Ishmael

I'm new here and this is my first post, so I will try not to make it sound too dumb.
I came across the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn a couple of years ago and have read it several times since. It starts with a man finding an ad in the newspaper for a teacher who seeks pupils interested in changing the world. Out of curiosity he goes to the address listed and finds that the Teacher who posted the ad is a giant, talking gorilla named Ishmael.
From here there really isn't much of a story to speak of, most of the book consists of long dialogues between the man and Ishmael. They talk about society, and what makes a certain society sustainable and another unsustainable. Ishmael explains how our culture is built on the idea of the war between man and nature. How in our society, we do not respect our environment, rather we look at the world in terms of how it can serve us. We take without ever giving back, and this means that eventually, there will be nothing left to take and our society will collapse under its own weight. The book explores a lot of ideas that we have adopted as a culture, and looks at possible alternatives which could mean a more fulfilling life for people and a more sustainable existance.
I assume that Quinn chose a gorilla as the teacher because he wanted a character with a perspective of society from the outside, one who could see our way of life without the biases that are taught to us through schools and the media. I love this book and I think it is one that everybody should read, if for no other reason than it raises some interesting questions about our way of life. If anyone here has read it, let me know what you thought.