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A startling exploration of our human entanglement with the rest of nature. As the climate veers toward catastrophe, the innumerable losses cascading through the biosphere make vividly evident the need for a metamorphosis in our relation to the living land. For too long we've inured ourselves to the wild intelligence of our flesh, taking our primary truths from technologies that hold the living world at a distance. This book subverts that distance, drawing readers ever deeper into their animal senses in order to explore, from within, the elemental kinship between the body and the breathing Earth. Abram shows that from the awakened perspective of the human animal, awareness (or mind) is not an exclusive possession of our species but a lucid quality of the biosphere itself--a quality in which we, along with the oaks and the spiders, steadily participate.--From publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
What if everything is animate? The trees, the wind, the rocks? How do we behave differently when we
What if mind is not our own, but something we move through, part of the landscape? Have you ever noticed the ways in which different landscapes and environments affect you?
Although Abram doesn't touch on trends such as "fake news" and "flat earthers" (nor are we led to believe he would endorse such movements), these seemingly irrational concepts do tell us something about the modern human experience. Maybe our society has moved too far in the direction of trust vested in figures of authority (scientists, news agencies, politicians). Nationalist Luddism may indicate that there is a social undercurrent desirous of ideas that can be verified simply and profoundly with our own senses and capacities.
In a world that is increasingly mediated, there is some sense to coming back to an ethic of mastery of our own perceptive capacities, especially when we approach the exercise of perception as a mutualistic experience with an animate earth.
If you're looking for both a mature and magical way to rekindle your sense of wonder with the world, this book might be just the taste of it takes to enter such a world.