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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
This book was densely written. I struggled to complete it. The overall message was engaging, though the author's experiences are diffucult to understand. In summary, everything is animate.
Whew, did I love Abrams 2nd great book!!!
“Our surmises regarding the subtle functions of neural processes within the brain are profoundly constrained by the fact that the brain did not evolve in order to understand itself. The complex organization of the brain evolved as a consequence of our sensorial and muscled engagement with the landscapes that surround us.”
― David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
This magician 'connected the dots' between deep ecology, phenomenology, anthropology, oral culture, the alphabet, and the DreamTime.
“Our surmises regarding the subtle functions of neural processes within the brain are profoundly constrained by the fact that the brain did not evolve in order to understand itself. The complex organization of the brain evolved as a consequence of our sensorial and muscled engagement with the landscapes that surround us.”
― David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
This magician 'connected the dots' between deep ecology, phenomenology, anthropology, oral culture, the alphabet, and the DreamTime.
A second and deeper dive into David Abram's fascinating philosophy. A blend of teachings on how to better apprehend the world around us, entertaining anecdotes and formal philosophy that is not only a pleasure to read, but a wonderful journey towards a better sense of who we are.
I desperately want to like David Abram’s Becoming Animal. I do. It starts out strong! But after a while the man becomes impossible to follow. Not because he's too intellectual. But because he's so rambly incoherent. He can't make a solid point on anything.
Three times now I've picked the book up and made genuine attempts to get through it; to understand the man, and his thought process. To listen to him. But the couple good quotes I have managed to pull from it each time really don’t make up for how much just reading it legitimately feels like pulling teeth without any kind of anesthesia.
That being said, I honestly don’t really know what I actually expected, considering it came from the glorious Neo-Animist “mastermind” that brought us such nonsense as:
Which is not only the worst take I’ve ever seen on “Mother Goddess” based Animist Ecology in particular, but also blatantly wrong on at least 3 different levels. Also just offensive coming from a Cis Male, honestly.
It simultaneously manages to be everything I hate about neo-Animism in general; everything I hate about modern Goddess-Worship; everything I hate about “woke Feminist men”; AND everything that makes me feel absolutely skeeved out to be a AFAB (but especially AFAB in any sort of Pagan space). And honestly, I’m really not here for it.
It didn't make me want to give his work a second chance upon figuring out it was the same person after my first attempt. Still, I’ve tried to give his work a genuine second (and third!) chance despite disagreeing with everything I’ve ever seen him ever say in interviews... But I just can’t do it anymore. At this point I give up. It's just not worth beating my head against his wall of nonsense anymore.
After years of trying and feeling out of place in Pagan spaces for not being Animist, I'm putting my foot down: Neo-Animism is trash. I clearly don’t jive with it- and clearly David Abram and I don't jive, either. Frankly I think he and Neo-Animism both should just be thrown in the gutter altogether.
Three times now I've picked the book up and made genuine attempts to get through it; to understand the man, and his thought process. To listen to him. But the couple good quotes I have managed to pull from it each time really don’t make up for how much just reading it legitimately feels like pulling teeth without any kind of anesthesia.
That being said, I honestly don’t really know what I actually expected, considering it came from the glorious Neo-Animist “mastermind” that brought us such nonsense as:
People always want to draw the line somewhere. But you see, it’s drawing the line at all that’s the problem: the idea that at bottom matter is ultimately inert, or inanimate. The word ‘matter,’ if you listen with your animal ears, is basically the word ‘mater,’ or mother. It comes from the same indo-european root as the word ‘matrix,’ which is Latin for ‘womb.’
We all carry within us an ancient, ancestral awareness of matter as the womb of all things, a sense that matter is alive through and through. But to speak of matter as inanimate is to think of mother as inanimate, to imply that the female, earthly side of things is inert, is just an object. If we want to really throw a monkey wrench into the workings of the patriarchy, then we should stop speaking as though matter is in any way, at any depth, inanimate or inert.
If we speak of matter as essentially inanimate, or inert, we establish the need for a graded hierarchy of beings: stones have no agency or experience whatsoever; bacteria have a minimal degree of life; plants have a bit more life, with a rudimentary degree of sensitivity; ‘lower’ animals are more sentient, yet still stuck in their instincts; ‘higher’ animals are more aware; while humans alone are really awake and intelligent. In this manner we continually isolate human awareness above, and apart from, the sensuous world. It takes us out of relationship with the things around us. If, however, we assume that matter is alive and self-organizing from the get-go, then hierarchies vanish, and we are left with a wildly differentiated field of animate beings, each of which has its gifts relative to the others. And we find ourselves not above, but in the very midst of this web, our own sentience part and parcel of the sensuous landscape.
Which is not only the worst take I’ve ever seen on “Mother Goddess” based Animist Ecology in particular, but also blatantly wrong on at least 3 different levels. Also just offensive coming from a Cis Male, honestly.
It simultaneously manages to be everything I hate about neo-Animism in general; everything I hate about modern Goddess-Worship; everything I hate about “woke Feminist men”; AND everything that makes me feel absolutely skeeved out to be a AFAB (but especially AFAB in any sort of Pagan space). And honestly, I’m really not here for it.
It didn't make me want to give his work a second chance upon figuring out it was the same person after my first attempt. Still, I’ve tried to give his work a genuine second (and third!) chance despite disagreeing with everything I’ve ever seen him ever say in interviews... But I just can’t do it anymore. At this point I give up. It's just not worth beating my head against his wall of nonsense anymore.
After years of trying and feeling out of place in Pagan spaces for not being Animist, I'm putting my foot down: Neo-Animism is trash. I clearly don’t jive with it- and clearly David Abram and I don't jive, either. Frankly I think he and Neo-Animism both should just be thrown in the gutter altogether.
Written by ecologist and author of "The Spell of the Sensuous" David Abram, Becoming Animal is a work of nature philosophy which makes the claim that much of modern societal problems can be traced back to us forgetting out connection to the wider planet, and the bodies we inhabit which mediate this connection. From this statement of a problem, then, Abram's book sets out to forge a solution through the elucidation of the transcendent in the mundane, and discourses on the relationship between us, consciousness, and the world. The end result is a book which reads as part nature writing, part philosophy of mind, and part mindfulness exercises, with the whole being a compelling and eye-opening read, if a little bit too far-reaching for my personal tastes from time to time.
In attempts to balance out my predisposition toward Transcendentalism in particular and nature writing as a whole, I often attempt to overcompensate by being ruthlessly critical of works even tangentially related. When I first picked up Becoming Animal, then, it was with the mindset that I would hone my abilities toward searching for weak points in the primary theses to see if I may destabilize the entire argument. That was my original intention, but as I read I found that, even when I encountered incongruities, there was far more I agreed with here than in any past nature writings I had read, possibly even in Emerson and Thoreau. Here, Abram seems to carry the core principles of that which can be found in Transcendentalism, while shirking all the unnecessary extremities. The result? A refined philosophical work that I would call (though Abram doesn't call it this) neo-Transcendentalism almost, and therefore showing a more-refined version of the belief system that so entrapped me years ago.
That's not to say that this work if faultless. Quite the contrary, I found later chapters such as "Sleight-of-hand," and "Shapeshifting" to be too far over-the-top to be believable, and their metaphors too heavy-handed. Rather, it is the fact that, in spite of these faults, this book still shines, that makes it astounding. A message rests at its core, a wake-up call that deserves to be heard by all and remembered by all.
In attempts to balance out my predisposition toward Transcendentalism in particular and nature writing as a whole, I often attempt to overcompensate by being ruthlessly critical of works even tangentially related. When I first picked up Becoming Animal, then, it was with the mindset that I would hone my abilities toward searching for weak points in the primary theses to see if I may destabilize the entire argument. That was my original intention, but as I read I found that, even when I encountered incongruities, there was far more I agreed with here than in any past nature writings I had read, possibly even in Emerson and Thoreau. Here, Abram seems to carry the core principles of that which can be found in Transcendentalism, while shirking all the unnecessary extremities. The result? A refined philosophical work that I would call (though Abram doesn't call it this) neo-Transcendentalism almost, and therefore showing a more-refined version of the belief system that so entrapped me years ago.
That's not to say that this work if faultless. Quite the contrary, I found later chapters such as "Sleight-of-hand," and "Shapeshifting" to be too far over-the-top to be believable, and their metaphors too heavy-handed. Rather, it is the fact that, in spite of these faults, this book still shines, that makes it astounding. A message rests at its core, a wake-up call that deserves to be heard by all and remembered by all.
It started out nicely, but then became preachy. This animist felt offended at times when the author insulted science. I moved on.
2 stars because the basic premise got me thinking about the world a little differently. But I couldn't stand his florid writing style. Made it about a third of the way through and then quit. Sorry, only a little sorry.