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Praise for Future Primal
“Who can doubt that we need a new paradigm for planetary civilization? Our economic models are projections and arrows when they should be circles. To define perpetual growth on a finite planet as the sole measure of economic well-being is to engage in a form of slow collective suicide. To deny or exclude from the calculus of governance and political economy the costs of violating the biological support systems of life is the logic of delusion. In Future Primal, Louis Herman offers a way out, a vision of a new kind of politics for a new era of humanity. Drawing on his time among the Kalahari Bushmen, the lessons of his service as a soldier in the Israeli army, and his experiences as a Jewish lad living through the darkest years of apartheid in South Africa, he has written a seminal book that bears witness to the folly of all those who say we cannot change, as we know we must, the fundamental manner in which we inhabit this planet.”
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Part II, “Where Do We Come From?” elaborates on the “big story” of humanity and the traditional life of the San Bushmen; it focuses on identifying our original, ancestral primal politics; how that is rooted in the evolution of our species; and how it is exemplified in the lifestyle of San hunter-gatherers. Chapter 5, “Out of Wilderness,” tells the story of how both consciousness and the coordinates of the quest evoloved out of an African wilderness. Chapter 6, “Lost Worlds,” re-creates what we know of traditional San Bushman hunter-gatherers when the fully nomadic hunting-gathering way of life was still viable; it also examines the intentions, achievements, and limits of the researchers and scholars who did the research. Chapter 7, “Primal Politics,” looks at more recent scholarship on San society and presents a fuller picture of how its traditional life exemplifies the four elements of primal politics. Chapter 8, “If You Don’t Dance, You Die,” describes the spiritual life of the San as expressed through their rock art, mythology, and healing dance, and it shows how shamanic practices are integral to their politics. I explore shamanic practice and its role in the truth quest further and more generally in chapter 9, “Boundary Crossing,” and chapter 10, “The Outer Reaches of Inner Wilderness.” Chapter 11, “The Primal Polis: Socrates as Shaman,” steps back in time to explore the political parallels in the ancient Greek polis and the role of shamanism in Socratic teaching and the birth of Western politics.
Part III, “Where Should We Be Going?” focuses on our present moment. Chapter 12, “Our Primal Future,” highlights instances where we can already see elements of primal politics emerging around the world. In particular, it examines the Israeli kibbutz and the politics of Nelson Mandela for lessons on how we might apply these principles in radically different contexts. The epilogue, “A Tao of Politics,” tackles the limitations of all political paradigms and shows how the future primal model differs from past paradigms in recognizing that the process of searching is at the heart of the good life we seek. Finally, the appendix, “Future Primal Toolkit,” suggests a range of strategies for bringing our primal future into our lives here and now.
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