Ishmael is the story of a young man, who is looking for something in his life but he is not sure of what that something is. He happens upon an advertisement that there is a teacher who wants a pupil to save the world. This interests the young man who meets with Ishmael, he learns that the world is in captivity and it is being destroyed, and to save it the people must be caged with the world being released from captivity. .
The teacher will tell him the story of how the world has come to be this way but that he will never look at life the same way. He gives an example to help the man understand his own misconceptions of his own dominance of the world. Only the ocean exists to the jellyfish that has no competitors in his example and they are on the top of the food chain and the world is the bowl that hold their existence. This is how man feels, that the world is made for him, and all of mankind is aware of this truth. Ishmael now tells him that man is destroying the world because he makes it different from the way it naturally is. In the end man will control all of the earth, the weather, etc. Then move into the universe until they have conquered all they can. Mans major flaw is that he doesn't know how he ought to live. .
He tells the pupil that he is apart of a group that they will call the "takers" and they split off of another group called the "leavers", when the agricultural revolution started. Because man is now a taker, he will inevitably end the world, but if he had stayed a leaver the world would remain forever. If humans and creatures follow the law they can live forever, but if they don't they will become extinct. All laws apply to all creatures on the earth and humans are not excluded. The problem is that humans go out of their way to stop competitors. Ishmael gives and example here using a different animal and how it would be if they were doing what the humans do.