb you can use to identify the people of your culture is this: They perceive themselves to be members of a race that is fundamentally flawed and inherently doomed to suffering and misery. Because they’re fundamentally flawed, they expect wisdom to be a rare commodity, difficult to acquire. Because they’re inherently doomed, they’re not surprised to be living in the midst of poverty, injustice, and crime, not surprised that their rulers are self-serving and corrupt, not surprised to be rendering the world uninhabitable for themselves. They may be indignant about these things, but they’re not surprised by them, because this is how they expect things to be. This makes as
much sense to them as having their food under lock and key.”

  “Do you mind if I play devil’s advocate for a minute?”

  “Not at all.”

  “There’s a teacher at school who’s always giving us pitying looks because he’s a Buddhist, which means he’s miles ahead of us in terms of awareness and spiritual enlightenment and so on. For him, the people of ‘our culture’ are the people of the West, and the people of the East belong to an entirely different culture.”

  “I take it this person is himself a Westerner.”

  “Yes, he is. What does that have to do with it?”

  Ishmael shrugged. “Westerners often think the East is one vast Buddhist temple, which is rather like thinking the West is one vast Carthusian monastery. If the teacher you mention were to visit the East, he’d certainly experience many new things, but he’d find, first, that the food is all under lock and key and, second, that humans are considered to be a miserable, destructive, greedy lot, just as they are in the West. These are the things that qualify them to be named people of your culture.”

  “Are there really people in the world who don’t think they’re a miserable, destructive, greedy lot?”

  Ishmael considered this for a moment and said, “Let me turn that question back to you in this way. In your fantasied journey into the universe, were you planning to look for other cursed races?”

  “No.”

  “Is it your expectation that every intelligent species in the universe is accursed?”

  “No.”

  Ishmael studied me for a moment and said, “I see that your question remains unanswered. Let me answer it this way. Even at your age, you’ve probably already met a certain kind of person who is convinced that anything bad that happens in his life is someone else’s fault—never his own. If you haven’t met such a person, I can guarantee that you will do so someday. Such a person never learns from his mistakes, because as far as he’s concerned, he makes no mistakes. He never discovers the sources of his difficulties, because he believes those sources lie in others who are beyond his control. To put it very simply, everything that goes wrong in his life he blames on others. He never says to himself, ‘The problem is something I’m doing.’ He says, ‘The problem is something other people are doing. Other people are to blame for all my troubles—and I can’t change them, so I’m helpless.’ ”

  “Yeah, I know someone like that,” I told him. I didn’t see any reason to tell him it was my mother.

  “Your entire culture has adopted this way of dealing with your difficulties. You don’t say, ‘The problem is something we’re doing.’ You say, ‘The problem is human nature itself. Human nature is to blame for all our troubles—and we can’t change that, so we’re helpless.’ ”

  “Yow,” I said. “I get it.”

  “I too get it, Julie,” Ishmael said. “Teachers need pupils to help them continue their own journey of discovery.”

  I raised my brows at him.

  “You’ve heard me say a dozen times that the people of your culture think of themselves as belonging to a flawed, doomed race.”

  “That’s right,” I told him.

  “Now, thanks to you, I have a much better way of saying this: The people of your culture blame human nature for their troubles. It’s still true that you think of yourselves as belonging to a flawed, doomed race, but now we both have a better understanding of why you think of yourselves this way. It serves a purpose. It enables you to shift blame from yourselves to something that is beyond your control—human nature. You are blameless. The fault is in human nature itself, which you cannot change.”

  “Right. I see that.”

  “Let me take a moment to state that ‘human nature’ is something the people of your culture claim to know about. It’s not something I claim to know about. Whenever I use the term, it will be as it comes from the mouth of Mother Culture. The very concept is foreign to me. It belongs to an epistemological framework unique to your culture. Don’t make faces. It won’t hurt you to hear a new word. Epistemology is the study of what is knowable. To the people of your culture, ‘human nature’ is a knowable object. To me, it’s a fabulous object, an object invented to be searched for, like the Holy Grail or the philosopher’s stone.”

  “Okay,” I told him. “But I don’t know why you’re insisting on all this.”

  His face twisted into a smile. “I’m talking to posterity through you, Julie.”

  “Come again?”

  “Teachers live on through their pupils. That’s another reason why they need them. You seem to have an unusual memory. You remember what you hear with unusual clarity.”

  “Yes, I guess that’s true.”

  “You’re going to be my rememberer. You’ll carry my words beyond the walls of this room.”

  “Carry them where?”

  “Wherever you go—wherever that may be.”

  Well, I spent some time frowning over all this. Then I said, “What about Alan? Is he a rememberer too?”

  Ishmael shrugged. “I suppose I may as well go into this now, Julie. I’ve had many pupils. Some have taken nothing from me, some have taken a little, and some have taken a lot. But none has taken all. Each takes as much as he or she can carry away. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “What they do with what they take is obviously beyond my control. For the most part, I have no idea what they do with it—or if they do anything at all. One recently wrote to me with his own strange notion of what to do. He intends to immigrate to Europe and set himself up as a sort of itinerant lecturer or preacher there.”

  “What did you want him to do?”

  “Oh, it isn’t at all a matter of what I want. Each must do what is within his or her compass. I call the notion strange only because it’s inconceivable to me. I know only how to bring people along in this context—through dialogue. I simply can’t imagine doing it in a lecture hall. My deficiency, not his.”

  “I’m feeling lost, Ishmael. What’s this got to do with Alan and me?”

  “When I called you my rememberer, you asked if Alan is also a rememberer. I wanted you to understand that what I’m giving you to remember is very different from what I’m giving him to remember. No two journeys are ever alike, because no two pupils are ever alike.”

  “Okay. That makes sense.”

  “We’ve taken a small side trip here to show you how to recognize members of your culture. Now let’s see if we can get back to the main road we left.… I was saying that it’s your culture’s deep-seated perception that wisdom is not to be found among you, and that this perception has been extant in your culture for millennia.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Do you understand why I’m bringing this up?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Your daydream takes it for granted that wisdom must be found elsewhere—billions of miles away from this planet. This is why it was necessary for you to construct a daydream in the first place. You know in your bones that the secret you’re looking for is not to be found here.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I see what you’re saying.”

  “What I’d like you to see next is that the loss of this secret was an event in your history. It isn’t something missing from your genes. Humanity wasn’t born deficient. This was something that happened uniquely among the people of your culture.”

  “Okay. But why do you want me to see that?”

  “Because … Have you ever lost anything? A key, a book, a tool, a letter?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you remember how you went about trying to find it?”

  “I tried to remember where I was when I had it last.”

  “Of course. If you know where you lost something, then you know where to look for it, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is what I want to show you now: where and when you lost the secret that is known to every other species on this planet—and to every other intelligent species in th
e universe, if there are such.”

  “Wow,” I told him. “We must really be special, if every other species in the universe knows something we don’t.”

  “You are indeed special, Julie. On this point, your Mother Culture and I are in complete agreement.”

  The History of Man in 17 Seconds

  Ishmael said, “There’s only one place to begin with any pupil, Julie, and that place is where the pupil is. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “For the most part, the only way I can know where you are is if you tell me. And that’s what you must do now. I need you to tell me what you know of human history.”

  I groaned, and Ishmael asked me why. “History is not my favorite subject,” I told him.

  “I can understand that,” he said, “knowing how the teachers in your schools are forced to teach it. But I’m not asking you to recite what you’ve learned (or failed to learn) in school. Even if you’d never spent a single day in school, you would have a general impression of what’s happened here, just by having your eyes and ears open in this culture for twelve years. Even someone who has done nothing but read the Sunday funnies has that.”

  “Okay,” I said, and then made a connection. “Is this Mother Culture’s version of human history? Is that what you’re asking for?”

  Ishmael nodded. “That’s what I’m asking for. I need to know how much of it you’ve taken in. Even more to the point, you need to know how much of it you’ve taken in.”

  “I see,” I told him, and started to work on it. After about three minutes he started to squirm, which in his size made an impressive sight. I gave him an inquiring look.

  “Keep it simple, Julie. This isn’t a term paper on which you’re going to be graded. Just give me the general outline that everyone understands. I don’t want a thousand words or even five hundred. Fifty words will do it.”

  “I guess I’m trying to figure out how to work in the Pyramids and World War Two.”

  “Let’s begin with the framework. Once we have that, we can ‘work in’ anything we please.”

  “All right. Humans appeared here about what—five million years ago?”