A Language Older Than Words

Rating:
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

Rating:
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

Rating:
Summary: Blast Open Your Perceptions
Review: Denial is such a tricky thing to talk about. It is designed to protect us from truths we absolutely see exist but find too frightening or upsetting to our world view, our sense of safety and stability, to acknowledge.

We know they are there.

We look away, and only talk with others who wont mention anything that makes us feel or think about the horror, the pain and the fear we live with daily in our insane, abusive culture of destruction and denial. And anyone who talks about the truth, who causes us to see, must be silenced.

Derrick Jensen will not be silenced.

A Language Older Than Words is an intelligent and unrelenting exploration of the patterns of abuse and denial in our culture that extend into every aspect of our lives, our relationships with each other, with women, children, and the natural world. Jensen shouts where others fear to whisper, and validates our natural knowledge that we are an inseparable part of the living world, and our culture of denial is silencing and killing everything.

This courageous, from the gut, truth telling rips down those layers of denial revealing how we have been taught to fool ourselves and how much of the experience of being human we have lost. Because in order to ignore the suffering (our own and that of most of the other creatures on the planet) we must also shut ourselves off from our own experience and the wonder, joy, complexities, and ecstasy of living in relationship with others and the natural world. Jensen's inspiring writing offers a way back to fully exploring and experiencing our own lives.

A Language Older Than Words is a passionate and poetic catalyst that will blast open your perceptions and give you courage to face your denial and abandon your fears. It is a gift of welcoming us back to what it truly means to be human, to be alive, to have relationship with all living things. I highly recommend this book to everyone. It is a springboard to so much further understanding, experience, and discovery. Jensen is truly one of the most important philosophers writing today.

Don't wait another day to read this book!!!

Rating:
Summary: The most disturbing, jarring, NECESSARY book I've ever read
Review: Derrick Jensen has written this book from his own, and the world's, soul. What starts as a "feel-good" book on interspecies communication becomes a searing examination of his own silencing as a child (his father viciously abused him, his mother, and his siblings), and his perspective widens to encompass the silencing of all life on earth through the murderous practices of industrial, religious, military, and political institutions through history. Jensen indisputably links individual suffering and violence with that of other life forms -- and of the Earth that we continue to ravage in our denial of pain. This book is a masterpiece; it is agonizing to read -- yet hopeful...though in a most cautious manner. To anyone daring to awaken to the signs in and around us, time is running out for us humans to change our suicidal and ecocidal behaviour. Jensen dares us to face our pain and transform it into loving action on behalf of Life. I consider him a prophet. He spares us nothing in his passion for healing. We must pass through raging agony in order to wake up and shake ourselves free of our denial and inertia -- but the pain we (and everything else that lives) will feel if we don't change our ways will be indescribably worse.

I also recommend Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown's book, "Coming Back to Life," which gives us specific practices that individuals, groups, and communities can do to take loving action. WE CAN DO THIS -- and we need to do it together.

Please -- read this book and act with it!

Rating:
Summary: The most disturbing, jarring, NECESSARY book I've ever read
Review: Derrick Jensen has written this book from his own, and the world's, soul. What starts as a "feel-good" book on interspecies communication becomes a searing examination of his own silencing as a child (his father viciously abused him, his mother, and his siblings), and his perspective widens to encompass the silencing of all life on earth through the murderous practices of industrial, religious, military, and political institutions through history. Jensen indisputably links individual suffering and violence with that of other life forms -- and of the Earth that we continue to ravage in our denial of pain. This book is a masterpiece; it is agonizing to read -- yet hopeful...though in a most cautious manner. To anyone daring to awaken to the signs in and around us, time is running out for us humans to change our suicidal and ecocidal behaviour. Jensen dares us to face our pain and transform it into loving action on behalf of Life. I consider him a prophet. He spares us nothing in his passion for healing. We must pass through raging agony in order to wake up and shake ourselves free of our denial and inertia -- but the pain we (and everything else that lives) will feel if we don't change our ways will be indescribably worse.

I also recommend Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown's book, "Coming Back to Life," which gives us specific practices that individuals, groups, and communities can do to take loving action. WE CAN DO THIS -- and we need to do it together.

Please -- read this book and act with it!

Rating:
Summary: Transformational!
Review: Derrick Jensen is a master storyteller who skillfully weaves his own heartbreaking and heart-mending experiences together with a courageous and careful analysis of modern civilization and it's many causes and casualties. Jensen explores some of humankind's deepest and most personal questions and leads each of us to find our own answers by empowering and challenging us to simply turn to the natural world and ask. If you can put this book down, you will pick it up again (and again and again). You will be changed.

Rating:
Summary: A Powerful Reading Experience...
Review: Derrick Jensen's latest, A LANGUAGE OLDER THAN WORDS, is one of the most uncomfortable books I've ever read. As such, I suspect it was also highly uncomfortable for him to write. Its poetic use of words and skilled syntax only serve to emphasize, not obscure, the brutal honesty that he puts forth here.

The thesis is a simple one: We are killing the world. It's Jensen's rugged, insightful, and raw analysis of how and why we're doing it that makes me shudder when I read it. Having studied many of these themes before (well-written in books like Daniel Quinn's ISHMAEL), I've not encountered this subject in a way that touches the nerves that Jensen has managed to tap into. Killing the world, after all, is a horrifying thing, and Jensen exposes the horror by shining a bright light on it and analyzing where it comes from.

It's a brave book and a bold statement. And one that will be hated by many, particularly those who have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. The bottom line is this: if you read this book and find yourself affected by it, there's a chance for all of us. If you read this book and wonder what all the hoo-hah is about, you're too far gone and wrapped up in our cultural ways and vision to ever find your way out. If you read this book and find it threatening to your way of life, then you're the enemy, and you need to reconsider which side of the line you stand on.

I can't think of a higher compliment to give a book than to wish that I'd had it within me to write it myself. I wish I had this kind of insight and courage, and I'm grateful that Jensen does.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: the truth about everything we dont want to know
Review: Excellent book. Anyone with an interest in social justice or environmental issues should read this book. Check the facts-- Jensen is right on. his research is clear, and although he has a distinct bias, the facts of what he reports support his view. Its an excellent read that will change the way you view the earth and your place within it.

Rating:
Summary: The most honest book I've ever read...
Review: I found this book through Daniel Quinn's book list, and I didn't waste much time in reading it.

Although maybe more radical than Quinn and less science based than Richard Dawkins, the emotional cry of this book cannot be denied. Sheer rage, love and honesty that scream out of these pages is so overwhelming you'll have to be hard pressed to put the book down, or like my mother, to read it at all.

I was pretty sensitive as a child and I had to make "walls" and "barriers" in my mind to avoid being physically overrun by our culture. So my idol became (except my mom and dad) the coolest and coldest character ever - Mr. Spock. Logic with no feelings. To the max. In doing so, I became the prime mental example of our culture, yelling "I want more and I want it now" although not really believing it.

This book is for everyone who suspects there is something more than industrial consumerism that eats away our very planet.

I don't agree with all opinions in this book (especially about Richard Dawkins' work), but I began to have converstions with animals and plants. Insane? Maybe, but they said the same for those who said the Earth wasn't flat...

This is no easy read! But it is, after all, a very rewarding one.