The Only World We've Got : A Paul Shepard Reader

Rating:
Summary: Learning to sing as sweetly as a bear.
Review: Have you ever wondered why we dream of animals or see them in the clouds and stars (e.g., Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, and Bootes)? Have you ever wondered why Paleolithic men decorated their caves with animal art? Have you ever wondered why we share our homes with animals, entertain ourselves at zoos, or why some of us eat meat? Or have you ever wondered why "mass society delivers itself into military hands" (p. 138), or seeks comfort in "massive therapy, escapism, intoxicants, narcotics, fits of destruction and rage, enormous grief, subordinations to hierarchies that exhibit callow ineptitude at every level, and perhaps worst of all, a readiness to strike back at a natural world that we dimly perceive as having failed us" (p. 156)? Ecophilosopher, Paul Shepard addresses all of these questions, and more, in this fascinating Sierra Club Reader. "The generic human in us knows how to dance the animal, knows the strength of clan membership and the profound claims and liberation of daily rites of thanksgiving," Shepard writes in this book's Preface. "Hidden from history, this secret person is undamaged in each of us and may be called forth by the most ordinary acts of life" (p. xx).

A friend recommended this book to me as a good introduction to Paul Shepard's ten other books. In the first Chapter, "The Eye," Shepard studies the human eye and how it differentiates us from species. In Chapter Two, "On Animals Thinking," he argues that the human mind "and its organ, the brain, are in reality that part of us most dependent on the survival of animals," that "living animals are a necessary part of the mental growth of humans" (pp. 22-3). Whereas Darwin "rediscovered" in 1859 that man was an animal, Shepard's book considers what animals tell us most about ourselves (p. 107). "Physiologically," he writes in Chapter Five, "from the neck down, so to speak, [man] is an omnivore whose diet is about three-quarters plant products, like a bear or boar. By looking only at his gut one might predict that he is a kind of oversized raccoon. Yet the patterns of life set by hunting-gathering peoples are centered on the spiritual and ceremonial eating of large mammals. Behavior and culture are more wolflike than bearlike" (p. 113). Men "wolf" their food, as they say. "Man is a fat-making, fair-weather carnivore who can eat more than three pounds of meat at a sitting. He is also a primate snacker, a connoisseur of ripe and unripe berries, of frogs, crabs, and insects" (p. 131). Like animals, "men need, in their nonhuman environment, open country with occasional cover, labyrinthe play areas, a rich variety of plants, animals, rocks, stars; structures and forms numbering into the thousands, initiation solitude, transitional and holy places, a wide variety of food organisms and diversity of stone and wood, nearby fresh water, large mammalian herds, cave and other habitation sites, and so on" (p. 135).

In Chapter Six, Shepard examines how we have "broke bonds with the earth, soil and nature," and how the human spirit has become dissociated "from seasons and celestial rounds" (p. 149). As a result, civilized culture has become stuck in immaturity; "to remain a child," Shepard observes, "is not an appropriate individual destiny, nor is it a norm for our species" (p. 160). He encourages us to free ourselves from our cultural immaturity.

Nature writer, Barry Lopez calls Shepard's writing "endlessly stimulating." Paul Shepard was an original thinker, and this brilliant book offers an eye-opening and imaginative look at ourselves, and "the only world we've got."

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Learning to sing as sweetly as a bear.
Review: Have you ever wondered why we dream of animals or see them in the clouds and stars (e.g., Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, and Bootes)? Have you ever wondered why Paleolithic men decorated their caves with animal art? Have you ever wondered why we share our homes with animals, entertain ourselves at zoos, or why some of us eat meat? Or have you ever wondered why "mass society delivers itself into military hands" (p. 138), or seeks comfort in "massive therapy, escapism, intoxicants, narcotics, fits of destruction and rage, enormous grief, subordinations to hierarchies that exhibit callow ineptitude at every level, and perhaps worst of all, a readiness to strike back at a natural world that we dimly perceive as having failed us" (p. 156)? Ecophilosopher, Paul Shepard addresses all of these questions, and more, in this fascinating Sierra Club Reader. "The generic human in us knows how to dance the animal, knows the strength of clan membership and the profound claims and liberation of daily rites of thanksgiving," Shepard writes in this book's Preface. "Hidden from history, this secret person is undamaged in each of us and may be called forth by the most ordinary acts of life" (p. xx).

A friend recommended this book to me as a good introduction to Paul Shepard's ten other books. In the first Chapter, "The Eye," Shepard studies the human eye and how it differentiates us from species. In Chapter Two, "On Animals Thinking," he argues that the human mind "and its organ, the brain, are in reality that part of us most dependent on the survival of animals," that "living animals are a necessary part of the mental growth of humans" (pp. 22-3). Whereas Darwin "rediscovered" in 1859 that man was an animal, Shepard's book considers what animals tell us most about ourselves (p. 107). "Physiologically," he writes in Chapter Five, "from the neck down, so to speak, [man] is an omnivore whose diet is about three-quarters plant products, like a bear or boar. By looking only at his gut one might predict that he is a kind of oversized raccoon. Yet the patterns of life set by hunting-gathering peoples are centered on the spiritual and ceremonial eating of large mammals. Behavior and culture are more wolflike than bearlike" (p. 113). Men "wolf" their food, as they say. "Man is a fat-making, fair-weather carnivore who can eat more than three pounds of meat at a sitting. He is also a primate snacker, a connoisseur of ripe and unripe berries, of frogs, crabs, and insects" (p. 131). Like animals, "men need, in their nonhuman environment, open country with occasional cover, labyrinthe play areas, a rich variety of plants, animals, rocks, stars; structures and forms numbering into the thousands, initiation solitude, transitional and holy places, a wide variety of food organisms and diversity of stone and wood, nearby fresh water, large mammalian herds, cave and other habitation sites, and so on" (p. 135).

In Chapter Six, Shepard examines how we have "broke bonds with the earth, soil and nature," and how the human spirit has become dissociated "from seasons and celestial rounds" (p. 149). As a result, civilized culture has become stuck in immaturity; "to remain a child," Shepard observes, "is not an appropriate individual destiny, nor is it a norm for our species" (p. 160). He encourages us to free ourselves from our cultural immaturity.

Nature writer, Barry Lopez calls Shepard's writing "endlessly stimulating." Paul Shepard was an original thinker, and this brilliant book offers an eye-opening and imaginative look at ourselves, and "the only world we've got."

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Coming Back for More
Review: I used Shepard's works a few years ago among supplemental books for a course I taught theological students regarding their awareness of science and nature. People may recognize me today as the co-author of the recent "Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius" (1999)(which I must mention to make my major point about Shepard and his books). My point concerns the world's own "right of passage" regarding urgent dictums akin to "its the only world we've got". What we see in Paul Shepard and his work reflects a level of awareness typifying the keenest of polymathic minds from, say, the 1970-1990's. However, many people do not realize that before that (before the major books of environmental awareness were well-known to the public [Carson, Ehrlich, Meadows et al., etc.] and thus germinal in most minds) writings about nature by even celebrated literary writers, like Vladimir Nabokov [as in The Gift], or great "nature writers", like Edwin Way Teale, peculiarly LACK a sense of this urgency. Recent writings on these latter authors (who shared 1999 as their centenary year) brought this question to the fore when comparing them to the "levels" of modern eco-awarenss in men like Shepard. Observers were stunned-- how could men like Nabokov and Teale who wrote so genuinely, and with wondrous detail, concerning nature, "miss the point" [i.e. no "urgency"] regarding what we see as the environmental crisis today. A fine reading of Shepard's works (this "Reader" among them), provides the answer. If ones reads far enough back in Shepard's writings-- and then follows the development of his major theses enculcating URGENCY in eco-awarenss-- one realizes that what one is seeing IS precisely the germinal stage of that sense worldwide. Before that, for writers even as sensitive to nature as Nabokov or Teale, its seemed that no matter how assaulted nature was around them, and in their writings, "it still had someplace else to go". Somehow, great writers of nature of that earlier era never had that "personal epiphany" when a "line in the sand" was drawn for them. It seems so odd to scientists today (especially those working overseas) who experience that epiphany very day. With this in mind, Shepard's works are perhaps one of the best examples of that awakening and seeing them in that historical perspective gives them even more life.

Rating:
Summary: Coming Back for More
Review: I used Shepard's works a few years ago among supplemental books for a course I taught theological students regarding their awareness of science and nature. People may recognize me today as the co-author of the recent "Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius" (1999)(which I must mention to make my major point about Shepard and his books). My point concerns the world's own "right of passage" regarding urgent dictums akin to "its the only world we've got". What we see in Paul Shepard and his work reflects a level of awareness typifying the keenest of polymathic minds from, say, the 1970-1990's. However, many people do not realize that before that (before the major books of environmental awareness were well-known to the public [Carson, Ehrlich, Meadows et al., etc.] and thus germinal in most minds) writings about nature by even celebrated literary writers, like Vladimir Nabokov [as in The Gift], or great "nature writers", like Edwin Way Teale, peculiarly LACK a sense of this urgency. Recent writings on these latter authors (who shared 1999 as their centenary year) brought this question to the fore when comparing them to the "levels" of modern eco-awarenss in men like Shepard. Observers were stunned-- how could men like Nabokov and Teale who wrote so genuinely, and with wondrous detail, concerning nature, "miss the point" [i.e. no "urgency"] regarding what we see as the environmental crisis today. A fine reading of Shepard's works (this "Reader" among them), provides the answer. If ones reads far enough back in Shepard's writings-- and then follows the development of his major theses enculcating URGENCY in eco-awarenss-- one realizes that what one is seeing IS precisely the germinal stage of that sense worldwide. Before that, for writers even as sensitive to nature as Nabokov or Teale, its seemed that no matter how assaulted nature was around them, and in their writings, "it still had someplace else to go". Somehow, great writers of nature of that earlier era never had that "personal epiphany" when a "line in the sand" was drawn for them. It seems so odd to scientists today (especially those working overseas) who experience that epiphany very day. With this in mind, Shepard's works are perhaps one of the best examples of that awakening and seeing them in that historical perspective gives them even more life.

Rating:
Summary: Paul Shepard was one of the most brilliant minds we had!
Review: Paul Shepard (who also wrote The Tender Carnivore, which is also highly recommended)was one of the most insightful and brilliant thinkers of our century. This book has the power and impact of Thom Hartmann's "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" and the insights of Michael Tobias's "World War III." Highly recommended.