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Any culture that takes just what it needs form the surroundings and leaves the rest is called a leaver culture. These people are very nomadic, such as the pygmies in the Forest People. Leavers move to an area that they fell they can live off the surroundings for awhile without using everything up. A few such leaver cultures have tried some forms of agriculture, though not the same way as the taker cultures have. The people of the leaver culture believe that they will only use what is necessary to keep the people of the village or community alive, with the bare necessities. Leavers do not concern themselves with the rest to the outside world; their main concern is the people of their village or community.
They are not preoccupied with anything else as the takers are. In the books Ishmael and The Forest People their are some similarities in the leaver culture each one explains. Both books talk about how the leaver culture is not determined to conquer everything, such as the takers of a taker culture are. Leavers live each day planning how they are going to use the surroundings to best suit their needs.
They plan how long they will stay in the area they are in, when the gathering is to get done and when it is time to hunt. There is very little interaction between the leavers and the takers, but there is some. The villagers or the takers have the ability to make metal spears and axes, which are valuable tools to the pygmies. In return for the tools the villagers give them, the villagers tell them to go and kill them an elephant which is a very dangerous task. If the hunt is successful the takers and the leavers will work together to cut up the elephant. The leavers will only take what they need to survive and the rest is given to the takers.
This brings another similarity in both stories, the leaver culture believes that it should only take what is necessary for survival, and leave the rest. Such as in the hunt I have just explained, they took only what was necessary to feed their group and left the rest to the villagers. They never take more than what is needed to survive. The book Ishmael suggests that when agriculture came, human beings lost their leaver traits. It seems to believe once our civilization, became an agricultural, people started to settle down and live in one place. Once this happened we became takers, but there was one problem.
We were using up all the resources without being able to restore them, thus calling for further expansion. As this further expansion occurred, our culture continued growing in numbers, therefore we needed even more food to feed the ever-growing number of people. Of course human beings cannot be satisfied with what they have, so we pushed technology across the world, influencing those cultures that didnt have the same advancement as us. Ishmael attempts to use a functional explanation to narrate the story of the taker culture.
It tries to focus on how a taker culture works, by explaining when there is an increase in food production; there will be an increase in population in return. It also explains the opposite, like when the population increases, food production must increase in order to have enough food to feed the ever-growing number of people. Ishmael also talks about how takers believe they should feed less fortunate cultures. These are some examples Ishmael uses to show the problems with the taker culture that cannot be found in the leaver culture of the pygmies. Bibliography:
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