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This garbage is barely worth my time to review. I'm embarrassed to publicly admit I read this book.
The good:
- fantastic core message: we should question the dominant messages we get from our culture
- accurate identification (in my opinion) of the fact that a lot of Western culture's problems have to do with the fact that humans see ourselves as separate from and above the rest of the natural world
The bad:
- written in an extremely obnoxious way that's meant to mimic the Socratic method but is really just the author pushing his weird unfounded personal beliefs on his audience
- blames all society's problems on the agricultural revolution which is only backed up by hand wavey suppositions pretending to be deep fundamental truths
- the book's whole argument hinges upon 1. a misunderstanding of basic ecological principles and 2. a super simplistic interpretation of Genesis
Maybe I'm biased because of any or all of the following:
- it seems really obvious to me that the problems Quinn highlights here aren't due to the agricultural revolution but to capitalism combined with social, cultural, and political systems of power and oppression
- the "noble savage" trope that Quinn worships is a part of said systems of power and oppression (e.g. settler colonialism)
- easily debunkable misinformation about basic population dynamics makes me angry, especially when it's used to support morally offensive views about "population control" in developing countries
- this book is billed as "philosophical" but it's literally not...this is what I imagine a precocious middle schooler thinks philosophy is
Maybe this insufferable book was culturally tolerable thirty years ago...but even if that's the case we should leave it buried in the past. Don't read this.
The good:
- fantastic core message: we should question the dominant messages we get from our culture
- accurate identification (in my opinion) of the fact that a lot of Western culture's problems have to do with the fact that humans see ourselves as separate from and above the rest of the natural world
The bad:
- written in an extremely obnoxious way that's meant to mimic the Socratic method but is really just the author pushing his weird unfounded personal beliefs on his audience
- blames all society's problems on the agricultural revolution which is only backed up by hand wavey suppositions pretending to be deep fundamental truths
- the book's whole argument hinges upon 1. a misunderstanding of basic ecological principles and 2. a super simplistic interpretation of Genesis
Maybe I'm biased because of any or all of the following:
- it seems really obvious to me that the problems Quinn highlights here aren't due to the agricultural revolution but to capitalism combined with social, cultural, and political systems of power and oppression
- the "noble savage" trope that Quinn worships is a part of said systems of power and oppression (e.g. settler colonialism)
- easily debunkable misinformation about basic population dynamics makes me angry, especially when it's used to support morally offensive views about "population control" in developing countries
- this book is billed as "philosophical" but it's literally not...this is what I imagine a precocious middle schooler thinks philosophy is
Maybe this insufferable book was culturally tolerable thirty years ago...but even if that's the case we should leave it buried in the past. Don't read this.