A Language Older Than Words

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Summary: We are "normalizing" the "abnormal" ...
Review: A Language Older Than Words, Derrick Jensen Memoir/Philosophy of Nature

An archangel wake up call.....a message for everyone on our planet to hear. We are normalizing the abnormal.... through abhorrent childhood experiences a message for all of us is brought forth.

"We need to remove the veil of denial from our eyes and see the truth so we can alter our directions perhaps but at least know we made honest overt choices. The ecology economy that will sustain life works funneling from natural sources to provide for many while the inverted funnel or taking many natural sources and funneling them to few for profit annihilates and we as a planet are doomed. Nature provides for all of us but any natural resources used for profit will disappear quickly The false belief that we can turn off our technological processes and return to natural ways is an illusion since we no longer know any other way to live. Our ancestors have taken their knowledge to their graves. How many young girls knit or crochet today as a simple example..."

Technology provides us our needs through multiple sources, we can't go back, and we've burned and continue to burn each and every one of our bridges.

Compared to Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael" when speaking to others about this book, I missed that one but am far more enlightened now than if I'd read neither.

Countless questions came to mind....if we are to survive as a planet.....are we to be outspoken in a responsible way as our next plateau of generational spiritual growth, perhaps violently defensive for our planet??? He quotes psychologist Erich Fromm's.... third type of society-- "nondestructive-aggressive societies" ..."by no means permeated by destructiveness or cruelty or by exaggerated suspiciousness, but do not have the kind of gentleness and trust which is characteristic of the ....(life affirmative) societies (vs. the "destructive" ones).

One more provoking vision, a man sitting on top of a case of fish, telling everyone one the fish are his and even though starving, the people believe him and take no action? Who do the fish, the rivers, the forests, flowers, birds, animals, plants, all life forms belong to, who owns them?......ah the Native Americans asked the same question of the Americans who wanted to claim ownership of the land..... :-(

Copyright 2001 Arleen Raymond

Rating:
Summary: Brave, moving, required reading!
Review: I would like -- no, I MUST shake Mr. Jensen's hand. This is one of the bravest books I've ever read, and as a writer myself I commend the courage it took to write it. Never have I been more moved, more affirmed in my feelings, more outraged (positively) and more -- full.

This is what we need to know, what the world must comprehend. It is the most truthful, the clearest mirror ever held up to our culture and it is long overdue. We must look. We must see. Mr. Jensen demands this of us without apology, without sugar, but with the necessary brutal honesty.

I don't know how you did it, Mr. Jensen, but somehow, even without offering a definitive answer, you managed to leave me inspired. I closed the book and cried for a long while. Out of sadness, fear, and oddly enough, out of a deep and meaningful hopefuleness. I've told everyone I know this book must be read, felt and passed on.

I cannot commend you enough, cannot thank you enough, and could not respect you more for your willingness to go through the journey of writing this book so that we might read it and remember our lives.

Would that I could shout it from the rooftops!

Do not miss this -- it's a rollercoaster ride, and I did, indeed, go through every emotion conceivable while reading it. And I would not trade the experience for anything in the world.

Godspeed!

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Summary: indescribably to the point
Review: This book is an incredible brave affirmation to all of us living its fury, pain, passion and love. Here is a voice that brings together so many aspects of our lives...the ones we are usually told to see a psychiatrist about! e.g.'getting outraged,speaking out,( you are so full of anger, don't you think...?), being embraced by trees, feeling the mussels die after half a minute in the pot. Personally it confirms for me that these as well as my almost daily tirades against blatant insanity, are core to my being able to be here at all.

What I especially like about this book is that I sense that Dereck knew that the writing of it is its own solution, the brave stark acknowledgement that 'this is how it is for (hopefully) so many of us.... you are not alone out there.

Can I dare hope that its writing signals that the number of humans passionately seaching for ways to create an unfettered way of life out of the current destruction and insanity is growing? that some kind of critical mass may just arrive in time to change 'globalisation' into something creative and life affirming?...the fact that Dereck has found a ready audience. It has also above all convinced me that the outraged, angry, sensitive, clear-headed brazen child that I live with inside myself, has been, and will remain a saving Grace.

This is a profound extraordinary tour de force all the more because it so naturally spoke to all the most important parts of me that it does not feel separate. Because of its depth and power, it is a true celebration.

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Summary: "Don't look at my finger. Look at the moon."
Review: Deep-ecologist, Thomas Berry, says "the universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees--all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related" (p. 361). In his engaging book, Derrick Jensen encourages us to listen to those voices. Jensen is a familiar name to readers of The Sun magazine, where his interviews appear frequently. I first heard this LANGUAGE a year ago, when Jensen read excerpts from it in Tempe, Arizona. "There is a language older by far and deeper than words," he writes. "It is the language of the earth and it is the language of our bodies. It is the language of dreams, and of actions. It is the language of meaning, and of metaphor. This language is not safe" (p. 311). It is the language of "wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone, gesture, symbol, memory" (p. 2). And it is the language of interspecies communication.

Jensen's book belongs in the "life-changing books" section of the bookstore. It is as much a memoir as a "grenade rolled across the dance floor" (p. 108), encouraging us to wake up, pay attention, and listen (pp. 143; 248). This is not a "feel-good" bestseller. Rather, Jensen writes, it is "a cry of outrage, a lamentation, and at the same time a love story" (p. ix). As a victim of child abuse, Jensen digs deep into his personal experience to explore the silence and denial common to the world at large. "I wanted to write a memoir that moved beyond the microcosm of my personal experience," he explains, "to the macrocosm of the world in which we live" (p. ix). Why do we numb ourselves to our experiences, he wonders. Why do we deafen ourselves to other voices (p. viii)?

Through exploitation or annihilation, Jensen observes, our conscience and conscious awareness of relationship have been silenced by religion, science, politics, education, and violence, and we live by the maxim, "Thou shalt pretend there is nothing wrong" (p. 188). This book is about walking away from the "make-believe world" in which we "pretend all is well as we dissipate our lives in quiet desparation" (p. 6), and remembering "how to listen" (p. 7). "If we celebrate life with all its contradictions, embrace it, experience it, and ultimately live with it, there is a chance for a spiritual life filled not only with pain and untidiness, but also with joy, community, and creativity" (p. 142).

Jensen marches to the beat of his own drum, and the beat feels real. He shows that "wherever you put your foot, there is the path. You become the path" (pp. 150-51). We find the environmental activist in him wondering whether he "should write or blow up a dam" (p. 50), and pulling up surveyor's stakes (pp. 154-55). And we find him tending his chickens, dumpster diving for lettuce to feed them, conversing with coyotes, beekeeping, and shooing snakes off the road. He ponders, "what it does to each of us to spend the majority of our waking hours doing things we'd rather not do, wishing we were outside or simply elsewhere, wishing we were reading, thinking, making love, fishing, sleeping, or simply having time to figure out who . . . we are and what . . . we're doing" (p. 109).

This is a wise, old LANGUAGE that will speak to your soul, and then stay with you, reminding you "about the potential for life and love and happiness we each carry inside, but are too afraid to explore" (p. ix). I hope Jensen is working on another book in between his interviews for The Sun.

G. Merritt

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Summary: I'm sending a copy of this book to everybody I know
Review: And if you're not on my list, be well advised that this may be the most important book you will ever read.

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Summary: The Other as Yourself
Review: Jensen has been awe-fully, inspiringly awake, and he modestly submits his report on reality. And believe me, once you read this book you will decide you have not been awake at all; you have been in a trance, or sleep-walking. We are not fully aware of the world around us. For he reminds us that we communicate with animals in a special language. It is an unsettling truth, and you know it to be so. We have been ignoring animals, and certainly have never thought to reach out to them. We feel some stirring in their presence, but we are not quite sure what it means. Jensen explains exactly what it means. But then he expands his notion. We haven't even been attuned to other people, or the Earth. He graphically explains how our destructiveness silences our communication. We have to suppress a child so that we can molest him. We have to trivialize a culture so that we can bomb it. We have to ignore the Earth so we can despoil it. A moving thesis and an absorbing read. In the process, Jensen describes in detail the experience of being sexually attacked by his father. Probably the best book I have read in two years; on a par with The Goddess and the Alphabet by Schlain, although a completely different kind of book. He makes stunning points because they flow naturally out of his personal experience of reality. Schlain makes almost the same argument, but by arraying a lot of information drawn from five thousand years of written culture. Make this the next book you buy. George Bouklas

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Summary: Why you should read this book.
Review: A Language Older Than Words impresses by its sheer honesty. Derrick Jensen is the rarest of men: He's a man willing to present and find the truth at any cost. His meditations on various subjects, including his own abuse at the hands of his father, the killing of salmon, the rampant mistreatment of women, elucidate our culture's severe sickness. Our culture is a culture of violence and denial. By relentlessly exposing the truth, Jensen brings us one step closer to confronting and fixing our ills. His work is a reality check, and his pursuit of truth is courageous.

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Summary: A Language Better Than Words
Review: W.S. Merwin, poet and lover of the land, writes "If I want to talk of trees, I will have to use a forgotten language." These words puzzled me when first I found them ten years ago. As is the case with most great lines, my memory absorbed them: I would one day understand. Slowly, as a result of more paradigm shifts in my thinking than I care to count, that day has come. At the heart of A Language Older Than Words lies a philosophical treatise: if we as a species desire to survive, we must liberate ourselves from the constraints of rational thought. Such a notion will startle the covenanted rational man, cause him to seize up, to tighten his grip upon his notion of reality--"I think therefore, I am;" "Not trees but sense-contents of trees." He must find the closest possible means by which to descredit the source of the words that have disturbed him. He will say, drawing on rhetoric of Psych 101--"The author is acting out."--or Logic 208--"This book contains a contradiction, therefore it is not real book." He does so in order to protect that which he holds true. He puts the book down and selects another which will congratulate him for being who he is, what he is a part of.

This book does not congratulate anyone. In its Brechtian diatribes on the post-treaty Gulf War devastation, the multinational melange present on any and all plates at supper time, the genocide of native populations committed by colonists (corporate and otherwise), and the eradication of countless species populations, as well as the author's own experiences with violence (at others' hands as well as his own), A Language Older Than Words documents the crimes of rational man, of Western Culture, of America.

In Jensen's writing, the personal is political. His logic is associative, rather than rational. In these ways, the book itself practices the very lessons it conveys. If humans will survive on this planet, they must alter their concept of logic. There can be no more hiding behind judgement of others ("The author's acting out...") in order to facilitate the very mechanism of silencing that Jensen challenges on every single page. There can be no more isolating of one's personal experience from the sea of all human events. No tidepool will go unrecalled.

What is writ large in world events is writ small in all our lives. Jensen invites anyone who has chosen to believe they are happy and whole to reconsider if they disagree. He asks us to question why we consume so much and love so little, why we destroy so much and devalue creation? Once the reader considers these questions, they will feel that everything they "know" and "hold true" quakes in the presence of the answers. The shifts in thinking this book can lead to are frightening. But Jensen holds us to him. In the epilogue he draws us near--the reader feels they are being blessed with strength, confidence, and deep human love. "Godspeed," he whispers. And the reader wants to weep. We realize that, as the poet asks God to do in John Donne's Holy Sonnet 14, Jensen has "battered [our] heart" in order to let us subvert reason and believe once again with our entire being something we feel shyly to be true.

I am reminded most strongly of Sojourner Truth's "Speak truth to power with love." In Jensen's "Language" and words, the reader experiences the execution of Truth's charge. From a lesser writer, the ideas conveyed might read like hate mail to corporations, patriots, and true believers of any kind--and those who have yet to explore the questions Jensen asks will dismiss it as such and go on with their lives--but in Jensen's hands--just like the bird's egg in the nest on the cover--the ideas are delivered as more of a love letter addressed to anyone who feels their life does not belong to them, and begins every morning with a soft wish that it did.

If everyone were to read and consider deeply this book, W.S. Merwin's words may never have to come true. In the meantime, however, reading "A Language Older Than Words" prepares us should we soon indeed have to speak "a forgotten language." Jensen is speaking it already.

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Summary: Hatred Amidst The Love
Review: Jensen is at his best when illuminating simple yet profound truths about the silencing of victims and the self-destructiveness of our culture. These topics are of global importance, and his raw treatment of them hits hard. This core material is diluted, however, as the book wears on, and Jensen's personal story and views come clear. Jensen's arguments regarding victimization are weakened when he uses his personal yardstick to measure who the victims are (and are not). One case is his defense of revolutionaries who took and held hostages. He describes the hostages' captivity this way:

"... prisoners ... played chess, gave and received cooking and music lessons, sang Happy Birthday to each other, and compared their imprisonment to "a cocktail party without liquor."

This to describe the ordeal of people held captive for months. In Jensen's view the hostage takers are the victims, and the hostages are prisoners, apparently being treated to a good time by their benevolent hosts. Jensen's arguments are further weakened by his tendency to mix episodes of true victimization with those resulting from his own bad luck or personal choices. Near the end of the book, he recounts a bee-keeping dilemma:

"I was poor. I had not yet received a settlement from the trucker whose lack of refrigeration had killed the bees, and so was unable to buy new bees to start over. I was not very happy."

This exemplifies Jensen's habit of presenting his misfortunes as the result of another's incompetence or betrayal. The trucker is partly responsible for his poverty, but so is his own refusal to take a job. Jensen's ability to stand by his principles is admirable, but also a contributing factor to many of his problems. Also remarkable is that Jensen calls the terrible abuse inflicted by his father the catalyst for his activism, but denies the possibility that he is acting out his anger at his father through this extremism. That he began "communicating" with stars (harmless, distant, non-human) during an abusive childhood, and eventually withdrew from mainstream society to find his most intimate relationships not with other humans, but with nature, tends to contradict his denial. He spends only half a page on this matter, which begs to be examined. Consequently, this book does more than illuminate our race's "death urge." It provides a look into the mind of a highly intelligent but deeply scarred man whose love of nature is counterbalanced by his hatred of humanity (externalized self-hatred?), the origin of this hatred perhaps being clearer to others than to himself.

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Summary: a prayer of thanksgiving
Review: Did the stars speak to you, or the trees? I grew up by a lake, and at night in the summertime I slept under the stars. The bullfrog songs lulled me to sleep. Connection to the natural and spiritual world, and to my sibling, kept me alive through difficulty. Derrick Jensen calls this book "a prayer of thanksgiving." He's walking the ground that Richard Rhodes walked in _A Hole in the Heart of the World_, seeking meaning and purpose beyond the violence and pain of his childhood. This book had a profound effect on me, not unlike Viktor Frankl's _Man's Search for Meaning_. Derrick Jensen seeks to stop genocide and ecocide, and perceives family violence as a microcosm of the larger violence. Something meaningful exists in the pages of this book, a truth beyond words. If you read intuitively, you will find it for yourself, within yourself, and you will begin to think of what you can do to bring some part of misery to an end. Not everyone wants to protect a tree for two years like Julia Butterfly Hill, or spend a lifetime advocating with the energy of Audre Lorde -- but we can begin by erasing amnesia and intentional ignorance. (Just read what he says about schooling, pages 103, 104!) I believe that if the earth is going to survive, more of us will need to become aware of the interconnectedness here. As Meir Berliner said, "When the oppressor gives me two choices, I always take the third." This book will open thoughts to those third choices.