Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence

Rating:
Summary: a good companion....
Review: ....to Stephen Diamond's ANGER, MADNESS, AND THE DAIMONIC, this book always reminds me of one of its central ideas: that innocence unaware of its own daimonic dimension (its own shadow) becomes evil.

Rating:
Summary: a good companion....
Review: ....to Stephen Diamond's ANGER, MADNESS, AND THE DAIMONIC, this book always reminds me of one of its central ideas: that innocence unaware of its own daimonic dimension (its own shadow) becomes evil.

Rating:
Summary: May's study of violence is even more apropos today
Review: POWER AND INNOCENCE is even more pertinent to today's violent society than it was when first published in 1972--during the Vietnam war. Subtitled A SEARCH FOR THE SOURCES OF VIOLENCE, May elaborates really on his introduction to readers in LOVE AND WILL of his conception of "the daimonic," pointing out how power--though corruptive when absolute or totally absent--can, like anger or rage, also be a positive, constructive force. He also warns of the dangers of "pseudoinnocence": an immature, naive inability or (often religious) unwillingness to recognize the reality of evil in the world, oneself or others. Such denial of the daimonic is the antithesis of true spirituality. Though the war is long over, we Americans are currently engaged in hostilities of a different kind: domestic violence, schoolyard massacres, bombings and general mayhem. We are as violent as ever--maybe more so--and May's superb and prescient book is as aprop! os as ever--maybe even more so.

Rating:
Summary: May's study of violence is even more apropos today
Review: POWER AND INNOCENCE is even more pertinent to today's violent society than it was when first published in 1972--during the Vietnam war. Subtitled A SEARCH FOR THE SOURCES OF VIOLENCE, May elaborates really on his introduction to readers in LOVE AND WILL of his conception of "the daimonic," pointing out how power--though corruptive when absolute or totally absent--can, like anger or rage, also be a positive, constructive force. He also warns of the dangers of "pseudoinnocence": an immature, naive inability or (often religious) unwillingness to recognize the reality of evil in the world, oneself or others. Such denial of the daimonic is the antithesis of true spirituality. Though the war is long over, we Americans are currently engaged in hostilities of a different kind: domestic violence, schoolyard massacres, bombings and general mayhem. We are as violent as ever--maybe more so--and May's superb and prescient book is as aprop! os as ever--maybe even more so.