The Voice of the Infinite in the Small: Re-Visioning the Insect - Human Connection [Paperback]

Joanne E. Lauck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 13, 1998 | ISBN-10: 1893183106 | ISBN-13: 978-1893183100 | Edition: 2nd

Understanding the Infinite in the Small is less a book about insect biology and behavior than it is about reinventing ourselves as a non-hostile species. It is a unique psychological and spiritual perspective on insects and the recasting of our relationship to this Lilliputian world. The popular culture never rises above issues of power. It is in this mode then that we are caught between opposites: either we kill the insects, or we are defeated by them. We rarely see a third possibility. We rarely put down our weapons long enough to consider the effect we might have if we entered their world with empathy and compassion. Perhaps we underestimate the powers of providence that would suddenly appear if we could align ourselves with the earth and the small creatures that serve it so faithfully. It's time to try.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lauck, an environmental educator, writes with infectious enthusiasm about everyday matters that may well determine the fate of the earth, namely, our relationship to its most numerous inhabitants: the insects. Following Rachel Carson and others, Lauck catalogues and critiques the pervasive mentality, ultimately suicidal, that places commercial concerns over all others. She invokes Jung, Rilke, Thoreau, Einstein, Robert Bly, Sam Keene, James Hillman and Suzuki Roshi, among others, to suggest an outlook more sensitive to human values. Lauck is a storyteller, too, and in her effort to replace our underlying adversarial myths about our relation to insects, she relates tales from cultures around the world in which insects are helpers, heroes, teachers, even gods. Sections on the mosquito, the spider, even the cockroach are insightful and inspiring, with implications both for large-scale agribusiness and for our daily comportment toward our tiny brethren. Our revulsion toward insects, she demonstrates, is conditioned, not innate, and we can learn other, kinder ways. Sections of detailed material on the lives of insects are surprising and fascinating. Here and there the science is spotty, as Lauck tends to accept with uncritical sentimentality the most bizarre shamanic anecdotes or New Age claims, and her secondhand pop interpretations of science are occasionally wide of the mark. At one point, for instance, she makes the incredible claim that "[s]tudies in quantum mechanics have demonstrated that objectivity in research is an illusion," a simplistic position destructive of all inquiry. Nonetheless, this is important material, informative and highly readable, a good resource book for teachers, parents and citizens, as practical as can be, personally and politically.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

Key Note

In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, a gnat asks Alice, "What sort of insects do you rejoice in where you come from?" Puzzled by the question, she replies, "I don't rejoice in insects at all." In these lines an ancient world that honored all life forms meets our Western culture which ranks other species on a hierarchy of perceived value and places insects and related creatures at the bottom. There are reasons why we mistrust and fear insects. Few have much to do with the real creatures. Most involve misperceptions about them, ourselves, and our relationship to the Earth community-the roots of our enmity are embedded in a false creation story and a bid to overpower and control the natural world.

Major Selling Points

No matter what your age, environment, or standard of living, one must interact with the insect world, and most people spend enormous amounts of money trying to eradicate them.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 84% of U.S. households still use pesticides in the home and millions of people store chemicals already banned. This book has an expanding market in those homeowners and parents who now realize that using chemicals is no longer an option.

This book gives readers the opportunity to expand their circle of concern and deepen their commitment to live in harmony with all other species.

The book has a ready audience with home-owners, environmentalists, organic gardeners and people working in animal-related fields, including pet owners.

It will also appeal to those people who are aware of the need to protect the natural world and who have gained an appreciation for other species, but cannot yet include insects because their appearances, appetites or numbers are threatening.

By investigating the reasons why we have, individually and collectively, adopted an adversarial and false stance toward creeping creatures, the reader learns that they have an innate affiliation for them.

With the current popularity of films such as Antz and A Bug's Life, public interest in the insect world is at an all-time high. These films try to make insects personable to children. This book makes insects sacred to adults. Working together, the films and the book will change attitudes towards insects in a positive way.

Marketing Plans Major review coverage National TV and radio campaign that will focus on the environment, health professionals and educators. The author will continue to write numerous articles to promote in main stream media. Promote the book to the National Science Museum's across the country, The Nature Conservancy and to the Nature's stores and their catalogs Bookstore promotion and readings In addition to the Blue Water Publishing web site, the author is developing "The Insect-Human Connection website that focuses on the insect-human connection. The author offers presentations and/or workshops and is planning on presenting at Matthew Fox's CreationSpirituality University in Oakland and The Ecopsychology Institute headquartered in the California State University and to the Deep Ecology Institute and other conferences. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 378 pages
• Publisher: Granite Publishing, L.L.C.; 2nd edition (August 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893183106
• ISBN-13: 978-1893183100
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,288,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Food for Thought on the Insect-Human Connection, August 24, 2005

By 

David B Richman (Mesilla Park, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Voice of the Infinite in the Small: Re-Visioning the Insect-Human Connection (Paperback)

Joanne Lauck's book "The Voice of the Infinite in the Small," starts with the very intriguing premise that we humans tend to demonize the smaller six, eight and multi-legged creatures around us, while these have their place in nature and are often important in our own survival (where would we be without pollination!) As a professional biologist who has specialized in arthropods, I could not agree more on this point. Indeed, Lauck has brought together some most intriguing imagery and fascinating myths and metaphors into a discussion that I think was long overdue. As a professional I constantly hear complaints from people about some harmless or nearly harmless arthropod, such as any spider, certain innocuous true bugs and beetles, or house centipedes that they think should be immediately wiped off the face of the earth.

That said I think Lauck also makes some fairly serious blunders and depends too much on very questionable authority. I find some of her supposedly true stories (such as bees visiting the grave of a dead bee keeper or people making pacts with Japanese beetles) to be pretty difficult to swallow and she is totally wrong on several "facts" about flies and arachnids. One (perhaps minor, but none the less irritating) example is the old legend that male deer bot flies can fly hundreds of miles an hour. This tall tale was based on a totally mistaken calculation made by C. H. Tyler Townsend, a late nineteenth and early twentieth Century entomologist, who guesstimated that to be a blur a male deer bot fly had to be traveling at least 500 mph! In actuality they need only be flying no more than 35 mph! To be traveling at 500 mph, the bot flies would use up a huge amount of energy and the resulting turbulence would tear off their wings! On a more serious note I am quite reluctant to give blood to mosquitoes (although I have given my share involuntarily to be sure!) and am also a bit leery about being too cavalier about mosquito-born diseases. Eventually we may make our peace with a parasite like the malarial plasmodium, but it is only after a period of adjustment during which many of us may suffer as much as the insects. It is easy to contemplate these problems from a distance when one does not have to stand by the bed of a child dying from dengue, yellow fever or malaria! As to friendly scorpions, I would be willing (and in fact have done so) to hold a big black Pandinus (Emperor) scorpion (which are pretty docile and not especially venomous), but definitively not a "death stalker" (Leiurus sp.) or fat-tailed scorpion (Androctonus spp.) Only a fool would handle either of these two directly. Encouraging anyone to hold such dangerous creatures is a very bad idea!

I, indeed, would take the middle way (and I can only speak for myself in this). I believe that one should not go out of ones way to do harm to other creatures and that deliberately killing another organism is excusable for only three reasons (one being very human). The first is need for sustenance (including protecting food crops from pests, although not to the level of broad-spectrum pesticide use we have employed in the past)- I have heard that even the Delhi Lama eats meat every other day because of a metabolic problem. The second is to protect oneself and others from disease or envenomation - at least some, if not most mosquitoes, ticks, lice and fleas, as well as some scorpions and spiders, may fall under this- Bubonic plague or dengue are not fun diseases to get and I am not going to wait around for them to become more benign! The final reason I would grant (being a scientist) is to gain knowledge of the natural world, in part to help protect it in the long term and to maintain a body of knowledge that would help us understand the relationships and dynamics of the biota. I would put some constraints on this activity- as organisms become better known I see them being more valuable alive than in a collection. Thus most mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, marine mollusks and a few others, like butterflies, can currently be monitored without usually taking physical samples. The eventual goal would be to eliminate the need for collecting, although this may take more time for some groups like beetles or higher flies.

That said I admire Lauck for bringing the subject up and hope that some of her wonder and respect for the insect world would permeate society more than at present. We need not kill every creature that causes us fear. However, to discriminate properly in an all too imperfect world we need to arm ourselves with some knowledge.

Read this book for some inspiration for ways to get along with the insect world (which as Lauck points out, is also our own), but also with a carefully critical eye.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insects as Messengers, May 21, 2001

By 

Scott Hess (Petaluma, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Voice of the Infinite in the Small: Re-Visioning the Insect - Human Connection (The New Millennium Library, V.5) (Paperback)

The Voice of the Infinite in the Small has opened up vast new understandings in my mind and psyche, about the beauty, dignity and yes, the sacred nature of the Insect Kingdom. Joanne Lauck holds a mirror up to the unnatural aversion, the hatred, and the venomous attacks by human culture on that which it cannot manipulate and control. She reveals how afraid we have become of a genuine give and take with our fellow species and with natural systems in general. This is the life threatening Crisis of our time.

Lauck also points out with tremendous richness of reference, from Aboriginal myth to current expressions of the New Sciences, how the insect kingdom can reflect and communicate the Natural Intelligence that pervades all- if encountered with CLEAR, RESPECTFUL INTENT. This book is amazingly detailed and thorough. It is an example of a powerful intellect placed in the service of wholeness and the original, natural self we are longing to recover for our human survival and ultimate success. I could feel the peace surround me and the love rush in when absorbing these ideas. May this book be circulated, appreciated, amplified throughout the world! It is powerful medicine in a dark and dangerous time.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book That Will Change Your View of the World, July 29, 1999

By 

Robert N. Sollod "Bob Sollod" (Shaker Heights, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Voice of the Infinite in the Small: Re-Visioning the Insect - Human Connection (Paperback)

This wonderfully researched book is one of those books that comes along now and then that both can change your view of the world and confirm intuitions that had been buried. Respect and compassion toward all living things is makes the world a better place and us better people. Such compassion thus fulfills two of the major responsibilities of every human being on earth. I love Ms. Lauck for the vision, courage, and compassion which made it possible for her to write this book, which is destined to become a classic. Whether it becomes a best-seller or simply a perennial underground classic (like the One Straw Revolution) I cannot predict. But "The Voice of the Infinite in the Small" is going to be around for many years - until its message becomes apparent to us in the Western world.