Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality

Morris Berman

feb 2012 · State University of New York Press

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The third book in Morris Berman's much acclaimed trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness, Wandering God continues his earlier work which garnered such praise as "solid lessons in the history of ideas" (KIRKUS Reviews), "filled with piquant details" (Common Boundary), and "an informative synthesis and a remarkably friendly, good-natured jeremiad" (The Village Voice). Here, in a remarkable discussion of our hunter-gatherer ancestry and the "paradoxical" mode of perception that it involved, Berman shows how a sense of alertness, or secular/sacred immediacy, subsequently got buried by the rise of sedentary civilization, religion, and vertical power relationships.

In an integrated tour de force, Wandering God explores the meaning of Paleolithic art, the origins of social inequality, the nature of cross-cultural child rearing, the relationship between women and agriculture, and the world view of present-day nomadic peoples, as well as the emergence of "paradoxical" consciousness in the philosophical writings of the twentieth century.

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Morris Berman is the author of Social Change and Scientific Organization; and the first two volumes of the trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness, The Reenchantment of the World and Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West. He teaches part-time in the Master of Liberal Arts Program at the Johns Hopkins University.