Are humans the masters of this world, or simply one of its many inhabitants? This question, which might seem straightforward, sits at the heart of some of the most pressing philosophical and ecological debates of our time. For centuries, a dominant strand of thinking has positioned humans above the rest of nature – as its rulers, its engineers, its rightful owners. But a growing body of philosophy challenges this assumption at its core, arguing that humans are not made for themselves, but made for the world. One of the most compelling articulations of this challenge comes from novelist and philosopher Daniel Quinn, whose work forces us to confront a question we rarely dare to ask: what if the story we’ve been telling about humanity’s place in the universe is simply wrong?
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The story we live by
Every culture operates on the basis of a foundational story – a set of assumptions about who we are and what we’re here to do. In the Western industrialized world, this story goes something like this: humans are the pinnacle of evolution, the planet was made for us, and our destiny is to grow, expand, and conquer nature through the power of technology and reason. This narrative is so deeply embedded that most people never consciously register it. It simply feels like reality.
Anthropocentrism – the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity on the planet – has deep roots in Western thought. Ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle held that humans are superior to all other animals due to our reason and capacity for abstract thought. Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas reinforced this view by arguing that humans, possessing immortal souls, were exceptional and distinguished from all other creatures. René Descartes, the 17th-century father of modern philosophy, framed the world as split between the realm of mind and that of inert matter, viewing non-human animals as mere mindless machines to be mastered and exploited at will. This philosophical lineage created the intellectual scaffolding for a civilization that treats the natural world as a resource to be used rather than a community to belong to.
But Quinn, writing in his landmark 1992 philosophical novel Ishmael, offers a radically different story – one that questions whether this dominant narrative has ever been true, or whether it has simply been a dangerous myth.
Takers and Leavers: two visions of humanity
Ishmael is structured as a Socratic dialogue between an unnamed narrator and a captive gorilla named Ishmael, who has spent years developing a philosophy about humanity’s relationship with nature. At the core of Ishmael’s teaching is a distinction between two types of human cultures, which he calls Takers and Leavers.
The Taker worldview
Taker culture, the dominant culture since the widespread adoption of agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago, centers around the belief that humans are above other organisms. Takers believe that people are meant to innovate, expand, and dominate the planet. The world, in the Taker view, belongs to humanity. Natural forces are obstacles to be overcome, competing species are nuisances to be eliminated, and the food supply is something to be controlled and owned. Takers also believe that the course of civilization – despite its problems – represents inevitable progress.
Quinn argues that this worldview is not merely a cultural preference but a mythology with catastrophic consequences. The Takers enact a difficult, antagonistic story that ultimately makes life not easier, but more anxiety-ridden. Quinn suggests that humans realize subconsciously that they are living a life without great meaning, and hence fall prey to things like greed and mental illness. The Taker path, in Quinn’s view, is not just bad for the Earth – it is bad for the humans living it.
The Leaver worldview
Leavers, by contrast, are members of tribal and indigenous cultures who live according to the laws of nature rather than in defiance of them. Leavers don’t view themselves as inheritors of the Earth and don’t take any more than they need to live. They do not see themselves as the world’s owners or managers. Instead, they understand that their survival is bound up with the health of the ecosystems they inhabit.
This is not a romantic portrait of simple tribal life. It is a philosophical position: that living within natural laws – working with ecological limits rather than against them – is not a sign of primitiveness, but of wisdom. As Quinn argues, it is the Taker cultures that have misread the evolutionary script, not the Leavers.
The myth of human supremacy
At the philosophical core of Quinn’s argument is a rejection of what might be called human supremacy – the idea that Homo sapiens occupies a uniquely privileged position in the order of existence. In the 1970s, scholars working in the emerging field of environmental ethics questioned whether humans should be considered superior to other living creatures, and suggested that the natural environment might possess intrinsic value independent of its usefulness to humankind. The resulting philosophy of biocentrism regards humans as one species among many in a given ecosystem, holding that the natural world has worth beyond what it provides to us.
Quinn’s contribution goes further. He argues that the myth of human supremacy is not merely philosophically flawed – it is evolutionarily dangerous. Takers operate under widely accepted but hidden premises of mythical thinking: that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, that the world was made for humans, and that this destiny involves conquering and ruling the world to bring about a paradise. Quinn’s point is that these are not facts – they are stories. And stories can be changed.
This resonates with broader philosophical currents. Deep ecology, the environmental philosophy developed by Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss, argues that the natural world is a complex of relationships in which the existence of organisms is dependent on the existence of others within ecosystems, and that non-vital human interference with the natural world poses a threat not only to humans but to all organisms. Næss himself wrote that the attempt to establish a master-slave relationship between humans and nature has contributed to the alienation of humans from themselves.
Humans as part of an ongoing evolution
One of Quinn’s most philosophically important arguments concerns evolution. The Taker belief that humans are the final, definitive product of evolution – the point toward which all of natural history has been building – is, for Quinn, both scientifically and philosophically mistaken. Ishmael tells his student that humans can adopt an alternative story, one that has humans as the first, not the final, fully conscious creature – one that supports evolution and diversity rather than foreclosing it.
This is a significant philosophical reorientation. If humans are not the endpoint of evolution but a participant within it, then our responsibilities change entirely. We are no longer managers or rulers; we are members. The process of evolution involves a series of natural changes that cause species to arise, adapt to the environment, and become extinct. All organisms have originated through the process of biological evolution – and humans are no exception to this story, no matter how sophisticated our tools or complex our cultures.
The science of interdependence reinforces this. Earth’s organization should be viewed as an ongoing co-evolution process of countless agents – from the first anaerobic microbes to contemporary ecosystems – sustained by innumerable relations and processes, entangled in a way that modification of one impacts many others. Humans are not outside this web. We are a thread within it.
The philosophical premise: humans are made for the world
The basic philosophical premise Quinn advances is deceptively simple: humans are not the world’s conquerors. We are its creatures. The world does not exist for us; we exist within it, as one expression of a larger, living process. Quinn proposes that we treat the world as if we belong to it, rather than it belonging to us.
This is not anti-human. It does not require abandoning civilization or technology. What it does require is a fundamental shift in the story we tell ourselves. Ishmael highlights the interconnectedness of all life and the need for a new cultural mythology that respects the natural world. Such a mythology would not place humans at the top of a hierarchy, but within a community – a community that includes rivers, forests, soils, and species whose existence is as philosophically significant as our own.
Many native and indigenous cultures have traditional beliefs in which humanity is viewed as part of nature, maintaining that we come from nature and that the natural world is sacred. What Quinn does is articulate this ancient wisdom in a language that speaks to the modern philosophical tradition – and challenge us to take it seriously.
What would it mean to live as Leavers today?
Quinn does not call for a return to hunter-gatherer life. His argument is cultural and philosophical, not prescriptive in that narrow sense. What he advocates is a change in the story – specifically, a rejection of the myth that growth, control, and domination are the natural destiny of the human species.
In practical terms, this might mean reorienting economic and political systems around ecological limits rather than treating those limits as problems to be engineered away. It means, as economist and philosopher Charles Eisenstein argues, viewing the Earth not as a dead rock with resources to exploit, but as a living system whose health depends on the health of its organs and tissues – its wetlands, forests, seagrass, mangroves, fish, and corals. It means, as deep ecology advocates, restructuring modern societies to reflect the inherent worth of all living beings, not just the instrumental value they provide to humans.
Most fundamentally, it means accepting that human flourishing and planetary flourishing are not competing goals. They are the same goal. Humans are at their best in relation to others – a wide variety of others, human and nonhuman alike. A civilization built on the premise that we are made for the world, not the world for us, would look very different from the one we currently inhabit. But according to Quinn – and to the philosophical tradition that his work draws from – it would also be a civilization that could actually survive.
What do you think? If the story we tell about humanity’s place in the world shapes how we treat it, what kind of story would you want the next generation to grow up with? And is it possible to live like a Leaver – honoring the laws of nature and recognizing our place within the web of life – without abandoning the material comforts that Taker civilization has made possible?
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism
- https://theconversation.com/humanity-and-nature-are-not-separate-we-must-see-them-as-one-to-fix-the-climate-crisis-122110
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel)
- https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/ishmael-1992-by-daniel-quinn/
- https://www.gradesaver.com/ishmael/study-guide/quotes
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/anthropocentrism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology
- https://humanorigins.si.edu/education/introduction-human-evolution
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10626422/
- https://learningresources.sjrstate.edu/blogs/campusbookclubs/bookblog/ishmael-by-daniel-quinn
- https://livingarchitecturemonitor.com/articles/five-reasons-why-we-are-not-separate-from-nature-sp23
- https://humansandnature.org/interdependency/
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