Robert Wolff (3)

Very much enjoy Wolff’s book as I had much the same emotional responses to it as when reading another favorite, David Abrams’ The Spell of the Sensuous. Both presented a taste of other ways of knowing which we in the industrialized West often never experience. As do many others, I fear we are quickly moving to a point where old ways of knowing will be forever lost. Each day indigenous peoples, like other animals, are being driven to extinction by encroaching ‘civilization’ and the commodification of everything and everyone. What is most troublesome to me is what Vandana Shiva calls Mononcultures of the Mind.… (mehr)

An interesting account of a man from Western culture, with the Western culture mindset, befriending a jungle tribe in Malaysia who had a perspective of world very, VERY, different from his. In this tribe, just like many others around the world, they see the world and everything that inhabits it as one, connected being, and humans are just another part of the pattern. They listen and communicate with the Earth in their own way. Robert Wolff writes his account of him trying to understand this tribes' perspective, which as expected of someone raised in the West, is frustrating and near impossible to anyone who grew up with their culture being the "absolutely correct" way of thinking.

A fascinating book that really makes you think.… (mehr)

Summary: Robert Wolff was born and raised in Southeast Asia, and has spent his life living at the border of two cultures. As an adult, he returns to Malaysia and learns from the aboriginal Sng'oi people. The are jungle dwellers and hunter/gatherers, but more importantly, they lead lives of joy and community, and a sense of interconnection to the world around them, free from the anxiety, struggle, and alienation of the modern world. What Wolff learns from them, and shares with us, is not only their story and their way of life, but also their unique way of being fully human.

Review: It was obvious from fairly early on that this book was not written by someone who writes for a living. The prose is simple and uncomplicated throughout, which on the one hand makes it non-threatening and accessible for the layperson, but on the other hand tended to dilute the message - there are only so many ways to say "we don't have a good word for this in English" before it starts to look like a cop-out, especially when other authors have found good words for similar concepts.

The organization was also less polished than what I would expect from a more experienced author. About half of the chapters read as though they were written at very different periods, and although they were on similar themes, they didn't have much connection to what came before or after. This in and of itself wouldn't have been a problem; collections of essays are a-okay by me (although some editing for repetition was needed; I think we heard at least five or six times that raising one's voice is considered extremely rude in Malay culture.) However, the other half of the chapters were more connected, and told more of a story, leaving the book as a whole to feel a little somewhat discombobulated.

Maybe as a result of the piecemeal approach to the book, there were a few times when it felt like Wolff was being somewhat hypocritical. In one chapter, he's very down on anthropology and anthropological methods for missing the truth of the people they study, but then in the next, he takes off to conduct what essentially amounts to his own anthropological study. Similarly, in the beginning of the book, he's very critical of people who go off into the jungle, become shamans, and then come back and try to sell what they've learned to other people... and then he tells us about how he went off into the jungle, became a shaman, and oh, by the way, thanks for giving me money to read this book I wrote about it.

The thing was, despite all of the problems I had with its presentation, I actually appreciate and mostly agree with his message. I think that modern culture (Taker culture, in Daniel Quinn's parlance) does have the effect of completely alienating us from the rest of the community of Life. I absolutely do believe that the people with whom Wolff spent time live their lives full of joy, humanity, and a sense of Oneness the world around them, and I further believe that Wolff did learn to tap into that mindset, that "way of knowing." My problem is not with the message, it was with Wolff's means of conveying it. Wolff's story is interesting and his message important, but he doesn't ever bring it around to be practical for people who don't have a tiger-filled jungle available for their vision quest at a moment's notice, nor is the writing enough to really convey the power and the universality of the point he's trying to make. 3 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: It was certainly interesting, and not as New-Age-y woo-woo as I'd feared, but I think Daniel Quinn's The Story of B makes a lot of Wolff's same points but with a better use of the language.… (mehr)