Civilization: The Leaver Way

In this chapter, both characters, the narrator and Ishmael share great ideas in their conversation. For example, because leavers live by the hands of the gods, they live in accordance to evolution. “Because they’re in a position to evolve. Because that’s where evolution takes place. Pre-man evolved into early man because he was out there competing with all the rest. Pre-man evolved into early man because he didn’t take himself out of the competition, because he was still in the place where natural selection is going on.” Ishmael–Pg. 238 Instead Takers are in a position in which they can’t compete because there is no competition for them (since they destroy every species before it becomes dangerous) resulting in no evolution at all. Since we take the roles of the gods there isn’t anywhere we can grow to.

Their conversation then leads to both Taker and Leaver premises. The first says that man was made to rule the world, on the other hand, the second one points out that man belongs to the world as any other species does. If you apply the leaver premise you receive evolution, otherwise you receive destruction. The narrator tries to show this idea in a short and concrete way by applying Adam’s story. “And there are two trees in the garden, one for the gods and one for us. The one for them is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the one for us is the Tree of Life. But we can only find the Tree of Life if we stay in the garden – and we can only stay in the garden if we keep our hand’s off of god’s tree.” –Pg. 241

Both the narrator and the reader ask themselves a question at this point of the conversation, if we want to follow the Leaver way of life does that mean we have to give up our way of life and become uncivilized? Ishmael has an interesting answer to this question in which he explains that one doesn’t have to be a herder-gatherer to be a Leaver. “As I pointed some time ago, human settlement isn’t against the law, it’s subject to the law – and the same is true of civilization.” Pg. 246 What Ishmael shows in a perfect way is that one can be an agriculturalist and by following the peace keeping law one evolves and instead of destroying the habitat you help it grow.

The narrator now asks what he and the reader are supposed to do with the information as Ishmael shows there isn’t much more to teach. He explains to the narrator that he should teach this information to the world through words which are the narrator’s profession. He is very pessimistic about the idea of teaching what he got from Ishmael but ideas we always thought impossible became true one way or another. This is the way the chapter ends and I look forward to reading the last chapter of this amazing book. It completely satisfies and exceeds it’s goal to teach the reader another way to see the world, another way to live life on the planet earth: the leaver way to a harmonious, evolving and ethical civilization.