Ishmael

Thom Hartmann recently reviewed Quinn's "Ishmael." Hartmann's own book "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight", touches on many of Quinn's ideas. Hartmann writes:

The story we're told about the human race is that our population was relatively stable for over a hundred thousand years, then slowly grew to around a quarter-billion about the time of Christ. A thousand years later, deep in the "dark ages," it hit around a half-billion. And, finally, in 1800, we hit our first one billion humans.
From there, our population exploded like cockroaches in a dirty New York apartment. Two billion by 1930. Three billion in 1960. Four billion in 1974. Five billion in 1987. Six billion around 2000. The human race has run amok on the planet, we're told, and nobody's sure why.
But there's a fundamental flaw in this story -- it's not the story of the human race. There are many cultures -- indeed, thousands -- around the world whose populations have been relatively stable for the past 50,000 years. (Most are now in decline, in fact, because of pressure from the rest of us.) The story of the population explosion isn't the story of the human race, it's the story of a single culture -- our "modern" culture of written language, agriculture, mechanism, and written law.
So what do those other cultures know that we've missed? How did they manage to live on the earth -- and included among "them" are all of our ancestors -- for over 100,000 years without nearly destroying the planet?
In "Ishmael," Quinn introduces the concept of two basic ways humans have historically organized ourselves -- what he calls "Takers" and "Leavers." Takers fundamentally believe that "the world is here for humans." Leavers understand that we're one species amongst millions who are part of the extraordinary and sacred web of life. We -- the culture that has grown to six billion -- are the Takers, and we began "taking" when we broke the first and most fundamental law of all life on earth...

For those who have not read "Ishmael" or Quinn's other works, you really are missing a great thought-provoking body of literature. Read it, think, process, discuss and change...

What if, instead of talking about "God," we were talking about everything being sacred, even the rocks being infused with the "fire of life"?