A review by tangleroot_eli
Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram
4.0
I knew after reading 10 pages of Becoming Animal that it was going to be one of those books that radically alters the way I perceive and interact with the world, even if just for the span of time that I'm reading it. And that is true, but I thought it had the potential to become the most impacting book of my adult life thus far, and it misses that mark.
Abram does an outstanding job of recalling readers to their earthly bodies and the felt space we inhabit. He also, in many places, conjures a worldview very close to my own religious/philosophical stance: a sort of naturalistic animism that acknowledges a non-anthropomorphic life and sentience in all things and understands life as a relationship between objects (of which the human self is one), rather than a subject-object dominance with humans "on top". I did a lot of nodding and whispering, "YES!" in the first 250 or so pages.
But I was surprised and disappointed (especially as the Acknowledgements note the passing of [b:Universe Story|981818|The Universe Story From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era--A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos|Brian Swimme|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179978526s/981818.jpg|966707] co-author [a:Thomas Berry|82857|Thomas Berry|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]) that Abram's section on revitalizing the oral tradition, re-engaging with the world as a dynamic and unfolding story, rather than a set of static facts (which I'm in favor of), doesn't explore the rich possibilities of framing and building those stories in ways and terms consistent with scientific discovery. Instead he argues that, when scientific discovery seems at odds with sensorial perception, we should side with perception (this despite his repeated denial of an anti-science or anti-intellect stance). He suggests, for instance, that although Earth is proven to orbit the Sun, we should envision the world as if the Sun orbited Earth, because that's how it seems to our senses.
I had come with Abram that far, but I could not cross that final threshhold with him. To do so seemed an insult to science, knowledge, and the Earth that is so wholly (and holy) a part of us.
Abram does an outstanding job of recalling readers to their earthly bodies and the felt space we inhabit. He also, in many places, conjures a worldview very close to my own religious/philosophical stance: a sort of naturalistic animism that acknowledges a non-anthropomorphic life and sentience in all things and understands life as a relationship between objects (of which the human self is one), rather than a subject-object dominance with humans "on top". I did a lot of nodding and whispering, "YES!" in the first 250 or so pages.
But I was surprised and disappointed (especially as the Acknowledgements note the passing of [b:Universe Story|981818|The Universe Story From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era--A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos|Brian Swimme|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179978526s/981818.jpg|966707] co-author [a:Thomas Berry|82857|Thomas Berry|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]) that Abram's section on revitalizing the oral tradition, re-engaging with the world as a dynamic and unfolding story, rather than a set of static facts (which I'm in favor of), doesn't explore the rich possibilities of framing and building those stories in ways and terms consistent with scientific discovery. Instead he argues that, when scientific discovery seems at odds with sensorial perception, we should side with perception (this despite his repeated denial of an anti-science or anti-intellect stance). He suggests, for instance, that although Earth is proven to orbit the Sun, we should envision the world as if the Sun orbited Earth, because that's how it seems to our senses.
I had come with Abram that far, but I could not cross that final threshhold with him. To do so seemed an insult to science, knowledge, and the Earth that is so wholly (and holy) a part of us.