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3.0 out of 5 stars
Ambitious book that does not fully live up to promise, 29 Jan 2001
By A Customer
This book is very ambitious, but in my view, falls short of what it could have achieved. Essentially, Edmund Law is arguing the following: As Homo Erectus became a self-conscious primate, the stress of dealing with possibilities and contingencies became over burdensome: he could starve if the hunt failed, or die if attacked by enemies or be killed by the formidable predators roving the earth. This stress was eased by genetic developments that gave emergent man the capacity to "hallucinate", have visions, commune with higher powers and create a tribal mythology/cosmology. These new abilities bonded the tribal society together, provided it with common symbols, absolved this new creature from responsibility in the really big matters (like would there be enough prey, etc.) and gave it the courage and altruism to work and fight for the good of the clan. Since this religious capacity was beneficial to man, natural selection favored the genetic propagation of individuals with the predisposition to have visions, dreams, hallucinations and religious experience. Thus, man has a genetic need to believe in something, anything. The current crisis of the "Religious Ape" is due to social and scientific developments that have weakened religion and deprived man of his deep-seated genetic appetite for faith. So much for the main arguments.But Mr. Law often appears to be contradicting himself. On the one hand, he claims that religion has historically put a check on man's excesses; several paragraphs later, he argues that really strong faith demands a conviction that puts witches on trial, burns heretics at the stake and allows for no compromise in the religious dogma, as if these were not gross excesses themselves. Also, Mr. Law appears to be taking fire at many aspects of today's modern, democratic, pluralistic, emancipated society, implying that a more religious age and a subsequently more "structured" world were better for both men and women, since then everybody knew his or her place and did not need to be stressed by freedom of thought or freedom of opportunity. It appears as if his main concern is the stress that modern man feels by having a broader world-view, accountability for his actions, innumerable possibilities and no clear answers to the big questions. He repeatedly refers to the happy serf who knew that he would be a serf his whole life and just didn't need to worry about becoming anything else, thus no stress. He even argues that if some nobleman were to lay the serf's fields to waste, at least the poor serf had the necessary faith to pray for divine redress, maybe even cast a spell on the perpetrator, but at least he did not have to endure the stress of taking the villain to court and exposing society to the trauma of inner division. If the alternative is to return to a locked and narrow society with little room for freethinking and free movement, I think I would rather be an ape in crisis. Mr. Law roams far and wide in this book, covering everything from the latest breakthroughs in chip design to degenerate modern British art. He paints an unflattering picture of modern man and his society and, in doing so, treads into many patches that are not his field of expertise. Accordingly, the book sometimes takes on a tone of soapbox rhetoric and amateur journalism, any subject or fact that might seem to support his main thesis of the modern ape in crisis. To his credit, he does not appear to have any hidden agenda, no grand climax toward which the book is deceptively leading the objective reader. His conclusion is simple: man needs to believe something and is finding it increasingly difficult to believe in anything. Unfortunately, he lists Nazism, Communism and alien abduction as "modern" alternatives to faith. Not very encouraging prospects if you harbor any concern for the future of man. Maybe natural-selection will start favoring a modern human capable of living with uncertainty and personal accountability and the pursuant stress, while the hallucinatory, neurotic and suggestible variety will slowly go away. On a final note, I have never read a book so poorly edited and so chockfull of basic grammatical errors and typos. Zero stars to the publishing house and their editorial staff.
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