“The world was made for Man, and Man was made to conquer and rule it” (Ishmael). This identifies the topic of anthropocentrism …show more content…
Man has been trapped in a culture that is not suited for him and this is leading to their downfall. This is supported in Ishmael, “Your captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. … You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it? —your captivity and the captivity of the world.” (Ishmael). Daniel Quinn doesn’t put blame on Man, but instead puts blame on the culture that is being followed. This is emphasized by B, “It's not MAN who is the scourge of the world, it's a single culture. One culture out of hundreds of thousands of cultures. Our culture.” (Story of B). This ‘Taker’ Culture is based on totalitarian agriculture which means that people began managing the environment by themselves. The prospect of stepping out of nature is the problem according to Quinn. Human carelessness and priority for material gain is in turn harming the environment and the species occupying those habitats. This loss of diversity is one of the reasons for a possible collapse of mankind. Through the characters teachings in his novels, Quinn proposes mankind undergo a Tribal revolution which is a re-transition back to a collective tribal society. A tribal society is not based upon material wealth. This in turn solves the problems of global warming and deforestation as human production decreases. The people in this tribal society are known as Leavers, who simply don’t take more than they need. One of the main reasons that environmental issues have arose are due to excessive human use. “Totalitarian agriculture is based on the premise that all the food in the world belongs to us, and there is no limit whatever to what we may take for ourselves and deny to all others.” (Story of B pg. 260). Instead of nature, the people have