Summary Of Ishmael An Adventure Of The Mind And Spirit

In the book, Ishmael An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, Ishmael is a talking gorilla that believes that the world is in a very rough spot. He believes it is due to humans acting like dictators and destroying this world. His reasoning comes from his time with Walter Sokolow; Walter was his owner for a portion of his life. Walter decided to give Ishmael unlimited amounts of books, so he could teach him and the knowledge Ishmael gained were truly astonishing. He has an unbiased upon because he has read all types of literature and looked at all different aspects as well as not being human gives him insight on various types of human behaviors. He believes that we must do better in order to persevere what we have and if humans don’t, earth could

Those three reasons all lead to same conclusion that humans are at fault for all of the problems that the world is facing and they’re the only ones that can fix this crisis.
Firstly, Ishmael considered humans to be anthropocentric. Anthropocentrism definition from Encyclopedia Britannica is a “philosophical viewpoint arguing that human beings are the central or most significant entities in the world” (Boslaugh). In simpler words, humans are human oriented and only look at benefits of humans without any regard to nature. An example of anthropocentrism in the book is when he talks about his time in the zoo. Ishmael was stuck in a cage all day every day; he had people visit him, however he had no personal contact with anything of them. The only contact he had was with food distribution twice a day. That is no way to live; he isn’t acting like a gorilla should

Takers are individuals who take more than what they need and do not think about consequences that could arise from their actions. While, leavers are people whom only take what they need and think about their actions and how it could affect other aspects of life. Ishmael believes that everyone was a leaver before 8,000 B.C. because they were hunter and gathers and only got what they needed. However during the time of 8,000 B.C, the agricultural revolution happened, the agricultural revolution resulted in farmer’s ability to till the ground better and produce more food than they ever have before. This led to land never used for farming to be used for agricultural purposes as well as the beginning of large scale farming operations. This was the beginning to the destruction of the environment because the farmers did not consider the affects that over farming would cause. A major problem that over farming has caused is an increase in population, then the over farming isn’t enough, which them causes farmers to produce more and we go back and forth in a never ending roller coaster ride between increase in food supply and increase in population. The world has yet to meet our carrying capacity, and when we do the world will have a major population decline. The other major problem that over farming has caused is the destruction of our environment. The more food we produce,