Yet another review of a review.<\/p>\n
There has been discussion on various sites in recent weeks, including Andrew Sullivan\u2019s The Dish, of a recent book by staunch unbeliever Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything<\/b><\/a>. The book is about an experience she had during adolescence that she now perceives as some sort of mystical experience, outside rational thinking.<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t read this book or anything earlier by Ehrenreich, but I suspect I would respond as does A.C. Grayling, in the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a> (via<\/a>)<\/p>\n \nEhrenreich is well known for her atheism as well as her other publicly-avowed stances. As a highly talented writer and a powerful advocate for social justice causes, she has a standing in American life that will make this spiritual \u2014 or quasi-religious \u2014 turn a subject for debate. The explanation she gives of what she means by her \u201canimism\u201d is only sketchily offered, for the reason mentioned: the difficulty of expressing the inexpressible. All those who report having the kind of experiences she has had have had to resort to poetry, allusion, hand-waving, or metaphor to convey what these experiences are like. <\/p>\n …<\/p>\n We should always remember that the mind is a great player of tricks: one can induce Ehrenreich-type experiences in the lab, or by popping certain kinds of pills, no Other and no Mystery required. It is accordingly a surprise and \u2014 let it be confessed \u2014 a disappointment to find so doughty a heroine of her causes sliding away from Athens to \u2014 well, if not to Jerusalem than to some other Eastern locus of the ineffable, the unnamable, and the smoky.<\/p>\n I repeat: it is a disappointment when a rational person\u2019s thinking about the unusual, the unexpected, the extraordinary, the amazing experiences of transcendence and unity that many of us have at heightened moments of life, suffers a declension into quasi-religious or supernaturalistic vagueness. The human brain is complicated enough to produce all these experiences from its own resources; we need no fairies in the garden to explain how roses bloom.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n All that said, Grayling concludes,<\/p>\n \nThat disappointment registered, my admiration for Barbara Ehrenreich the author and campaigner remains, as it does for the book itself: it is so beautifully written, so full of pungent insights on matters other than a putative Other, and so fascinating as a portrait of an intense and hypersensitive mind, especially in its youth, that it must surely count as one of the best reads of the year.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yet another review of a review. There has been discussion on various sites in recent weeks, including Andrew Sullivan\u2019s The Dish, of a recent book by staunch unbeliever Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the … Continue reading