Daniel Quinn

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Disambiguation: For the fictional character see Daniel Quinn (City of Glass).
Daniel Quinn

Born 1935 (age 73–74)
Omaha, Nebraska, USA1
Occupation Writer
Official website

Daniel Quinn (born 1935 in Omaha, Nebraska) is an American writer described as environmentalist1. He is best known for his book Ishmael (1992), which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991.

Quinn himself does not identify as an "environmentalist," arguing instead as his central thesis (and throughout his works) that humans are not separate from but part of the so-called "environment" (which, like "nature," is typically conceived of as being out there somewhere, and somehow distinct from us).

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[edit] Biography

Daniel Quinn studied at Saint Louis University, University of Vienna, Austria, and Loyola University, receiving a bachelor's degree in English, cum laude, in 1957.

In 1975, he abandoned his career as a publisher to become a freelance writer. Quinn is best known for his book Ishmael (1992), which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991. This fellowship was established to encourage authors to seek "creative and positive solutions to global problems". Ishmael is the first of a trilogy including The Story of B, and My Ishmael. The 1999 film Instinct started from parts of this story.

Ishmael and its sequels brought ever-increasing fame to Quinn throughout the 1990s, and he became a very well-known author to certain segments of the environmental movement, the simplicity movement, the anarchist movement and Anarcho-primitivism movements. Quinn has traveled widely to lecture and discuss his books.

Daniel Quinn offers readers a way out of the dilemma between inattention and blame. It is tough to hold the attention on global problems and still imagine solutions and reasons for hope. Some blame humanity in general, and claim "human nature" necessarily leads to species loss and habitat degradation. In the writings of Daniel Quinn, one can find a perspective that is pro-sustainability and pro-human, a refreshing antidote to views of humans as inherently toxic to the world.

While response to Ishmael was mostly very positive, Quinn inspired a great deal of controversy with his claim (most explicitly discussed in the appendix section of The Story of B) that since population growth is a function of food supply, sustained food aid to impoverished nations merely puts off and dramatically worsens a massive population-environment crisis. This crisis is born of a disconnect between local humans and the local habitat with its food. Quinn points out that ending this disconnect is a proven way to avoid famines.

Some say[who?] his argument is a modified version of Thomas Malthus, although Quinn states the problem is not a food shortage, pointing out an excess of food, which does not go to feeding those who are starving. He suggests that current population growth is unsustainable both for human beings and other species, and that apparently benevolent policies now will wreak havoc when considered from a longer-term view. As evidence of this, he points to the extinction of 200 species a day currently being caused by human beings. Quinn has also suggested that the low fertility rates of developed nations are irrelevant as counter-evidence to his thesis, because the food production of developed nations is what is driving population growth in the Third World.

Quinn repeatedly states in his books that he speaks to a population as a whole, and not some artificial subsection (say, Germany). His argument is simple: more food, more humans. Not necessarily more humans in Nebraska, for example, but wherever the extra food from Nebraska is going. His argument rests on the physical fact that more food eaten directly translates to more human mass. He specifically states that starvation in problem areas is not necessary, provided the humans are allowed to move to areas that can sustain them. He objects to nonemergency food aid that simply keeps an already unsustainable population growing in place, a place that will never feed that many.

In 1998 Quinn collaborated with environmental biologist Alan D. Thornhill, PhD, in producing Food Production and Population Growth, a 2 hour 40 minute video (later DVD) elaborating in depth the ideas presented in his books.

Quinn's book Tales of Adam was released in 2005 after a long bankruptcy scuffle with its initially scheduled publisher. It is designed to be a look through the animist's eyes in seven short tales.

Related authors include Jean Liedloff, Derrick Jensen, John Zerzan, Jack Forbes, Edward Goldsmith, and Fredy Perlman.

Quinn currently lives in Houston, Texas with his wife Rennie.

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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Quinn"
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