Customer Reviews

In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking History and Time

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Don't pay attention to Trickster. If you've ever had a course on Native-American mythology you'd know what a trickster is. There is nothing in this book about quantum physics.

I was fortunate enough to have Calvin Luther Martin as a professor at Rutgers. I took one of his Native-American courses for fun and it was just that. Wildly fun. He was easily my favorite professor at Rutgers. He is a fantastic story-teller and if he's ever lecturing in your area by all means try to catch him. His lectures had a campfire-like atmosphere. That's how intimate and magical they felt. He would roam up and down the aisles of the lecture hall and speak in a soft yet energetic voice. This man is the definition of eloquence.

This book is a very interesting read. Even though it's been about 8 years since I was first assigned to read it I've read it several times since then. Each time I pick it up I see something that I missed in the previous read. This is one of those books that you can't benefit from unless you've read it at least twice. The book will eventually blow your mind if you read it enough. It makes you look at history from a completely different perspective. That is no small feat.

As a student of Calvin's at Rutgers University this review is not without bias, and yet to call it a stirring book, and to pronounce Calvin a profound thinker is not gratuitous enough. This is a book which engages the metaphysics of Native American occupation of North America as a means to critique the Western understanding of human spatial and temporal existence. It is both historical and philosophical as it seeks to reevaluate the relationship between human beings and the "place" they inhabit. Calvin is one of those individuals who has the power to change the way you see yourself in relationship to the world around you; "In The Spirit of the Earth", contains this power.

Calvin Luther Martin's "In the Spirit of the Earth" examines several closely related themes: the history of modern man's relationship with the Earth and its creatures, our use of language, the mindset behind the development of technology, and history itself. Martin describes his work as combining memoir, ethnography, and history. I would add that this book is also a story. It tells of a species that once lived with a sense of connection to its natural surroundings, then severed that connection, and over thousands of years continued to build structures of thought, speech, and material culture which kept that connection broken. It tells how our range of human discourse "has narrowed from human/other-than-human to human/human."

It is also a meditation on the consequences of that story: the harm we have caused, in our quest for security and dominance, to our own psyches and spirits, to other species, and to other human beings who have not accepted our cultural paradigm.

The roots of this book go back at least to 1970, when Martin began studying the relationship between North American Indians and the land, its plants, and its animals--especially its animals. He discovered a repeating theme amongst tribal peoples: the spiritual and visceral connection ordinary people had with the animal powers. Drawing on his knowledge of both early Paleolithic cultures and what he learned of tribal peoples of the present era, he presents the reader with a plausible description of what human culture must have been like on the eve of the Neolithic Age, which ushered in agriculture, technology, urbanization, the concept of history, patriarchal gods, and the inability to live on the planet without despoiling it.

The theme of our bond with animals weaves through the book. In Paleolithic times we viewed wild animals as allies, even family. After the agricultural revolution, we domesticated, controlled, and abused animals. We demonized animals not under our control. And in contrast to the early mythologies which depicted animals as co-creators in stories of beginnings and transformations, Neolithic peoples wrote histories that were strictly about the doings of people, and the most powerful classes of people at that. Notions of history and time became tied up with the linear march of "progress," that is, the steps of accruing power over nature and over other humans whose ideas we oppose.

Martin's book is a powerful indictment of the prevailing mindset within which most literate people now live. The damage that has flowed from that mindset may be the undoing of us all. However, there are some things about our technological prowess that I find difficult to write off. For instance, my grandmother died in childbirth in a remote region without medical care. I would have died in childbirth too if I had not had access to modern health care. There is a price that comes with life in the wild. Would humans have all been better off to have none of the amenities we now enjoy?

One approach to this question suggests that the technological, rational, patriarchal stage has been a necessary but temporary phase in our species' development. Without it, we would never have developed as individuals with the capacity for self-examination. Nor would we possess distinct identities apart from our culture group, which is a relatively recent development in human history. According to some thinkers on this subject, the ability to act as an "I" has brought benefits as well as harm. But many also believe that we could be evolving toward a state of consciousness which will allow us each to perceive both as a discreet self and as a self connected to a greater whole that includes the entire network of Being--in other words, a state that combines our past and current ways of knowing.

Clearly, we can't go back to the past which Martin has written about so poignantly. But there is a way forward, and part of finding that way lies in examining what we've given up. Martin's book is an important contribution to helping us understand what we might want to carry forward into our future.

Just a note: the "review" by Trickster is just that, a con job.

CHI-HO! Enter the mass of CLM and hear the gospel that you have ignored. Yes, you heard it here first--the Indians knew about quantum physics, but their knowledge of arcane physics was not enough to stop their destruction by the white man. Learn about superpositioning: this when Indians would teleport forward or backward in time (because time is cyclical). There is also a helpful section on painting oneself up like a tribal warrior of the past. My gripe with the book is that Mr. Martin has left out a crucial facet of Indian history--the smashing of the teleportation machines by the early Dutch settlers. This fact cannot be ignored in any survey of the period. CHI-HO!