Catholic cleric turned
Deep Ecology environmentalist novelist/
philosopher, author of Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael, and several other works, perennial favorites of
hip high school teachers and
college professors, and sometimes, their students.
The most important thing to realize is that neither Ishmael book, nor the Story of B, is intended to be factual. They are fictions, set in worlds much like our own, but not ours. Therefore, they do not contain, as a documentary book would, references, a bibliography, or supplimentary evidence. Assertions are made, experiments are detailed, names of civilizations and ideologues are dropped, and points hammered in again and again and again; at the same time, this is a Universe where gorillas can communicate telepathically, "bau" in German means "burrow" instead of "building", the Laurentian order hosts seminars of the rabidly Right deconstructionist movement (say what?), and a cleric preaching Green ideals in Germany is shunned as the Antichrist (Yeah, like that's gonna happen.).
His argument is, in a nutshell, that up until the advent of agriculture, human beings had a deep spiritual understanding of the Universe that allowed them to live their lives in the serene acceptance of What Is, and both consciously and unconsciously adapted to the greater good, not only of the tribe, but of the ecosystem. All this was true until the "Great Forgetting", when humanity forgot all this, discovered agriculture, at which point we decided we could take the order of things or leave it. The Leavers, as he calls them, kept to the tried and true ways of hunting and gathering, while the Takers pursued the single-minded program of "totalitarian agriculture" -- that is, growing food at the expense of everything else. This led to uncontrolled population growth, religious beliefs based on "waiting for someone else to save them" ("Salvationism") and hence, totalitarianism in all its other forms, and every kind of social, personal, and ecological evil. Now, we face a crossroads: either move beyond civilization into a new Eden, or die in a cultural collapse.
As proof, he offers the following thought experiment: confine a dozen breeding pairs of rats in a large box. Feed them, water them, and take out their litter. Notice how many rats you have after six months. Now take another dozen breeding pairs, and feed them twice as much. After six months you will have many more rats than in the first case. This is because rats instinctively know how to limit their numbers, and will only reproduce enough to replace themselves. In like fashion, human beings will prudently replace themselves under ideal conditions, but when fed, will reproduce beyond all bounds. Therefore, a rational and logical solution to population growth is to cut off all foreign aid, and find ways to limit our own supplies of food.
In truth, it is neither logical nor rational. Abandoning this thought experiment, and looking at the actual conditions, we see that weaker rat pups tend to get edged out, and die, if not of starvation outright, then of the accrued factors of scanty diet, weakness, disease, and violence. In some cases, starvation means sterility, which is arguably more merciful than dying outright, but still not the gentle hand of Gaia guiding Her creation. (Ah, but that's just the point! We can't face the truth! say Quinnites. It's not gentle, but we stupidly expect that it should be!) As a matter of fact, we have no evidence that anyone actually tried this experiment, outside of the pages of his books.
On the other hand, let's look at the situation of human beings. Looking at the CIA World Factbook, we see that the lowest fertility rate on the planet is in salvationist Italy (1.18 born/woman); Belgium, traditionally the best-fed country in terms of caloric consumption, is slightly higher (1.61 born/woman). Most other European countries follow suit, with fertility rates far below the replacement rate of 2.2 born/woman; the United States, horny bastards as we are, have a rate of 2.06 born/woman; the world average overall is 2.73 born/woman. As you can clearly see, the planet is not "spiralling out of control" in terms of fertility; by and large the population explosion is leveling off. Now, let's look at sub-Saharan Africa, whose animist beliefs allow them an intimate knowlege of natural law, whose food supply is scarce, and who are determinedly not developed: Uganda's women average 6.88 born apiece. Nor does this merely reflect child mortality; Italy's growth rate is 0.07%, the world average is 1.25%, but Uganda's growth rate is a staggering 2.93%. Many other developing nations follow suit; Afghanistan averages 5 children born/woman, with a growth rate of 3.48%.
So much for his theories of population growth. Now, for agriculture.
It's simply not true that agriculture only means growing food. Yes, StarLink is the product of "agriculture", but so is every cat, honeybee, and sparrow in North America. And so is every hybrid tea rose, every boll of cotton, every packet of herbal medicine, and most every sheet of paper. As a matter of fact, StarLink corn is grown to feed animals, edible ones, yes, but also such inessentials as "wild" birds at a feeder. Far from becoming less sensitive to the needs of other animals and plants over time, humanity has tended to become more so: few hunter-gatherers concern themselves unduly with the fate of plankton, or spend (as the Dutch once did) incredible amounts of capital on importing flowers. Having a few houseplants here and there in a highrise may seem like a pathetic attempt at recreating the Forest Primeval, but all those ornamental plantings, cactus, favorite philodendrons, and park trees tend to add up, as do pets, zoo animals, protected animal populations in parks and elsewhere, and the aformentioned rats. Far from becoming less sensitive to the rest of the Universe, we are ever more sensitive -- no matter how greedy we can be, we don't consider the Earth, and by extension, ourselves, the center of it, anymore.
Possibly his biggest gaffe is that he completely shoves evolution, or indeed, any kind of change outside of that brought about by human malfeasance out of the picture. As with the Christian viewpoint he so violently opposes, the natural world, once created, is eternal and basically static, with no change desirable or even possible outside of the drama of mankind's fall and redemption. One doesn't have to be a biologist or even a physicist to know that that simply is not the case: the real stakes in our environmental problem isn't "the Planet", or even "the ecosystem", but the unique balance that allows for our affluent state of human life.
All of which would be tolerable, were it not for the fact that Quinn is a terrible novelist. The basic plotline of two out of three of his novels (I have yet to read the third) runs Narrator ("A") hates Quinn-mouthpiece ("Q"), A is confronted by Q, A sees the error of his ways and converts, and then Q spends the rest of the novel imparting his wisdom in dialog form to the newly enlightened A. This would be OK, as well: some great literature has been written about the internal and external conflict and resolution that forms the conversion experience. Unfortunately, we don't get to see it happen: Quinn's narrators tend to be obvious straw men who are most often simply struck dumb by the mouthpiece's statements, rather than replying with embarrassing counterarguments, and whose conversion is achieved, in turn, in sudden flashes entirely devoid of any internal dialog whatsoever other than the equivalent of "No! It can't be! Wait, it must be! Hey, it is! Gee, I was stupid!". The rest of the novel is conveyed with long monologues by the mouthpiece to the by-now-adoring pupil, or Socratic dialog of the easily caricaturable kind where the teacher repeats the pupil's remarks as questions until the pupil's only responses are variations on "Yes", "How true", and "What wisdom!" When all else fails, he plays the "oppression" card, where the mouthpiece gets killed, thus proving that he was right all along. (After all, only good guys get assassinated -- right?)
What he does do, with great artistry, is con and flatter the reader into thinking that something urgent is being imparted that only they, and a small circle of like-minded friends, can understand -- a shocking, revolutionary tract that moves "beyond civilization" and even humanity itself into a cosmic consciousness, where all divisions between subject and object become dissolved.What they're getting is basically, what the progressive Establishment (if Al Gore is any indication) would like them to believe: the planet is doomed unless we all give up all civilized living. Since this will take some time, in the meantime we should submit to the wise control of enlightened elders who will do our thinking for us and micromanage our lives. Ho hum...