Reddit reviews Wandering God

For two podcasts in a row, KMO has had JMG on to talk about his new book, Not the Future We Ordered.

This sounds A LOT like Morris Berman's book Reenchantment of the World written in 1981. They even used the phrase "Reenchantment of the World in last week's podcast! (edit not sure who used this phrase, it was possibly James Howard Kunstler, who KMO says uses the phrase in this World Made By Hands* novels) They also talk about Gregory Bates's study, and how it relates to our culture (as did Morris Berman in his book!)

Morris Berman wrote this trilogy on human consciousness, and Reenchantment was the first book. The next two were Coming to Our Senses and Wandering God.

I wonder if JMG has read these books, and just doesn't give credit for taking the ideas and repacking them, with a bit of peak oil mixed in.

edit Morris Berman in his books cites influences extensively. I learned about many thinkers/writers just through Berman's books. Berman is reviewing all these past thinkers, and then adding his own original take on the situation. He isn't rewriting books from the past and claiming the ideas as his own.

You should check out the book Wandering God.
A nomadic lifestyle may lead to some sort of enlightenment.

Ran said:
> It's a fun metaphor, but to buy into it I'd have to see examples of how the old myths had symbiotic interconnections like species in an ecology, and how the new myths don't.

I will try to expand more and make the parallels further, symbiosis makes sure that not only there will be organisms that will be better adapted for its niche but that they can approach tougher niches, this way different organism fill as much as possible of the living-space.
 
 

Compare that what the organism of a mono-crop becomes: a product, and a product means that his life purpose is to get the attention of the buyer and be consumed as fast as possible.
 
 

If we take a simpler definition that for organisms symbiosis is a mutual improvement in life. For an ecological Mythos(world of myth) we would have a kind of synergy(symbiosis) that improves in meaning for each other.
 
 

From my experience with folklore, Hindu and budhist myths, ortodox christian myths I have a gut feeling that myths improve each other inside these traditions and myths don't get obsolete but just enhanced. Even with that experience I don't have the erudition nor the space to expand this with examples and an exposition.
Keeping the ecological metaphor is harder to see how well was a place ecology until that place is destroyed.
Since is harder to show this synergy(symbiosis) with older myths I will try to appeal to your experience with the modern incarnations of myths: the meme and the mono-myth.
 
 

The meme has the same shelf-life like any product and it competes for immediate attention, it is a modern myth by many arguments and in even in theory and in practice they are found to be selfish and replicate at the detriment of other memes or the bigger picture.
 
 

More reading on mono-myth critique, an ecology of myths and integral(hollistic) "mythos":
 
 

Giambattista Vico (1668—1744)

Wandering God: Morris Berman

Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K Le Guin