Living with a Wild God
Barbara Ehrenreich
[Granta]
The mid-life rediscovery of an adolescent journal recording dissociative, quasi-mystical experiences presents a significant challenge to a “fourth-generation atheist”: this is the heart of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Living With a Wild God. Ehrenreich cites the journal liberally, revealing a vibrantly precocious teenage self who devours texts spanning literature, philosophy and the sciences in her quest for understanding ‘the situation’ of human life. The effect is fascinating, yet sometimes grating; young Barbara lacks her future self’s wit, and her uncompromising rationality creates a solipsism as cold as it is arrogant. Both solipsism and dissociation may be reactions to the family turmoil amply documented here. However, despite the personal insights it offers, Living With a Wild God is no autobiography. This project initially seemed to Ehrenreich “inexcusably self-involved”, and an autobiographical reading would confirm this bias. While the author caustically dwells on her parents’ behavior, she flies over other relationships – never mentioning her children or most partners by name – to focus on personal and often solitary experiences.
Unlike most of Ehrenreich’s work, thjs is not a book about feminism, social or economic justice. And yet, it is a bold re-examination of some of the West’s most fundamental institutions: religion, yes, but also psychiatry, rationality, and human exceptionalism. Enriched with examples drawn from biology, physics, philosophy, and theology, Ehrenreich’s investigation is as informative as it is engaging. Finally, Ehrenreich offers few answers: she describes the “mystical experience” that is the crux of the narrative in few paragraphs, and compresses the “history of religion” originally envisioned into one short, inconclusive chapter. Ehrenreich does advance the existence of a conscious Other(s), convincingly railing against “the collective solipsism our species has embraced” in the name of “modernity and rationality”. Still, she resists pledging to any particular system of belief. It is deeply significant for a lifelong atheist to commit to “keeping an open mind”. Her work compels us to do just that.
Words: Mònica Tomàs
