The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was BORN to do.
- Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
The water we're swimming in
For the past two weeks, I worked on a project with a handful of colleagues at school. We discussed and created the beginnings of an interdisciplinary program. As an example of taking a big question and looking at it through different lenses, one morning we addressed the question, "What makes the climate crisis so hard to solve?"
We each took a couple minutes and listed out the various thoughts that initially came to mind. On my list of about 10 thoughts, the one that stood out as most impactful was the dissociation between the consumer and the producer - that we, as western consumers, have lost touch with those producing our products, where they are, what the raw materials were, where the raw materials were from, and what actually went into making these things. Capitalism works a lot better when we're close enough to relate to the producers.
We are consumers, and we live in a consumerist culture. That's a fact. And it's such a part of our lives that mostly we're oblivious to it and how it impacts our thinking.
Mental prison
The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and except for a handful of Leavers scattered across the world, the entire human race is now inside that prison.
- Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
At some point in our conversation at school, one of us used the phrase "freedom from consumptive thinking." I like that phrase. It's a reminder to me that we must in fact be constrained in our thinking by the culture of consumption in which we're living.
Maybe it's just fine to be constrained in our thinking in this way, but what might become possible if we free our minds and actions from the grip of the culture of consumption?
Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, was a powerful book for me when I read it sometime in college. I recommend that you check it out too!
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind.
- Marcus Garvey. Source.
