Taker or Leaver?

I warned you that I wasn't done talking about my relationship with Ishmael, but after coming to the end of it, I'm almost hesitant to think about it anymore for a while. Almost.
According to the book, Man has lost touch with the natural world and the Natural Law. He has decided not to follow it -- to simply ignore it. Man has come to the conclusion that He is the epitome of evolution (well, that only goes for the ones who believe in that wacky concept of evolution). All agree that Man is the Lord and Master of all he surveys, and all the plants, rocks and creatures are our humble subjects (Bow down to us!) and that he can really do ANY thing to the world that he wants.
Ishmael purports a position that the fossils show that our ancestors boned it by settling down and letting that oversized head sponge really get to absorbing. About 10K years ago, JoMoe Sapien and his brothers and sisters sat on a rock that would one day be in Baghdad, and voted to become Takers (of everything they could get their hands on, and in astounding quantities), and the few poor souls who have since escaped enslavement by the resulting Europeans continued their three million year journey as Leavers. The Leavers have been traditionally recognizable by way of their scandalous grass and leaf wardrobe in innumerable, legendary National Geographic photo spreads, and their ability to live outside for over TWO days in a row.
For the last week, I have been trying to escape the inescapable depression that sits at the middle of the premise of Ishmael like a swirling vortex. The thought that we are simply "doing it wrong" -- an all-star cast of 7 billion Mr. Mom's trying to drop off the kids at school in the wrong direction -- terrifies me. That we are on a collision course with mass extinction, and that that would be the standard option for Maw Nature to exercise, is less than heartwarming bedtime reading. And the end of the book does little to ease the conscience. "Teach 10 people about what you have learned." That's all you got Danny Quinn? The best I've seen for this is a guy on youtube that's getting stoned people to read the book three pages at a time into the camera.
Anyway, no one is going to switch back to being a Leaver at this point, so what is there to do about this Taker Extraordinaire culture that we are camped out in the middle of? Since I am far too lazy to take up arms in violent revolution, and because the only thing I could do worse than farming is soldiering, I've ended up stumblin' and bumblin' right into the 'Teach 10' brier patch.
I get up in the morning and I teach a whole bunch of kids the best I can. Well, probably not the 'best.' if I was working on a powerpoint, or reading a little ahead, or figuring out how the associative property works, instead of blawgin' -- columning -- here, I could likely cram another couple of Great Lessons in each day. But at least we've moved on to the next stage after Ishmael, a book by a smartypants professor named Jared Diamond called Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Don't worry, I'm not going to spoonfeed y'all every book we read, so don't look for another book report next time, but luckily for the Lazies, the National Geographic Channel has your spoon if you just don't have time for the book. You can put the G,G,&S DVD series in your Netflix queue, and get all smarted up without having to lift your butt up off the couch.
Instead, I think it's time to get back into the South -- come to think of it, my class is also starting To Kill a Mockingbird -- Maybe I can slip back into some downhome columnizing next time. Hopefully, I can open with a joke about the trouncing of Alabama by the Georgia Bulldogs.