Product Description

In this far-ranging and heartening collection, Derrick Jensen gathers conversations with environmentalists, theologians, Native Americans, psychologists, and feminists, engaging some of our best minds in an exploration of more peaceful ways to live on Earth. Included here is Dave Foreman on biodiversity, Matthew Fox on Christianity and nature, Jerry Mander on technology, and Terry Tempest Williams on an erotic connection to the land. With intelligence and compassion, Listening to the Land moves from a look at the condition of the environment and the health of our spirit to a beautiful evocation of eros and a life based on love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #445914 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Customer Reviews

Inspiring conversations on human/nature relations
This book is comprised of interviews Derrick Jensen had with a diverse group of people that he saw as searching for answers to the question of why modern society was propagating a pervasive ecological destruction of the earth, and if there are ways to live more peacefully with the natural world. The interviewees include anthropologists, psychologists, theologians, and indigenous philosophers. Jensen uses the dialogue form instead of a single-voice narrative "in the hope the reader would experience the story for what it is - a communal effort at working through some of the greatest and most difficult questions ever faced by human beings." This dialogue form was at first distracting, since it lacked the tight organizational structure of written discourse and the argumentative authority of the single-voiced narrative. But as I became more accustomed to the dialogue style I saw that its weaknesses were also its strength. The personality and subjective aspect of the interviewer and the interviewees came to the forefront showing how that which was being discussed was shaped and colored by each of them and the interaction between them. This non-detached orientation helped to make the discussion about human/nature interaction more intersubjective, or less about something out there and more about something constructed by participating subjects in the drama of life. In terms of the interviewer, Jensen was trained in mineral engineering physics in the early 1980's but soon found himself miserable in his "not-too-meaningless", middle class technical job. His quest to find "other models for happiness" (page 2) is apparent in his interviewing style that maintains an intimate personal quality even while discussing abstract theoretical points. Within the dialogues he stays in the background allowing the interviewees to fluidly expound on his penetrating but concise questions. He also is able to do the difficult job of asking follow-up questions that complement and probe further, by building on the interviewees responses. What emerges is the sense of being witness to oral conversations that stir the heart, inform the intellect and inspire the spirit. The interviewees themselves are a "who's who" of the environmental field. From Earth First founder Dave Foreman we hear that "in religious terms... fighting to save biodiversity, the process of evolution, is a way for us to save our souls". The complexity of the fight and the man, come out later in the interview when he tells a story about going to Washington D.C. to be a lobbyist for the Wilderness Society. A senator took him aside and told him to put his heart in a safe-deposit box and replace his brain with a pocket calculator because only by quoting economists and engineers and being devoid of emotion would he have credibility. To this he said " But Damn it, I am emotional. I'm an animal, and proud of it. Descartes was wrong when he said, 'I think therefore I am.' Our consciousness, our being, is not all up here in the skullbox, its our whole body we think with...We need that green fire in our eyes. Somehow we've got to remember how to think like a mountain." (page 12) Mathew Fox, tells us of how his Creation Spirituality is about realizing that nature's laws are miracles, and that regaining the mystical awe in experiencing life creates a foundation of love within us, that if missing makes us essentially lost in the world. Then showing the cross pollination of ideas alive in these interviews, he quotes sustainable agriculture advocate Wendell Berry who says that "Perhaps the greatest disaster of human history is...the conceptual division between the holy and the world, the excerpting of the creator from the creation." (page 69) The Ecofemist, Charlene Spretnak, proposes a replacement for "mechanistic, dualistic, anti-nature, anti-spiritual modernity" (page 49) not with a nihilistic extreme relativity post-modernism, but with what she calls 'ecological postmodernism'. Based on being embodied and embedded in the natural world, her ecological postmodernism refutes the "death of subject" and the "denial of meaning" of postmodernism. She counters Foucalt's autonomous self with a self based on an interdependent communion with the universe. I regret that the length of this review limits me from going into more of the remaining twenty-seven interviews, but let me finish by saying that when I need spiritual inspiration or intellectual stimulation to enhance my work as an Ecological Anthropologist, this book of conversations will be one of the first places I will turn.

Everyone should be listening to Derrick Jensen!
If there were any justice in the world, Derrick Jensen's book, "Listening to the Land, " would be a best seller, the hot book being read and talked about by just about everyone. In such a world, what would - just for example - President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other "drill, cut and burn" true believers think of this book? One guess? They'd probably arrest Jensen under the USA Patriot Act and have the book burned on a pile of old-growth firewood! How about all these big-shot CEOs now on their way to jail (hopefully) for corporate wrongdoing? They'd probably try to figure out how to coopt Jensen into their corporate advertising about how "green" they are! Don't forget the Catholic Church bishops, who shuffled pedophile priests around and protected them from any reprimand over the years; they'd probably say that Jensen and his friends are all just a bunch of nature-worshipping atheist witches! And let's not let good ol' average "middle Americans" off the hook either, since it's their consumption and waste (which apparently knows no bounds), their actions, and their apathy, which allow a few powerful people, companies, and governments to trash the planet, the poor, and the vulnerable (both human and non-human) for their own power and profit.

Unfortunately, in this far-from-just world of ours, most people -certainly not our political or corporate leaders -- have never even HEARD of Derrick Jensen, let alone read "Listening to the Land." And, also unfortunately, most of these people would probably just dismiss Derrick Jensen and friends as a bunch of "tree-hugging, left-wing, anti-establishment nutcases." Well, given the level of violence, destruction, and mass extinction humans are currently wreaking on our planet, I'll take the "tree-hugging anti-establishment nutcases" over Bush, the corporate CEOs, the Catholic bishops, and the SUV-driving American suburbanites -- any day of the week!

What Derrick Jensen has courageously done here is to bring together around 30 leading theologians, environmentalists, Native American philosophers, psychologists, techno-skeptics and others in a fascinating series of interviews ("conversations" really) which provide a much-needed fresh perspective while bringing to bear tremendous energy, passion and focus on some of our biggest and most urgent problems. These people may care passionately about things, but they're definitely not a bunch of wackos. In fact, the more you read, the more you realize it's OUR SOCIETY that's wacko, not the "tree huggers."

Jensen is excellent at asking penetrating question and getting his subjects to speak their minds, although at times I wish I could have heard more of his voice as well (have to read his other books, I guess). By the end of "Listening to the Land," the level of thoughtfulness, eloquence, compassion, and wisdom found here fills us with understanding, sadness, righteous anger, and a sense that the world as it is currently constituted is just not right. Specifically, Jensen shows us how a lack of connection and harmony within the human soul itself - a result in large part of organized religion's teachings regarding man's "specialness," separation from all other works of creation (i.e., nature), and hence "dominion over the Earth" -- has bred a potentially fatal disease for both humans and non-humans. Jensen's conversations also make clear that something must be done about this situation immediately, and it ain't drilling in the Arctic or blowing the tops off of mountains in West Virginia (as the Bushies would have us believe), I'll tell you that!

If, after reading "Listening to the Land," you don't feel at all angry, disturbed, or upset, perhaps you're a corporate CEO or the White House Press Spokesman or something. For the rest of us, though, many of whom care about both our own lives as well as the world around us, this book is indispensable and deeply moving. I couldn't recommend "Listening to the Land" more strongly to anyone who cares about the world they live in. I admire and commend Derrick Jensen for his honest and powerful work; and I greatly look forward to reading his other books!

Valuable and Diverse Compendium of Earth Philosophies
Kudos to Derrick Jensen for coming up with the idea for this unique book. This is a very insightful and diverse collection of conversations with a variety of environmentally minded thinkers. These are structured as loose dialogues in which each thinker's ideas come to the fore. Not all of these discussions are strictly environmentalist (in the basic definition of the term), but all explore humanity's important connection with the Earth in myriad fashions. The discussions are very loosely arranged by discipline; with ecology, science, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology, and finally art and philosophy appearing as the book progresses.

This ordering of different disciplines leads to a few problems in flow. The book gets off to a rocky start with essays in hard ecology from activists, especially Christopher Manes, who can't accept the fact that humans are (at least temporarily) stuck in a non-ecological society. In the book's later stages things really slow down with poorly developed philosophies and quaint PC-isms. A low point is the scatterbrained mysticism/communitarianism of Dolores LaChapelle and Julien Puzey, while the environmental bookbinding art of Sandra Lopez is rather neat but too esoteric to be of much use.

But the day is more than saved overall by the powerful remainder of the book, in which the really articulate thinkers make their mark. Good examples are the musings on technology by Jerry Mander, the population economics of William R. Catton Jr., and the cultural analysis of Frederick Turner. A good side effect of this book is the attention it brings to the many under-appreciated and valuable books by these thinkers. And in every interview, Jensen does a marvelous job of acting less like an interviewer and more like a facilitator. He provides sharp comments and leading questions in an efficient manner, allowing each thinker to give their philosophy in ways that provide maximum insight to the Earth-connected reader.