Revolution for Power

In chapter eleven there’s a deep and special conversation between Ishmael and the narrator. Ishmael, who is still at the circus begins the conversation by asking his student why he wanted to know the other story that was being enacted, the leaver story. He first answered that he was curious about their story but Ishmael, who wasn’t in a good mood said it wasn’t enough. The narrator finally finds out what Ishmael was looking for. “They failed because you can’t just stop being in a story, you have to have another story to be in.” –Pg. 214 You are always doing, thinking and acting which gives you a story.

Ishmael then begins the Leaver story through a set of questions in which he asks the narrator if he would like to live as a leaver before the industrial revolution. The narrator answers he wouldn’t but really doesn’t have much of an answer other than it wasn’t a good life. Ishmael looks for him to understand it through an example of the plain Indians, who already being agriculturalists, accepted going back to the gathering-herding way of life after the Spanish brought horses to America. With this example he answered that mother culture said these people were naïve for choosing that detestable way of life. The narrator is confused about where they are heading to, so Ishmael gives him an idea of what they are going to get at. “We’re on our way to discovering what lies at the very root of your fear and loathing of the Leaver life. We’re on our way to discovering why you feel you must carry the revolution forward even if it destroys you and the entire world. We’re on our way to discovering what you’re revolution was a revolution against.” -Pg.217

Ishmael states from the point that many of our modern Taker civilization live in poor conditions, similar to those of a jail with nothing to do or go. He asks our narrator if one of this people would live as a Leaver with their herding-gathering way of living. He answers they wouldn’t which Ishmael agrees with. “Takers believe in their revolution, even when they enjoy none of the benefits.” –Pg. 218 Ishmael asks his student to picture how this life would be. The picture our narrator gets is of a person totally focused and dedicated to gathering food. Ishmael totally contradicts this idea by showing him this is only what mother culture shows us to believe.

The next step of their trip to Leaver life is a simulation of Ishmael being a Leaver and the narrator being a Taker who is trying to convince the Leaver to not live in this way of life. Basically what happens is that the Taker tries to show that if food is scarce the Leavers won’t survive because they never harvested food to store for this situation. “You die because you are at the mercy of the gods. You die because you think the gods are going to look after you.” –Pg. 225 It basically shows that they totally depend on what the gods want for them, which is totally normal for Ishmael. Instead the Takers have plans and take control from the gods for their own good. “You should trust yourselves with your lives. That’s the human way to live.” –Pg. 225

Now knowing this they come up with new names. “The Takers are those who know good and evil, and the Leavers are…? The Leavers are those who live in the hands of the gods.” –Pg. 229 This is why we Takers fear living like the Leavers, because we want and seek control.

I hope to see in the following chapters how their conversations go to. I would like to see how Ishmael put’s all of these concepts together and how the story develops and how we can live more consciously.