Recommendations from our site
“This is one of the most original and interesting books I’ve read in the last five years. Barbara Ehrenreich had written a book on war and got intrigued by the rituals and the group cohesion that results from war. So she wrote her next book on this human capacity and even need for group cohesion. What she found is that just about every society, at the time of Western contact, had some way of altering their bodies, and dancing around a fire or totemic object to some sort of rhythmic beat, music or a drum. Almost every traditional society had ways of using motion and music to bind themselves together and to achieve states of collective ecstasy. Europeans were generally disgusted by this, and tried to stamp it out as best they could. She shows how Christianity used to be a danced religion, but in the middle ages that got stamped out too. And what we’re left with is this rather dry and puritanical fear of ecstasy and loss of control.” Read more...
Jonathan Haidt, Psychologist
