Customer Reviews

The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book after reading Eckhart Tolle's endorsement: "A fascinating and important book on the origin, development and the imminent demise of the ego...Highly readable and enlightening, as the author's acute mind is imbued with the higher faculty of spiritual awareness." Eckhart Tolle's books have changed my life so I was sure this book would be important for me too, and haven't been wrong. I've read it through over the last three days and feel also though my whole outlook on the world has been altered. This book is a complete revisioning of human history from a spiritual point of view, seeing human history in terms of the development of the ego, looking at how the ego has given rise to thousands of years of violence and oppression. Taylor looks in turn at warfare, male domination, social inequality, alienation from the body, abuse of the natural world and so on, showing how the over-developed sense of ego produces these problems.

The book makes the important point - using a massive range of research - that earlier human beings and many of the world's native peoples - did not have our strong sense of self or ego and so were free from all of this disorder. The book's depiction of how the insanity of so much human behaviour is produced by the ego is riveting and extremely impressive. After reading this there is no way you can look at "normal" human behaviour in the same way. Taylor makes it absolutely clear that what we consider as normal is, in many ways, insane. And just as impressively, Taylor puts together an extremely good case for the idea that we are beginning to transcend the insanity of the ego and moving into a new era. This is one of those books which makes you look at the world in a new light, and gives you inspiration and hope for the future. Somehow it gives me the inspiration to try to fight for a better world, to contribute to the collective change which is taking place, and rekindle the state of harmony which the human race has lost.

This book had me riveted. If we'd read books like this in high school history class, I would have been a lot more interested. The author does a great job of combining history, anthropology, gender studies, and spirituality (among other things) into a fascinating account of the past 6,000 years of human history.

I know that, after reading this book, I'll never look at the world the same way again. The premise behind the work makes so much sense, and helps to explain why things (good and bad) are the way they are.

Typos and grammar issues bother me, and there were some really horrendous ones in this book. However, I am willing to overlook them in this case and give this book five stars because I believe it is so important to our understanding of ourselves.

This is one of the best books I read in 2007. I highly recommend it.

I loved Steve Taylor's lucid account of why he thinks the world is in such a bad way, how we got to be in this sorry state and how we can get out of it. It skillfully blends history, psychology, sociology and spirituality to produce a book that is not only thought provoking and enlightening but also enjoyable to read. Despite the potentially depressing nature of the issues covered, Steve Taylor manages to remain positive and provide solutions for a way forward to a better world. This is an uplifting book and recommended to anyone searching for answers to difficult questions.

The Fall contains many intriguing ideas about why humnanity is in the situation in which we find ourselves. Taylor reminds us, thankfully, that all the misery encountered by so many people in the course of their lives is just plan wrong. It does not have to be.

I would suspect that many of his ideas would be challenged by other scholars and a discussion of his theories would be most interesting.

The Fall is quite repetitive in places. I would have liked to have read how Taylor thinks we can have a more compassionate peaceful society on a global scale with more than 6 billion people alive today.

Steve Taylor manages to come up with a seemingly obvious but until now neglected theory about human nature and the development of civilisation. He analyses not only where we went wrong historically but also where we are still going wrong today. Our intensified sense of ego distorts the way we behave, as does the establishment of a culture that rewards selfishness, aggressiveness and the whole me-me-me I-want-it-now childishness that embodies the modern world. He says what a lot of people (including me) have been thinking for a while. If there is war, oppression and hunger in the world - how did it get here? And can we ever change? Steve Taylor suggests some fascinating answers to these questions. I was impressed enough to give up my job and house and go and live in a field growing my own vegetables... well, maybe not yet.

This is an inspiring and thought-provoking book. The author offers a completely new way of looking at the human race's past, and a new way of explaining all of the madness in human nature. It covers thousands of years of history and even looks into the human race's future, but is always extremely readable and even entertaning. It tries to explain almost too much - the origins of war, religion, male domination and so on - but it all makes sense it terms of theories he puts forward. All of these "pathologies" are seen as the consquence of our over-developed sense of ego. Underyling the whole book there is a sense of the spiritual, a vision of a possible state of harmony and meaning beyond our present traumas.

I found this book through Eckhart Tolle and it is one of the best books I have ever read, a spiritual vision of history which explains how human beings have made such a terrible mess of the world through the workings of the ego. Its scope is awe-inspiring - from the earliest times of the human race to the future, through every culture and country. But it is by no means a negative or cynical book - on the contrary, the author shows that human life is meant to be (and actually was for much of our history) glorious and meaningful. He suggests that there is an evolutionary movement pushing us back to a state of harmony, and that we can accelerate this process through our own spiritual practice. An amazing book!

The Fall had the potential of being a great and important work. The anthropological information was very enlightening. What's lacking is the same breadth of knowledge regarding evolution, developmental biology and developmental and ego psychology. Any book devoted to the ego should thoroughly explore the stages of ego development. Had this been done, it would have sugested that the fall wasn't a fall at all--not a devolution from a golden age of greater wisdom--but a step away from a relative state of undifferentiation toward greater individuation. In fact, collectively, the development of the human race (psychologically) parallels individual psychological development. The stages of differentiation are potentially stages of alienation when unsuccessful individuation (mastery of primitive emotions/instincts) prevails. The "Pre-fall" state perhaps should be more accurately referred to as a psychologically naive state. Likewise, we enter life in an undifferentiated symbiotic state from which we gradually emerge through an intrapsychic process known as the "psychological birth" (see Margaret Mahler). The awareneess of separation can be terrifying when unaccompanied by sufficient nurturing to allow the adaptive individuation process (healthy ego functioning) to occur. Regression back to the symbiotic state to overcome awareness of the separate self is attempted through drugs, sex, religious conversions, etc. The Trans-egoic state (trans-me state) is a late development in which the ego is superseded by identification with the human family. (Steve is correct on this point). And our evolution is not so much biological as it is sociological and cultural. In this regard we can consciously alter the course of our current trajectory. But such a radical shift probably won't happen unless it is in response to a global crisis. Here, humans will be divided by which of the 2 instinctual drives will predominate--1.) individual survival instinct motivated by fear, competition, and protection, or 2.) species survival instinct motivated by compassion, cooperation, and growth. The story of evolution is the story about these 2 complementary drives in all sentient creatures. But evolution has no teleological upward direction. It is a vast experiment in creativity--most of the branches it takes wither and die. We humans just happen to be one of many branches--skilled at symbolic cognition, but we relatively suck at natural vision, hearing, smell, speed, locomotion, regeneration,etc. "The Fall" falls by having as its foundation a fundamental assumption that can't be tested or proven--the "higher" psychological state of hunter-gatherer humans--interesting thesis, but speculation. All in all, even though I disagreed with much of the author's argument, I found the book stimulating and worth the read.

It was Elaine Reisler in her book The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future who first introduced the theory that the rise of patriarchy was associated with the invasion of settled agricultural areas by kurgan nomadic pastoralists. James Meo in SAHARASIA: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World, extended Eisler's thesis with his suggestion that the origins of what we call "civilisation" occurred with patterns of violence which was associated with a period of Climate Change, associated with the Bond Event of the 5.9 kiloyear period of accute aridity, associated with the spread of the Sahara. Unfortunately this earlier book did not have the importance it deserved, partly because of its association with the sexual repression theories of Wilhelm Reich.

Steve Taylor has liberated the Saharasia Thesis for a larger audience. In particular he suggests that the idea of the individual ego was a direct result of the institution of patriarchy, accute social stratification and institutionalised warfare, associated with this period of climate change. He suggests that "pre Fall cultures" like the Ituri Pygmies documented by Colin Turnbull in The Forest People or the San Bushmen, did not exhibit such pathological behaviours. There is much corrobatory evidence that Taylor does not make use of, for example, the book The Mountain People also by Turnbull demonstrates how egotistical individualism can occur when people are subject to survival pressure, as were the Ik of Uganda. Edward Whitmont Return of the Goddess demonstrates that when individual egotism first appeared it was confined to a God King. The human sacrifices that accompanied the graves of various people, from Shan CHina, to the Death Pits at Ur and Egypt Dynasty 1, are ample evidence of what happens when ego is released into the world. By the late Bronze Age individual egoism spread to an artistocratic warrior Maryanu class, and the suffering engendered by the climate change of the Late Bronze Age collapse, saw a following Axial Age (See Karen Armstrong The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions) and the extension of ethical behaviour to all, necessdary to combat the egotism that was spreading. The Little Ice Age sees the rise of the first Global Culture of Individualism, our own, which has reached its apogee today.

Taylor optimistically points towards the Dawning of a New "Trans-Fall" Era, but realistically shows that although the signs are there time is short.

This book is extremely important for suggesting the cultural aspects associated with periods of climate change. The Little Ice Age was a period of mixed blessings. Earlier waves of anti-semitism, witch burnings and wars of religion were associated with it. More recently we have seen the scientific and technological revolutions. As the latter pushes us towards a new age of rapid climate change, Taylor's book comes at an opportune moment.

Taylor makes his thesis well. The first part deals with the "history of the fall", looking at the pre-fall world, associated with sexually and socially egalitarian cultures, and little institutionalised violence and warfare. In the post fall world he shows how this led to War, Patriarchy, Inequality and systemic Child Dbuse, drawing on the work of The Continuum Concept: In Search Of Happiness Lost (Classics in Human Development). He shpws how this led to the origins of anthropomorphic gods, echoing Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, the separation from the body, and the nature of linear absolute views of time and history.

As an introduction, and with links to these other references mentioned above, I cannot recommend Steve Taylors book highly enough

The idea that sometime in the not too distant past there was a fundamental change in human consciousness is not new. Julian Jaynes in "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the bicameral mind" suggested such a change as recently as 3000 BC. C.G. Jung, and many of his followers proposed that the human ego constelated at a definite time in history, but declined to suggest when. Steve Taylor in "The Fall" , more audacious, suggests that it happened about 4,000 BC, coincident with a climactic change that resulted in the drying up of the Sahara. As archeological evidence for the presence of the human ego is skimpy at best, he draws on evidence from certain races that appear to have bypassed "The Fall" , pygmies, aboriginies, certain American Indian tribes. Though he makes a persuasive case, the main problem with the book is the old adage, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Taylor's claim that our present day woes began rather recently, is extraordinary. One can speculate on when the ego constellated, but sadly our window into those remote times is fuzzy to say the least.
Nevertheless Taylor puts forward a compelling case, that the human race today suffers from a collective psychosis, that an unbalanced ego is at the root of this psychosis, and that the emergence of this ego happened as a result of environmental conditions, not as a result of genetic makeup. Anyone interested in the history of the human psyche, who ponders about just what went wrong, should find this book compelling.