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"The question still hangs heavy in the air: If our behavior is not
making us happy, why do we act this way?"
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"Immediately after she left, I wished I had pointed to the sky and
repeated the Buddhist saying 'Don't look at my finger, look at the moon.'"
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-- Derrick Jensen (A Language Older Than Words)
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I have an earnest desire to save the world, and I hope
that someday you may too. Many years ago I read a book called Ishmael,
by Daniel Quinn, which was recommended to me by a friend of mine. I am sure
that this book and the other Quinn work that I read following it marked the
true beginning of my want to "save the world."
While I hardly feel like the Quinn works are the most influential and
important books I've read on this subject, they brought the focus that
allowed me to find works that were so maximally influential and important,
and so I recommend the Quinn works to anyone else looking for such a
springboard.
Some sites that revolve around Ishmael and other important Quinn
work are at:
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Because these ideas surround what is known as "systems thinking," it is
difficult to express them accurately and nearly impossible to express
them completely with a few websites and a book, however Ishmael and
the sites above (especially with the essays at
http://www.ishmael.org/)
are a good start. Often readers of Ishmael have a difficult time
trying to figure out where to go next. To them, I offer a reading list
of some other important works that should help them start to take on this
new vision as their own. I do warn though that some of these are very
dagnerous and will irreversibly change the way the reader will look at
everything around them.
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- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
- The Story of B by Daniel Quinn
- My Ishmael: A Sequel by Daniel Quinn
- Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn
- A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen
- The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen
- Insatiable is not Sustainable by Doug Brown
- Dancing With Mosquitoes by Theo Grutter
- The Hidden Connections by Fritjof Capra
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The science behind some of the influences of these works may be extremely
interesting to some readers as well. To them, I recommend a few books and
articles that should give some interesting insights into human nature and
earth systems. One or two of the below may be repeated in other lists on
this page.
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- <LINK> The oil we eat: following the food chain back to Iraq - Essay by Richard Manning <LINK>
(4 pages of the big practical picture)
- The Agile Gene (previously Nature via Nurture) by Matt Ridley
- The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Huamn Nature by Matt Ridley
- Genome by Matt Ridley
- The Hidden Connections by Fritjof Capra
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
- The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins
- Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity by William Durham
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
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A few movies which either relate to this vision or have borrowed ideas from it
also come to mind. Some of the websites above, like
http://www.readishmael.com,
will highlight other works (movies, Pearl Jam albums, etc.) that have been
directly touched by this vision or these books in particular.
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