If McCandless Read Ishmael....

i think its very easy for each of us to sit here after reading ishmael and criticize it as being overly simplistic, or a waste of time because we should be "doing" and not reading, writing, or discussing. The simple problem with this theory is that the vast majority of our society has no awareness of what "we"(the people who have read these types of books and hold these types of views) mean by doing. The average person never, to any significant depth or for any significant amount of time, actually contemplates what the best way is for humanity to move forward. They simply accept the blueprint laid out for them by society, and spend their lives in a quest for material goods. For this reason, it is extremely important that there are people who are not simply "doing". Humanity needs people who are willing to put this type of thought-process into a medium that is readily accessible to the general public, and every person who has written here that ishmael or into the wild or any other book has been life changing for them validates the worth of this process. In a sense, simply "doing" , while most likely the best path to personal freedom and happiness, is somewhat selfish in that the individual puts forth little or no effort to aid the rest of humanity in obtaining this same degree of freedom and happiness.