The Voice of the Infinite in the Small: Re-Visioning the Insect - Human Connection (The New Millennium Library, V.5) - Softcover

Joanne-e-lauck

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0926524496 ISBN 13: 9780926524491

Publisher: Swan Raven & Company, 1998

Synopsis

Understanding the Infinite in the Small is less a book about insect biology and behavior than it is about reinventing ourselves as a non-hostile species. It is a unique psychological and spiritual perspective on insects and the recasting of our relationship to this Lilliputian world. The popular culture never rises above issues of power. It is in this mode then that we are caught between opposites: either we kill the insects, or we are defeated by them. We rarely see a third possibility. We rarely put down our weapons long enough to consider the effect we might have if we entered their world with empathy and compassion. Perhaps we underestimate the powers of providence that would suddenly appear if we could align ourselves with the earth and the small creatures that serve it so faithfully. It's time to try.

About this title

About the Author

As an educator in the San Jose Unified Public Schools, professional writer, graphic designer, former dream counselor and certified wildlife rehabilitator, Joanne Lauck combines an eclectic group of skills in her work. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in clinical psychology from Grand Valley State University (Grand Rapids, Michigan) and received a Masters of Science degree in experimental psychology from Eastern Michigan University with continuing courses in transpersonal psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Counseling in Menlo Park, California. She has a California teaching credential in psychology.

Five years ago, she also became the founder and facilitator of a contemplative group in Dallas, Texas. Since 1989, she has collected and explored animal and insect dreams exclusively, using the material to write articles that have subsequently been published in a variety of newsletters and magazines including Dream Network Journal, Earthlight Quarterly, Tracks, Native Rescue Magazine, Young Entomologist Journal, The Opossum Newsletter, The Monarch Newsletter and It's a Wild, Wild Life.

Ms. Lauck has presented at numerous conferences including the 8th International Conference of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing in San Rafael, California, in 1991 and at the 6th International "Animals 'n Us" conference in Montreal, Quebec, in 1992 and at two Whole Life Expositions in San Jose and San Francisco. In addition she has developed and implemented an elective course for grade school children called "Thinkin' Like a Bug", which is now four years old. She also created and maintains a butterfly garden for the Books in Elementary School that teaches an approach to insects and plants that bypasses the traditional pest vs. non-pest orientation.

Her sincerest desire is to add to the great effort of many men and women working toward healing the Earth and helping people return to their native place within its community.

From the Back Cover

Our belief in insects as adversaries still encourages an ultimately self-destructive use of pesticides almost forty years after Rachel Carson warned us of their deadly effects. How do we coexist with insects without chemicals? Environmental educator Joanne Lauck says the problem and its solution are within us. Drawing on myth, anecdote, native wisdom, and science, she reveals the roots of our hostility and shows us how to stop the war and live in harmony - healing an inner aspect of ourselves in the process.

Reviews

Lauck, an environmental educator, writes with infectious enthusiasm about everyday matters that may well determine the fate of the earth, namely, our relationship to its most numerous inhabitants: the insects. Following Rachel Carson and others, Lauck catalogues and critiques the pervasive mentality, ultimately suicidal, that places commercial concerns over all others. She invokes Jung, Rilke, Thoreau, Einstein, Robert Bly, Sam Keene, James Hillman and Suzuki Roshi, among others, to suggest an outlook more sensitive to human values. Lauck is a storyteller, too, and in her effort to replace our underlying adversarial myths about our relation to insects, she relates tales from cultures around the world in which insects are helpers, heroes, teachers, even gods. Sections on the mosquito, the spider, even the cockroach are insightful and inspiring, with implications both for large-scale agribusiness and for our daily comportment toward our tiny brethren. Our revulsion toward insects, she demonstrates, is conditioned, not innate, and we can learn other, kinder ways. Sections of detailed material on the lives of insects are surprising and fascinating. Here and there the science is spotty, as Lauck tends to accept with uncritical sentimentality the most bizarre shamanic anecdotes or New Age claims, and her secondhand pop interpretations of science are occasionally wide of the mark. At one point, for instance, she makes the incredible claim that "[s]tudies in quantum mechanics have demonstrated that objectivity in research is an illusion," a simplistic position destructive of all inquiry. Nonetheless, this is important material, informative and highly readable, a good resource book for teachers, parents and citizens, as practical as can be, personally and politically.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Swan Raven & Company
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0926524496
• ISBN 13: 9780926524491
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 388