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Title: Nature and Madness by Paul Shepard ISBN: 0-8203-1980-5 Publisher: University of Georgia Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Society is Immature
Comment: For those interested in studies of western culture's destructive relationship with nature, this treatise from Paul Shepard is certainly a rewarding read, though I recommend it with some reservations. Shepard starts with the Mother Earth concept and takes it to great psychological lengths, then applies this psychology to all of mankind. It's certainly a radical thesis, but it's worth thinking about. In what he calls variously ontogenetic regression, unaltered immaturity, and other labels, Shepard makes the case that humans have been torn from their true mother, the Earth, as the unfortunate outcome of modern civilization and social constructs. Thus, society behaves in pathological ways similar to what can be seen from children who are torn away from their mothers before the onset of maturity. Therefore, our society's attitude toward nature is perpetually immature, underdeveloped, and undernourished, with all the destructiveness and disrespect that results from such a dysfunctional childhood.
While this thesis has its various strengths and weaknesses that can be discovered by the reader, there's not enough meat to it to round out an entire book, even a very short one like this. Shepard's most glaring weakness is in psychology, as he offers little more than extremely basic Freud (with the associated sexism and dubious ideas on infancy and childhood), and then makes unconvincing attempts to extend this psychology to society as a whole. Meanwhile, Shepard's writing gets buried in academic dogma that is a real slog for non-professors who don't speak in non-stop technical jargon all day. Watch for arcane terms like methectic, kerygmatic, neoteny, or autochthonous; along with brain-drain sentences like "...amputate and cauterize pubertal epigenesis because they would further transform the relationship of the infant to its mother." Add all this to Shepard's rather self-righteous speculations and you are in for an exasperating read, although the basic thesis of this book definitely offers food for thought.
Rating: 2
Summary: Not his best
Comment: I am a big Paul Shepard fan but this book was a disappointment. The book starts off well investigating the thesis that natural selection has left the human mind with a set series of developmental events that must take place between childhood and adulthood by which the child comes to understand its place in both the human community and the natural world. This sequence was built into human psychology during hundred of thousands of years of living as hunter-gatherers. When we adopted large-scale agriculture a mere 10.000 years ago this sequence was radically disrupted as the sphere of the childs interaction with both the naturl world around it and it human community was contracted drastically. Many of the ills of modern life stem from this disruption.
Shepard presentation of his basic thesis is compelling. But he then goes on to psycho-historical explorations of how this disruption takes different shapes in different historical epochs. This constitutes the bulk of the book. The psycho-history pieces I found unsatisfying, full of very broad generalizations about the psychological effect of various cultural trends. There is no way to tell what is just psychobabble and what is not. If you are new to Shepard I would recommend the Tender Carnivore instead, or for a nice summary of his whole line of thought Coming Home to the Pleistocene.
Rating: 5
Summary: extending the legacy of Paul Shepard
Comment: This is a really impressive, powerful and inspiring book, which investigates neurotic behavior of the individual and collective societies as a result of alienation and separation fom our natural impulses, nature itself and our "co inhabitants" of the planet earth.Those interested in further investigating these themes are advised to check out John Zerzan's excellent "Against Civilization"(surely a pun on Huysmans classic portrayal of dissatisfied and empty urban neurosis, "Against Nature"), a collection of essays devoted to the "wrong thnking" and negative effects of civilization and the disastrous implications of man's separation from nature. In a similar vein, his "Elements of Refusal" should find a sympahetic readership amongst those impressed by Shepard's work. Gregdada from Korea.
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Title: Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence by Paul Shepard ISBN: 0820319821 Publisher: University of Georgia Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Coming Home to the Pleistocene by Paul Shepard, Florence R. Shepard ISBN: 1559635894 Publisher: Shearwater Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Only World We'Ve Got: A Paul Shepard Reader by Paul Shepard ISBN: 0871563967 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 01 June, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Others: How Animals Made Us Human by Paul Shepard ISBN: 1559634340 Publisher: Shearwater Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game by Paul Shepard ISBN: 0820319813 Publisher: University of Georgia Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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