Customer Reviews

The Way of the Human Being

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Calvin Luther Martin is a non-Native writing about Native American knowledge--a delicate and dicey thing to do, considering that the history of accuracy, respect, understanding and justice is not good. It's essential for non-Natives to read contemporary Native authors, but it's also important for non-Native writers to help other non-Natives build their own bridges of understanding. Martin has lived among Indigenous Americans in the southwest and far north, and learned from them as well as teaching there on subjects as various as quantum physics and alcoholism, in places like a seminary and a prison. He writes well, and often eloquently. A philosophical view builds and winds through the chapters. This is not New Age mush. It is scholarly and personal at the same time. It's intellectually sophisticated, and will bear repeated readings. But it's not obscure. It's down to earth. Martin dares to see that the most advanced quantum view of reality, and the oldest indigenous view of reality are basically the same. He writes movingly of the leap that Einstein and famed ecologist Loren Eiseley couldn't make: that fear creates a fearsome universe, and that compassion, courtesy and trust in relation to all things are the way of the human being in the world. Martin brings together the voices of contemporary American Indians, explorers and ethnologists of past centuries; he weaves threads of Native and non-Native writing. As readers we find not just an important and mind-expanding philosophy beautifully developed, but sharp scenes that inform us on why the pain in Native America persists today--and why that pain is different but real. Martin pulls together ideas that have solid support from others and takes them his own step further. We get some feeling for him as a person, too, a very interesting one, with a wonderful partner. I am grateful to him for this book.

i don't know what i expected when i bought this
but i know i didn't expect quantum physics
a very nice surprise
instead of just getting the same old romantic notions of indians as proto-hippies, we get an introduction into some seriously challenging and exciting concepts and experiences of existence and reality

There are many books out there that argue persuasively for the value of aboriginal peoples' worldviews - that demonstrate how aboriginal worldviews and lifeways could help us modern, civilized people restore our relationship to the planet, to each other, and to our own selves. But there are very few books that have given me the sense that I am actually entering into that worldview myself - or that I am at least grasping what it would truly mean to enter into it. This book is one of those very few.

The big surprise is that the doorway Martin constructs for us moderns to pass though is...modern quantum physics. Actually, that is one half of the doorway. The other half is aboriginal stories. Martin's genius and gift is to show how aboriginal stories and ways of living express a quantum view of reality. But unlike scientists, who study the world objectively and who only understand quantum principles on a mental-conceptual level (and who, I would suppose, then go home from their labs and act exactly like any other dysfunctional, planet-destroying civilized person), aboriginal peoples seem to have felt and lived quantum principles in their inner beings and in their day-to-day lives. If you have any idea what quantum principles are, you will realize that this is an extraordinary thing.

Martin's language is equal to his message: vivid, evocative, and solidly grounded in concrete experience. About ten years after first reading it, this remains one of the most rewarding, enriching, and beautiful books I know of.