Ishmael

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate November 2001

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Ishmael Paper Discovering Why We Believe What We Do and How We Are Destroying the World.

Have you ever wondered how we came to be on this Earth? Of course, it is only natural. The first thing that comes to our minds in the idea of God creating us. The second alternative thing that comes to mind is we have evolved into what we are today. In Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael, the narrator in the book and Ishmael a Gorilla explore these issue in great detail. Ishmael is trying to teach the narrator which in a sense becomes us how to save the world from being destroyed by ourselves. Mother Culture as it is referred to in the book teaches us what to believe through a process known as socialization. The Taker and Leaver culture have been socialized in completely different ways. The writer of this paper contends that both the Taker and Leaver culture were socialized into believing what they do by analyzing what Taker's are socialized to believe, what Leavers are socialized to believe, and how Takers are destroying the world.

The Taker culture nurtures their young from the time they are born. They are constantly teaching them new things and how to react and handle the world around them. They also pass on traditions from past generations that this is a sort of accumulation of knowledge. From the time one of our young is old enough to talk and go to school everyone around them addresses their curious questions about how things came to be in the same way. "God put us hear to rule the Earth"�, or we evolved. All of us just assume that we are here because we are meant to be and there is no one to contest that. We consider ourselves...