I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn

I would like to know the origins of the wisdom that permeates the book Ishmael. Who was your teacher? Or was it somehow channeled?

Categories: I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn|Tags: Education|

I don’t know how relevant or likely this is, but I was wondering if you ever considered the possibility of starting your own weblog.
With so many cheap or free options out there, like Blogspot or LiveJournal, and your inspired perspective on the world, it seems like it would be a wonderful fit, and a means for you to explore smaller ideas that might not make it into book form.

Categories: I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn, I Have a Question On a Specific Subject|Tags: Website, Writing and Publishing|

Daniel, I’ve got a million questions for you . . . such as why you mentioned in Ishmael and The Story of B jesus’ sermon on the mount(“behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not nor do they reap…”), yet then you include him with the “salvationists”? In the bible (read post-Ishmael) jesus describes religious leaders as “the blind leading the blind, and when the blind follow the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
It just seems to me that the ideas of jesus were used by religions/salvationists to serve their own needs and all the while mother culture tells us that salvation and jesus are one and the same.
Along the biblical theme Why no mention of john the “B”aptist? I understand now why jesus wished to be “baptised” by john the B, for when asked by the scribes who he was, john the B replies, “I am he who cries from wilderness.”
And thanks for going over the “great fall.” Powerful story i had never “saw” before.
But my real question is Have you ever realized how similar the concepts of Ishmael are to the music of the doors? “Cancel my subscription to the resurrection, send my credentials to the house of detention, i’ve got some friends inside… what have they done to the earth? what have they done to our fair sister? ravaged and plundered and returned bitter, stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn and tied her with fences and dragged her down, i hear a very gentle sound we want the world and we want it NOW!”
I hear parallels between Ishmael and much of the doors music. Is this a question you’ve been asked? Am i simply “seeing” Ishmael in everything?

Categories: I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn, I Have a Question About the Books/the Characters|Tags: Ishmael, Quinn's Motivations|

Was there a difference for you in the writing process when you wrote Dreamer versus writing something like The Holy or After Dachau?
There are books like your Dreamer and all the many, many Stephen King and Peter Straub mass market paperbacks that you find on the shelves and then there are books like After Dachau and The Holy—books that it seems like the author put more of himself into, that were more personal to the author.
Is there a difference in the writing process when you’re imagining up things for a novel like Dreamer and your more recent fiction, which seems like a different kind of thing altogether?

Categories: I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn, I Have a Question About the Books/the Characters|Tags: Quinn's Motivations, Writing and Publishing|

It’s been over a decade since Ishmael was published. My question is, how are we doing?
You once described the potential for exponential growth of the ideas in Ishmael. Has this been the case, or do you think there may come a time when “Quinn-changed minds” are relegated to the ranks of cultish idealists?
My friends and family have put me in such a category for years, and I’m starting to believe them.

Categories: Here's My Opinion; What's Yours?, I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn, I Have a Question On a Specific Subject|Tags: Beyond Civilization, Education, Political Correctness, Revolution|

While you were writing the Ishmael Trilogy, did you think/feel that the Copernican Revolution you were experiencing (and putting on paper) was not much unlike what Descartes, Hegel or Marx experienced as they produced volumes which would eventually create their respective cultural alterations? The self-evident difference being their volumes contributed to the Taker way and, well, yours are the antithesis thereof.

Categories: I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn|Tags: Education, Political Correctness, Quinn's Motivations|

Regarding the “lies” of Mother Culture, there is one lie (actually it’s just a widely held misconception) that I’d appreciate hearing your take on. A pervasive belief of our culture is the belief in (and reliance on) the Rule of Law.
Most people will concede that we need rules in order to have an orderly society, and that without rules there would be chaos. It was precisely a hundred years ago that the French mathematician, Poincaré, first discovered that even very simple rule-based systems were chaotic.
Today, most well educated people have at least heard of Chaos Theory (Edward Lorentz, James Gleick), Fractals (Benoit Mandelbrot), and Cellular Automata (Stephen Wolfram). It is not exactly a secret that rule-driven systems are now known to generate chaos rather than order. But it occurs to me that most people don’t fully appreciate the significance of those esoteric mathematical diversions.
For some 3500 years, Western Civilization has operated under the unexamined and unchallenged belief that rule-based systems are inherently orderly. Now we discover that this foundation belief is an astonishing misconception.
Have you spent any time regarding this observation? How might it be possible to reveal this (perhaps disturbing) finding to the lay public, along with some insights on how we might craft and introduce into our culture a more highly evolved and enlightened regulatory mechanism capable of delivering the “divine order” it promises?

Categories: Here's My Opinion; What's Yours?, I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn, I Have a Question On a Specific Subject|Tags: Anthropology, Religion|

I’m curious about the significance of the number thirteen in your work. I get the feeling that it is no coincidence that many of your books have thirteen chapters, end on page 413, and so on.
Thirteen is an interesting number in many ways, and I have a few ideas as to why it might be significant. Still, I am curious to see what you might have to say in response to this.

Categories: I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn|Tags: Quinn's Motivations|

After reading Ishmael, we were wondering how it fits in with Mr. Quinn’s political views and the current situation with the Middle East, and the other nations in the “Axis of Evil.”

Categories: I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn, I Have a Question On a Specific Subject|Tags: Christian, Political Correctness, Quinn's Motivations, Religion|

How are you different from the prophets who tell people how to live thier lives? I know it is not your intention to do so, but I feel like through reading other questions and talking with other Ishmael readers, that your ideas revolutionize the way we think about the world.
In turn, how we live is ultimately shaped by you. Gutting out our system of understanding and replacing it with that of Ishmael changes how we think and live, right?

Categories: I Have a Question About Daniel Quinn, I Need Some Clarification|Tags: Christian, Education, Political Correctness, Quinn's Motivations, Religion, Revolution|