Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

Synopsis:
An exploration of a murder committed in the FLDS community of polygamists becomes an exploration of the history of Mormonism and the paradox of the many outward virtues of its followers, and the murders and massacres that have marked its development into a major world religion.

Review:
This is my second time reading Under the Banner of Heaven, and I got so much out of it this time. The importance of Mormonism on the history of the American West is something that I never learned about, even as an American Studies major in college. It’s just fascinating to me and I want to learn a lot more about it. My one disappointing quibble is that in the last pages of the book, Krakauer calls Mormonism a Christian sect, and it made me wish that he had used his skills as a journalist to engage with the Mormon theology, which bears no resemblance to orthodox Christianity, Protestant or Catholic. There are superficial similarities, but Mormonism really is its own religion.

Posted in American Literature | Tagged , , , , | 2 Replies

Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes by Daniel L. Everett

Synopsis:
The account of a missionary and linguist who has devoted his life to studying the language and culture of the Piraha in the Amazon, a people who have no numbers, colors, origin story, or perception of anything outside the immediate.

Review:
Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes is a fascinating first person account that looks at a culture that is so utterly alien to our own that it’s hard to believe we could ever have anything in common with them.

The Piraha people live in Brazil along the Amazon, and have an hermetically sealed culture that is seemingly impervious to outside influences, mainly because the Piraha believe themselves superior in every way to the rest of the world. In their discourse, they don’t reference anything outside the immediate, and have no words to reflect those sorts of concepts. For example, they don’t use numbers because counting something means that there could be more of a thing, but since the more isn’t right there then there is no more, therefore, no need to count. To put it another way, they use the word “all” indiscriminately. You can still have all of something even after giving part of it away. They don’t discuss the origin of the universe, nor does their cosmology include an afterlife.

This all proved to be fascinating to the author, Daniel L. Everett, as well as spiritually challenging. A linguist, Everett’s main task was to decode Piraha language so that he could translate the Bible for them. He ended up discovering that Piraha violates several key assumptions that linguists had always assumed to be inviolable, and his work revolutionized the field. However, because he was unable to use the Piraha language to explain Christianity to them, Everett came to lose his faith entirely. He ended up being converted to the Piraha’s pragmatism and immediacy.

I can definitely see how the Piraha way of life would present a challenge to evangelical Christianity, with its emphasis on the inner, personal experience of spirituality. But I can’t help but wonder if Everett had been more grounded in orthodox, Reformed Christianity, with its emphasis on God’s intervention in history if he could’ve found a way to solve the problem of presenting Christianity to a people who can’t even fathom the concept of God. The Piraha laughed when Everett gave his testimony, filled as they usually are with tragedy and dramatic spiritual awakenings, because the Piraha believe that people get what they deserve. In one way, they’re like ancient practitioners of the Secret; but in another way it’s like they already get the idea that nobody is entitled to an easy life. Most Christians who spend years in the faith realize that believing in Christ doesn’t guarantee good things. In fact, the opposite can be true. And Christianity shouldn’t be proved on the basis of the number of blessings a believer can count.

I hope that Bible translators don’t give up on Piraha. I’d love to read another book explaining how such a translation is achieved. It’d be fascinating!

Posted in American Literature | Tagged , , | 3 Replies

Our Babies, Ourselves by Meredith Small

Synopsis:
An exploration of how parenting styles around the world bring into question our definition of normal infant behavior.

Review:
I was familiar already with a lot of the content of Our Babies, Ourselves, because Meredith Small’s findings crop up in a lot of literature on attachment parenting. However, it was still well worth reading because she delves so deeply into issues of evolution, natural selection, biology, and human development to demonstrate why parenting styles vary across cultural lines. She looks at tribes like the !Kung and the Ache, as well as urban cultures like the US and the Netherlands and shows the differing ways in which infants are cared for.

Small then builds a very compelling case that American parenting practices conflict with babies’ biological and evolutionary hardwiring in order to foster culturally important traits like independence. She sees a trade off, in that American babies reared in mainstream ways adapt and achieve desired independence, but tend to cry more than babies in other cultures that are more in tune with the natural rhythm of babies.

For a long time, I believed that all babies ate every four hours and needed to cry to fall asleep. This was because I spent years babysitting for formula-fed, sleep trained babies. It wasn’t until about 7 years ago that I began sitting for families whose babies were breastfed, and who coslept with their kids that I learned that there was another way to parent. Now I’m a mother who breastfeeds on demand with Superfast Baby in bed with me for most of the night. It’s so easy that way, and it was interesting to learn some biological and evolutionary reasons why it works so well.

Posted in American Literature | Tagged , , , , | 6 Replies

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Synopsis:
We live in the Age of Show Business. Postman’s book is a history of discourse that presents the case for the preeminence of the written word over visual media, and outlines the ills inherent in a visually-driven society.

Review:
I was somewhat familiar with Postman’s general ideas, having been friends with one of his protegees for many years. However, this is the first time I have read him for myself, which is a shame because I have an advanced degree in cinema studies. My studies were focused more on film history and less on film theory, so that’s my justification. Continue reading