"The city geometry delights only the untrained eye, to which the
subtle patterns of the vast viome are simply invisible, the
wilderness in disarray, a kind of pandemonium." With such excess of
lamentation, Shepard proclaims the sickness (madness) of Western
society, which he traces to the dawn of agrarianism and the settled
life. Hardly an original theme, especially for this romantic
ecologist whose earlier books (Man in the Landscape, Thinking
Animals) expressed similar concerns. For all the exaggerations,
however, Shepard does deal with a succession of pivotal times:
village life, the desert fathers, the Reformation, and
industrialized society. In each instance, he makes some
philosophically interesting points relating child development to
the prevailing religious beliefs, seeing both as reflections of an
underlying attitude of man toward nature. Thus, Earth Mother
religions dominated early agricultural settlements, and were
accompanied, according to Shepard, by "trophic" needs -
preoccupation with food and anxieties over nature's caprices. The
desert fathers are both the Jews and the early Christian leaders
who introduced paternalistic monotheism, substituting abstract
divinity for the concerete, interrelatedness of man with the
non-human world. The Reformation reinforced a dualism that combined
a condemnation of all that was natural with a prurient interest.
Finally, industrialism has substituted the artificial and the
mechanized, further alienating man from nature. Each stage has
succeeded in further infantilizing humanity, reducing adults to the
illusory omnipotence of the toddler. . . or creating monsters of
dependency. With allusions to Erikson, Eliade, George Steiner,
Perry Miller, and others, there are indeed occasional illuminating
insights or provocative ideas. But any scheme that presents modern
society in monolithic terms, snowballing downward on the basis of
synergies of religion, anti-nature ideology, and child-rearing
practices, topples from its own grandiose weight. (Kirkus Reviews)
Through much of history our relationship with the earth has been
plagued by ambivalence--we not only enjoy and appreciate the forces
and manifestations of nature, we seek to plunder, alter, and
control them. Here Paul Shepard uncovers the cultural roots of our
ecological crisis and proposes ways to repair broken bonds with the
earth, our past, and nature. Ultimately encouraging, he notes,
"There is a secret person undamaged in every individual. We have
not lost, and cannot lose, the genuine impulse."
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