In his novel Ishmael, Daniel Quinn talks about the destruction and salvation of the world. Through a newspaper ad, an unnamed narrator meets a telepathic gorilla, named Ishmael, who had placed the ad to find a pupil with the desire to save the world. Driven by his benefactor's obsession with Nazi Germany, Ishmael tells the narrator what he knows best: imprisonment (Quinn 24). Ishmael claims that humans in what are considered civilized cultures are prisoners of a history that holds the world captive. This large group, Ishmael calls “Takers,” while all others – usually hunter-gatherers of “primitive” cultures – Ishmael calls “Leavers” (Quinn 39). To save the world, Ishmael believes that the Takers must be freed from the history they are representing and return to a Leaver way of life. While it may seem to romanticize hunter-gatherers and seem to urge modern society to become gatherers, I feel that we can and are converting to a Leave lifestyle without necessarily becoming hunter-gatherers. According to Ishmael, the Takers are prisoners of a history that forces them to act (Quinn 37). The story begins with the premise that the world was created for humanity, an idea that humans did not become aware of until they abandoned their nomadic and hunter-gatherer lives to settle down and become farmers (68). Since the world belonged to them, humanity's destiny was then to rule and bring order to the chaotic world, but since the world would not submit, they dedicated themselves to conquering it (225). However, “…given a story to play out in which the world is an enemy to be conquered…one day, inevitably, their enemy will bleed to death at their feet…” (Quinn 84). The Leavers also played out a story: one that Ishmael claims gave rise to the birth of humanity... middle of the paper... reducing our carbon footprint (Why is urban agriculture important?). In developed nations, where education and birth control are available to most of the population, birth rates decline. Families may choose to have fewer children because they do not fear that their children will not become adults or that there will not be enough working hands to feed the family. As a result, population growth may approach an inflection point, moving from exponential growth to logarithmic growth and slowing the rate of deforestation in the long run. It may not seem like a revolution, but I think it's progress. Additionally, Korgen and White note a growing population of Americans urging the government to become a model for other nations (91). Doesn't that sound like the Leavers' version of humanity's destiny, which is to teach others a way of life that doesn't destroy the world??