Daniel Quinn - Ishmael

“But that’s all right. If I pull something from our bag tomorrow that I put in today, you’ll recognize it instantly, and that’s all that matters.”

“Okay. I’m glad to hear it.”

“We’ll make this a short session today. The journey itself begins tomorrow. Meanwhile, you can spend the rest of today groping for the story the people of your culture have been enacting in the world for the past ten thousand years. Do you remember what it’s about?”

“About?”

“It’s about the meaning of the world, about divine intentions in the world, and about human destiny.”

“Well, I can tell you stories about these things, but I don’t know any one story.”

“It’s the one story that everyone in your culture knows and accepts.”

“I’m afraid that doesn’t help much.”

“Perhaps it’ll help if I tell you that it’s an explaining story, like ‘How the Elephant Got Its Trunk’ or ‘How the Leopard Got Its Spots.’ ”

“Okay.”

“And what do you suppose this story of yours explains?”

“God, I have no idea.”

“That should be clear from what I’ve already told you. It explains how things came to be this way . From the beginning until now.”

“I see,” I said, and stared out the window for a while. “I’m certainly not aware of knowing such a story. As I said, stories , yes, but nothing like a single story.”

Ishmael pondered this for a minute or two. “One of the pupils I mentioned yesterday felt obliged to explain to me what she was looking for, and she said, ‘Why is it that no one is excited? I hear people talking in the Laundromat about the end of the world, and they’re no more excited than if they were comparing detergents. People talk about the destruction of the ozone layer and the death of all life. They talk about the devastation of the rain forests, about deadly pollution that will be with us for thousands and millions of years, about the disappearance of dozens of species of life every day, about the end of speciation itself. And they seem perfectly calm.’

“I said to her, ‘Is this what you want to know then—why people aren’t excited about the destruction of the world?’ She thought about that for a while and said, ‘No, I know why they’re not excited. They’re not excited because they believe what they’ve been told.’ ”

I said, “Yes?”

“What have people been told that keeps them from becoming excited, that keeps them relatively calm when they view the catastrophic damage they’re inflicting on this planet?”

“I don’t know.”

“They’ve been told an explaining story. They’ve been given an explanation of how things came to be this way , and this stills their alarm. This explanation covers everything, including the deterioration of the ozone layer, the pollution of the oceans, the destruction of the rain forests, and even human extinction—and it satisfies them. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it pacifies them. They put their shoulders to the wheel during the day, stupefy themselves with drugs or television at night, and try not to think too searchingly about the world they’re leaving their children to cope with.”

“Right.”

“You yourself were given the same explanation of how things came to be this way as everyone else—but it apparently doesn’t satisfy you. You’ve heard it from infancy but have never managed to swallow it. You have the feeling something’s been left out, glossed over. You have the feeling you’ve been lied to about something, and if you can, you’d like to know what it is—and that’s what you’re doing here in this room.”

“Let me think about this for a second. Are you saying that this explaining story contains the lies I was talking about in my paper about Kurt and Hans?”

“That’s right. That’s it exactly.”

“This boggles my mind. I don’t know any such story. Not any single story.”

“It’s a single, perfectly unified story. You just have to think mythologically.”

“What?”

“I’m talking about your culture’s mythology, of course. I thought that was obvious.”

“It wasn’t obvious to me.”

“Any story that explains the meaning of the world, the intentions of the gods, and the destiny of man is bound to be mythology.”

“That may be so, but I’m not aware of anything remotely like that. As far as I know, there’s nothing in our culture that could be called mythology, unless you’re talking about Greek mythology or Norse mythology or something like that.”

“I’m talking about living mythology. Not recorded in any book—recorded in the minds of the people of your culture, and being enacted all over the world even as we sit here and speak of it.”

“Again, as far as I know, there’s nothing like that in our culture.”

Ishmael’s tarry forehead crinkled into furrows as he gave me a look of amused exasperation. “This is because you think of mythology as a set of fanciful tales. The Greeks didn’t think of their mythology this way. Surely you must realize that. If you went up to a man of Homeric Greece and asked him what fanciful tales he told his children about the gods and the heroes of the past, he wouldn’t know what you were talking about. He’d say what you said: ‘As far as I know, there’s nothing like that in our culture.’ A Norseman would have said the same.”

“Okay. But that doesn’t exactly help.”

“All right. Let’s cut the assignment down to a more modest size. This story, like every story, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And each of these parts is a story in itself. Before we get together tomorrow, see if you can find the beginning of the story.”

“The beginning of the story.”

“Yes. Think… anthropologically.”

I laughed. “What does that mean?”

“If you were an anthropologist after the story being enacted by the Alawa aborigines of Australia, you would expect to hear a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

“Okay.”

“And what would you expect the beginning of the story to be?”

“I have no idea.”

“Of course you do. You’re just playing dumb.”

I sat there for a minute, trying to figure out how to stop playing dumb. “Okay,” I said at last. “I guess I’d expect it to be their creation myth.”

“Of course.”

“But I don’t see how that helps me.”

“Then I’ll spell it out. You’re looking for your own culture’s creation myth.”

I stared at him balefully. “We have no creation myth,” I said. “That’s a certainty.”

“What’s that?” I said when I arrived the following morning. I was referring to an object resting on the arm of my chair.

“What does it look like?”

“A tape recorder.”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

“I mean, what’s it for?”

“It’s for recording for posterity the curious folktales of a doomed culture, which you are going to tell me.”

I laughed and sat down. “I’m afraid I haven’t as yet found any curious folktales to tell you.”

“My suggestion that you look for a creation myth bore no fruit?”

“We have no creation myth,” I said again. “Unless you’re talking about the one in Genesis.”

“Don’t be absurd. If an eighth–grade teacher invited you to explain how all this began, would you read the class the first chapter of Genesis?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then what account would you give them?”

“I could give them an account, but it certainly wouldn’t be a myth .”