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 More Amazing Parallels - Elusive Republic and Ishmael 
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Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:54 pm
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I know Ishmael is not "due" yet, but I thought I'd start rereading it (see previous strand). It is a great book to read at night before you go to bed -an easy read in the sense that it draws the reader in. But don't get the impression that it's "light" reading. The ideas are sometimes hard to accept because the book forces the reader to question the economic, social, spiritual, and moral foundations of our existence. At least the book affected me this way ten years ago, and I'm finding as I read it now that it still causes me to question.

In Elusive Republic the debate is between a Republic based on the classic Greek principles of simplicity, austerity, service, agriculture,and industry and a more modern, "civilized" conception based on manufacturing, commerce, and consumption. Both systems depend on an agrarian society to produce a surplus. Yet, the classic Republic is seen as more primitive. In the case of the post-Revolutionary debate, both sides see the impossibility of turning back time and returning to a more "primitive" state. The reactions/proposals, however, are different. Hamiliton and the "capitalists" embrace the notion of division of labor, manufacturing, and free trade. While Madison and Jefferson argue for an agricultural society where home manufacturing is encouraged, but wholesale production of luxury items is not. Whatever form the political economy takes (agro-industrial or plain old agro), it will be based on the exploitation of resources and living beings.

Enter Ishmael - the primate intellectual who advertises for a student who has an "earnest desire to save the world." Ishmael introduces the concept of Takers and Leavers or Civilized and Primitive. And when he does I'm thrown back into the debate found in Elusive Republic. Ishmael, however, charges his student to dig deep through time and uncover his (our) creation myth. In the case of both books, I see political statesmen and a gorilla's pupil analyzing the state of the world and attempting to save it from it's inevitable corruption/destruction.

What do you all think?

Just trying to puzzle it out on a Saturday afternoon,

Cindy :shock:

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Cindy Fowler

"Read it and weep!"


Sat Feb 25, 2006 1:06 pm
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