I had expressed to a friend how disillusioned I had become with the current set up of society. I felt trapped by the need to earn money to survive. I told him how it seemed to me to be so much more effort to have to work separately to earn money to buy food and shelter, rather than just work only to find food and build shelter directly. I hated having to take jobs that I didn’t enjoy just for the money. I would rather be able to do whatever I love doing without worrying about having to do what I must to gain money for things. When I told him all of this, he told me to read Ishmael.

Ishmael directly addresses these concerns and details how we have come to believe that we need to behave the way we do. But it invites us to change our perspectives to change our behaviors which will hopefully result in all of us being less stressed and more fulfilled and happier.

The one point that Ishmael makes that sticks out to me is how much work modern life has become. I’ve always seen that our attempts to make our lives easier have really made them harder. We create all this technology mainly to create more leisure time. But in order to obtain this, we have to earn money. To earn money, we work more. Most of us have very little leisure time anymore because we’re too busy working to earn it! All work and no play makes us all dull. This constant working results in aggression leading to violence, including homicides, and depression, leading to suicides.

I wouldn’t want to turn to a hunter-gatherer life because I wouldn’t hunt since I’m vegan and I don’t believe in killing animals for food. It also would be near impossible to do since there is very little food that just grows naturally. But I often think I wouldn’t mind farming on a small scale, just growing enough food for myself and my immediate family.

I love many modern things like TV and movie theaters; prepackaged, easily prepared foods and restaurants; hospitals and medical treatments; cell phones and email. But I often wonder what price I’m really paying for all of these things and if it’s worth it. If you wonder that, too, read Ishmael and it may help guide you in deciding.
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