When we first start hanging out with Ishmael in MOBY-DICK, we see that he, like everyone cursed to walk this earth, has preexisting notions or prejudices regarding people and concepts and things that he has yet only a shallow understanding of. This is most evident when he meets his future best friend, the harpooneer Queequeg, who is (at least initially to Ishmael) a bizarre savage from a faraway land. After spending time with him, and sharing a bed with him, and being spooned by him, and smoking a pipe with him, and communicating with him in a way that transcends mere language, Ishmael’s skepticisms of Queequeg’s culture and strange religious practices melt away. Even if he does not fully understand them, Ishmael nonetheless respects their obvious importance in Queequeg’s life.

All throughout MOBY-DICK there are moments like this, where Ishmael’s snap judgments are soon replaced with a sort of gentle humanistic view. It’s inspiring. I think Melville sums this up well in the chapter where Ishmael and Queequeg become bedfellows:

See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.

I bring this up because this is how I try to come at the whole world and everyone in it. Sorry! Maybe that sounds too idealistic or reductive to you, but it is true. I don’t hate anyone, not a single person, and I try very hard not to pass judgment on things that I do not understand. I want to understand them . . . am curious about them! I am, after all, an Aquarius . . . it is WRIT UPON THE STARS that I espouse peace and brotherly love. All people are my brothers and sisters.

AND WHAT OF RELIGION?

Is there anything more contentious? Well: Ishmael (and Herman Melville) has a lot to say about religion. I agree with every word. These passages from MOBY-DICK have and continue to encapsulate my feelings regarding organized religion and personal spirituality, whatever they may happen to be:

I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth—pagans and all included—can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship—to do the will of God? that is worship. And what is the will of God?—to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me—that is the will of God.

Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person’s religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, because that other person don’t believe it also. But when a man’s religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him.

I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.

I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;— but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike— for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.