Ishmael Chapters 5-8

Going back to reading Ishmael, after taking a break for Thoreau, makes me enjoy Quinn's writing style even more. It is drastically different than Thoreau's. These chapters are mostly about Ishmael showing the narrator that he really does know more about the 'story' that he realizes or is willing to admit. 

He begins by asking the narrator why there are things wrong with the world. The narrator's answer is that humans are bound to screw things up because they don't know how to live the right way. Then they go on discussing how to find the law that humans think doesn't apply to them, as it applies to all other creatures, and why they believe that. Ishmael makes a good point when he asks about why humans don't have a law that states how we ought to live. He questions why we go to prophets for answers instead of figuring out the law on our own. 

Ishmael goes on to compare would-be aeronauts learning how to fly to the way humans figure out laws and how they work. There is a lot of trial and error until we finally find something that works. The first aeronauts had to figure out how to overcome the law of aerodynamics and the law of gravity in order to fly instead of fall. They didn't necessarily know that was what they were doing but eventually they figured it out. The narrator says the same goes for humans. We don't know what law we are trying to overcome, just that if we do it we will have succeeded.

After a while of Ishmael trying to get the narrator to figure things out on his own, he seems to get frustrated that there is no progress. So, he sends the narrator home and tells him to figure out the laws on his own before he can come back. It takes the narrator a while to get an idea about what the laws are, but when he thinks that he has it he meets with Ishmael again. 

One of the main laws that they talk about is about agriculture. The way farmers kill off any animal, insect or plant that gets in the way of producing 'our food' is a large problem. It will eventually lead to disaster. Once we kill off all of our competition (and eventually, their food) our population will expand in a huge amount. Eventually there will not be enough food to support the population and there will be nothing left to kill off. What do we do then?

We are already experiencing this problem on an extremely small scale. We try to grow food to feed the starving people around the world and ship it to them or help them grow it where they live. However, if this continues and the population keeps growing, one day there will be no where else to grow and harvest food and there will be so many more starving people than there are today. We need to find a way to fix this problem before it escalates out of proportion.