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I do not have internet in my apartment, and I love it. I have mobile data on my phone, and wi-fi hotspot that I use to connect to my computer when I need it, and that's it. And I love it. For a long time I've been feeling constricted by my internet addiction; and I do have an internet addiction. My phone is literally always in my hand; I check it every few minutes; I check it while I'm checking it. It's fucking bad, man. And because of that addiction, for a long time I've felt unable to, like, sit with myself and think about bigger things, bigger questions that have been on my mind -- and that's not healthy; I want to think about those bigger questions, to think and create something bigger than myself, and that's almost impossible when I'm doomscrolling on my phone all day or doing nothing but playing video games or, yeah, looking at porn. It's a distraction, and it poisons your ability to think. And, no, I'm not cut off completely; I still love chatting with my friends and playing video games and looking at porn, I'm not gonna give it up entirely -- but holy shit am I not upset about being forced to cut back on my usage of those things. It feels really freeing to read a fucking physical book for an hour. But really, the subject of this article is the book I just read this week, which re-reignited a lot of those big thoughts in my mind: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
Ishmael is a little hard to describe. It's less of a narrative and more of the author's self-reflection, or manifesto? put down on paper in the form of a dialogue between himself and the title character Ishmael, a 500-pound gorilla who put an ad in the newspaper searching for someone with "an earnest desire to save the world". With such a clearly insane prerequisite, the narrator answers the ad basically out of spite, to prove to himself that whoever this "teacher" is, they must clearly be some sort of charlatan, a New Age guru with empty platitudes and meaningless koans and nothing of actual substance to say. It must be bullshit. Right?
What follows, in his week-long span of learning under the guidance of Ishmael, is a genuinely quite unnerving cross-examination of the "culture" of modern Humanity, that being a culture of exploitation and hoarding of natural resources, disregard for the safety and health of the planet, and the "mythology" that tells Humanity that we are above the natural rules that govern all the rest of the animals with whom we share our planet. He doesn't offer easy answers, he offers no comfort, but he does suggest a different way of thinking about our planet and humans' place in it. I really don't want to give away too much of Quinn's ideas, because it deserves to be read; you should read Ishmael's words and work through them yourself, as if you're the one talking with him. It's honestly a transformative, sad, hopeful, infuriating, dare I say radicalizing book. At least, I wish it was radicalizing. I wish every human being could read Ishmael and learn from it, this book is that important to me.
If you're like me (and, if you've found this website, you probably are a little bit), you struggle with the nagging feeling that something isn't right with our society. Humans aren't meant to live like this, working demoralizing jobs and having our morality and individuality and critical thinking skills eroded by social media and marketing and advertisers from sunup to sundown. Ishmael doesn't promise to fix those problems, it doesn't even suggest it's possible, at least within our own lifetimes; honestly, it may possibly leave you feeling a little confused and nervous afterward. Do you know the phrase "You can't put the genie back in the bottle."? Ishmael is that, and it's worth it. It's uncomfortable and uncompromising, but it's an easy read; Quinn writes like a normal person, and even writes himself as quite clueless for the majority of the book. He's never moralizing or talking down to the reader, because he's in the same boat as all of us. The questions he asks in Ishmael are vitally important, and even more dire in 2025 than when it was released in 1991. I sincerely hope that anyone who reads this article will track down a copy (it shouldn't be hard to find), read it, and try to take it to heart. Whenever I have the money to do so, I fully plan to buy a few copies at a time and put them in those little "neighborhood library" cabinets, to try and get other people to experience these questions as well. I'm not bullshitting, when I do it I'll add a picture to prove it. I want this book to be read.
Originally published on August 21, 2025.