Wandering God [Paperback]

Morris Berman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2000

The third book in Morris Berman's much acclaimed trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness, Wandering God continues his earlier work which garnered such praise as "solid lessons in the history of ideas" (KIRKUS Reviews), "filled with piquant details" (Common Boundary), "an informative synthesis and a remarkably friendly, good-natured jeremiad" (The Village Voice). Here, in a remarkable discussion of our hunter-gatherer ancestry and the "paradoxical" mode of perception that it involved, Berman shows how a sense of alertness, or secular/sacred immediacy, subsequently got buried by the rise of sedentary civilization, religion, and vertical power relationships.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Wandering God, counterculture scholar Morris Berman goes counter-counterculture, taking on such hallowed figures as Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Following the lead of Bruce Chatwin's Songlines, Berman discovers the natural state of humanity in our nomadic origins, taking us back not to the early civilizations and their myths but to our Paleolithic ancestors. While debunking Jung and Campbell, Berman draws on a range of anthropological studies to show civilization itself to be pathological, and religion and mysticism to be a coping response. What is natural, he says, is living in paradox, with a heightened sensitivity to our surroundings, in the timeless uncertainty of moment-to-moment living. Leaning toward what one might consider a Daoist or Zen sensibility, Berman serves up persuasive arguments, and his use of sources from Bernadette Roberts to Ludwig Wittgenstein are nothing short of virtuosic. However, his entire theory seems to stand or fall on whether one accepts the immense causal influence of the Freudian notion of infantile attachment, which, if not subject to the same types of methodological criticism he aims at Jung and Campbell, is at least vulnerable to a Wittgensteinian disentanglement. Berman admits that his theory is preliminary, and Wandering God should be read in that spirit. --Brian Bruya

From Kirkus Reviews

paper 0-7914-4442-2 Promising, vivid speculations on the evolution of mental states and varieties of consciousness from Berman (Coming to Our Senses, not reviewed). In this third volume of his trilogy on the paths of consciousness, Berman traces the societal movement from horizontal, egalitarian relations to vertical, hierarchical ones. Lost in the transition, according to Berman, was the magic of everyday life, the hunter-gatherer's alertness that captures the eternal in a moment of permanent ephemerality. The integration of the universal into the particular through the acceptance of (and the revelation of living in) the world as it is also tamps the pain of alienation following in the wake of recognizing a separate self. Berman draws upon research to refute the interpretation of the Paleolithic period as myth-drenched; instead, he tenders the possibility it was marked by paradoxan utter watchfulness within the numinous landscapein which children ``cathected the whole environment'' to mend the split between self and world. Whereas human beings are hard-wired to be on the movemovement is the physiological substrate of the paradoxical experience''sedentism and agriculture have been ``forced upon us by a combination of external circumstances and a latent drive for power and inequality.'' Openness to experience faded, certainties and absolutes replaced our need for uncertainty and surprise, paradigms follow paradigms as ultimate (and ineffectual) fixes. Unfortunately, we can't just superimpose nomadic spirituality over our verticalities. As Wittgenstein recognized, and Berman concurs, ``there finally is no way of jettisoning the transcendent without drifting into incoherence.'' But paradox can be a gadfly, challenging our notions of destiny, heroism, and certainty, exposing ourselves to the congruence of hunter-gatherer life, and, Berman suggests, ``if our culture does have a future, it may well depend on the development of the dialectical possibilities that exist between horizontal and vertical aspects of life.'' Gilgamesh understood the paradox; it glimmers in works from Alice Miller to Ortega y Gassett to Bernadette Roberts; and Berman lets it loose to humble authority and hierarchy. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 364 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (February 17, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791444422
• ISBN-13: 978-0791444429
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #121,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #42 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Other Practices > Tribal & Ethnic

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderous Wandering, June 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Wandering God (Paperback)

A paradigm addict's worst nightmare, "Wandering God" eschews everything from the intellectual dishonesty of Deconstructionism to the reassuring but ultimately flawed cross-cultural Comparativism of modern-day idols, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung.

Third in his trilogy on Human Consciousness, W.G. is Berman's leanest and most densely packed argument so far. The book abounds with scintillating insights on diverse subjects, such as the role that child-rearing has on modern life, and boldly rejects the conventional thesis that Ludwig Wittgenstein's "lost years" were actually so. What on this good green Earth do these two subjects have in common? More than you think.

But this brief and quixotic description is putting the cart before the proverbial horse.

Berman's main focus is in articulating the difference between traditional hunter-gatherer and sedentary consciousnesses, how both are part of our common heritage, and how vestiges of the former (horizontal, paradoxical) collide with the dominant zeitgeist of the latter (vertical, power-driven).

Many have been attracted to this book by the Idries Shah-like cover, a desert caravan image, or lulled into thinking W.G. is another in the endless junkpile of New Age tomes with the word "spirituality" in its sub-title. Those of us who know Berman's work can already see beyond the lamentable dust-jacket design. "Wandering God" moves adroitly across precise, scientific vistas into uncharted terrain - the depths of the human mind and body. By the book's end, one has witnessed, and participated in, the eruption of an intellectual volcano.

Some reviewers have been put off by Berman's unwillingness to neatly package and tie off his theses, and stake his academical prize. But that just confirms what Berman claims about the vertical, ascent underpinnings of modern human life, which are driven by a need to conquer and achieve, be it political power or mental/spiritual proselytizing.

This book is highly recommended.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Berman's Best Yet, October 30, 2000

By 

Charles D. Hayes (Wasilla, AK USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Wandering God (Paperback)

Morris Berman has had a profound effect on my thinking during the past decade. "Wandering God," I've concluded, after long deliberation, is my favorite of all of his books. I shied away from it at first because of my aversion to books with the word spirituality in the title. The term is used so often and in so many ways that I'm never certain what it means. I should have know better in Berman's case. This is a fascinating read, and it raises questions about the history of consciousness which should have been aired decades ago, were it not for the tendency of scholarship to converge into group-think. One thing for sure, Berman is always out in front, ahead of the group. His complete confidence and maturity of thought enables him to lay out paragraph after paragraph of serious thought and then wrap it up with a personal statement that shows he respects the reader more than the institutions that rein over serious subject matter. If you want to read something that will give you food for thought for years to come, read "Wandering God."

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Go Horizontal, Not Vertical, September 6, 2001

By 

Stanley Krippner (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wandering God (Paperback)

Morris Berman's masterful book, Wandering God, argues that humakind lost its way once agriculture and sedentary life styles set in. Even though humans have the same brains and bodies that characterized their prehistoric ancestors, they worship a vertical god (in the "heavens") and arrange their societies in vertical hierarchies. Berman touts the advantages of horizontal, egalitatarian relationships and spiritual practices, even though it necessitates living in the paradoxes that come with self-awareness. Although he depends too much on the Freudian notion of "infantile attachment" to make his case, Berman's message is provocative and visionary.