Earthbodies, livre ebook

Shows how our cultural misconceptions about the body distort its capacities and lead to personal and social ills.

Shows how our cultural misconceptions about the body distort its capacities and lead to personal and social ills.

Earthbodies describes how our bodies are open circuits to a sensual magic and planetary care that when closed off leads to disastrous detours, such as illness, "dis-ease," and toxicity. In doing so, it answers a variety of questions. Can we understand our bodies without understanding how they are part of a rhythmic flow with the rest of the planet? How can we decide how to treat the animals around us when we fail to realize the nature of our kinship with them? Without hearing the voices of the earth, rocks, and ocean waves, how can we dialogue with the planet or understand ourselves? Why are we so fascinated with film versions of nightmarish ghouls and vampires? How can celebrities impact more on our lives than our own families? What kind of human connection can we expect from the Internet? How is it that some of our adolescent boys shoot down their schoolmates? Despite our apparent cynicism, is our culture overly sentimental? What kind of ethics would help us find a moral way to achieve an inclusive global community and cherish the environment?

Acknowledgments

Introduction


1. The Earthly Dance of Interconnection


Moving Earth and Flowing Flesh
Dancing versus Diabolical Logic
Addicted to Self-Laceration
Earthbody Sense
Ceremonial Awareness


2. Earthbody Dimensions


We Are Time
Sensing Enters the Earth
Eroticism Truly


3. Discordant Contemporary Rhythms


Introduction: Detachment as a Curse upon the Land
Ghouls: Our Love of Horror and Compulsion to Consume
Vampires: Hunger for Experience and Fear of Intimacy
Aesthetes: Obsession with Novelty and Control
Who Has the Last Laugh?


4. Cyberspace: Rootedness versus Being in Orbit


Introduction: A Different Kind of Materialism
Cyberspace: A Material and Embodied Place in the World
The Virtual Is the Heart of Reality
Cyborg Life: Protean Selves versus Fragmented Selves
Deep-rooted Emotion versus Cyberspace Sentimentality

5. Planetary Meaningfulness


Introduction: The World Is Our "Out of Body" Body
Animals and Humans as Part of the Same Dream
Animals and Vitality, Morality, Spirituality, and Play
Traditional Western Ethics as a Perverse Reaction to the Planet


6. Rejoining the Planet


An Earthbody Ethics of Achieving Presence and Co-presence
Patterns of Perversity in Flight from Pain
Rhythm's Power, Changing Destructive Patterns, and Finding Place
A Dynamic Sense of the Depth of Surfaces
Responsibility, Reverberating Resonance, and Joy


Afterword: A Poem


Notes


Index