Ishmael Responses
Response 9/22
The ending really got me mad. I didn’t think Ishmael had to die in the end. I do think the author did this on purpose though. To me it gave me two thoughts to think about. Is there hope for man after all Ishmael taught? Is mankind even worth the effort to save them at all? Ishmael death just represented all the stupidity and ignorance of the human race. They just killed him because they probably didn’t want to take care of him. Apart from that they just throw him in a roadkill furnace. It was a disrespectful way to honor such a magnificent creature. So after all Ishmael taught to the his pupil, is there a chance to save the human race? His pupil has to the job of convincing the whole world and teaching the whole world how the human race is suppose to work like. Does even matter though? After Ishmael pupil’s finally dies, is the human race just going to go back to how things are? The ending just leaves much more questions for me, rather than satisfaction.
Response 9/18
I do agree to bits of what the author said about culture in Ishmael. I do agree that it’s knowledge that is being passed down to generations. Each generation has it’s role to contribute to that culture and fill the section of time with their own knowledge. What’s that knowledge even good for though? I feel that it’s necessary knowledge to make our lives easier and to make us believe that there is still hope for us humans. As soon as we start thinking about cultures it becomes a subject in the pass. It’s always knowledge we can gather in the past, good knowledge. Knowledge that makes people believe that us as the human race, still have a chance. In reality though, I feel like everyday it becomes less and less until we eventually forget that culture and possibly start one that isn’t full of good knowledge.
Response 9/19
I’m not going to lie, but it became very confusing how Ishmael and his successors came to idea of creation will end with man. For what I understand, mankind believes the world belongs to man. In religions and other cultures that where the idea comes from and that’s mainly why we live our lives the way we do. According to book Ishmael, I believe it sums up that man is the only kind of successor. There will be no successor to man. The whole thing, which I guess means “life”, comes to an end with us. So were doing pretty much doing a good job of making sure of that. I guess many people aren’t aware of that, and I don’t even know if there is going to be a time when they everyone “wakes up”. Let’s just hope so for now.
Response 9/3
From what I can tell, we create “Mother Culture”. It’s a rule or a way of life we created and have passed on through generations. From what I can understand “Mother Culture” is seen the same way from everybody. As soon as you're born you're taught to walk, speak, and play. As a child you start to learn more things such as religion, gender, and races. As a teenager you learn even more such as love and school. When your finally an adult you learn about work, money, and family. Then you become old and die. This is “Mother Culture”.
It’s a cycle repeated through generations. This is the way you have to live life no matter what. You finally start to go crazy as soon as you realize you are living in this cycle, a never ending loop. If you’re brave enough step out of this cycle, you are shame upon. Your classified crazy according to the social class in that generation. You are forced to follow it in todays society if you want to “live a good life”.
Response 9/4
It’s sometimes very hard to say for sure that our planet wasn’t created for us “man”. It surely feels like it, but for some reason I just can’t truly believe that it was created just for mankind. I still believe the process of evolution is still happening. Maybe in a 1,000 years mankind might be different than what we imagine as mankind. I feel like we just got lucky in the process of evolution and became a very unique organism than others. If the world was just created for us, then why do other animals exist? Why is evolution still happening? Why are we wiping ourselves out? Why is there other planets in the universe? None of that stuff wouldn’t matter because we know the world is just for us. Many of us say we are still on the path to the destruction in the human race. So is that our fault? Or was is simply because the world isn’t meant just for us? Who knows what could happen in 1,000 years or million years? For all I know aliens could show up on flying dinosaurs and wipe us out. Still... I don’t believe the world is just for us and if it is, then we don’t really deserve it.
Response 9/8
It’s very hard to say that man has created a law. I think Mother Culture might be the fake law that everyone has created without knowing. Even though we as humans understand over laws such as the gravity law, I don’t think we do a law to follow. Since each person in this world is born differently everybody behaves differently. Since everybody behaves differently, nobody can agree to a law.
I think rules such the ones we have like no killing or robbing, are rules to guide us through life. I think if we did have some sort of law we all followed then it might be boring. I think nobody would any progress as the human race and learn from mistakes. You can’t stop believin gravity is a law, but with us you believe in what you want.