In the early twentieth century, psychologists began exploring a new frontier—a science of subjective experience that would link body and mind in systematic ways. Advocates of this emerging science, whatever theory they espoused, strained for complete illumination of hidden depths. The ambition itself was not novel: mystics in many traditions had sought union with the deity in contemplative practice; Calvinists and Pietists had encouraged constant scrutiny of the soul for evidence of salvation or damnation. What was new in the early twentieth century was the belief that emotional depths could be measured or at least described with scientific precision. The project animated professional strategies for the systematic understanding of mental life and its connections with physical life. Everyone agreed that mind and body were linked; the question was how. Did mind influence body, or the other way around? Or did the two realms interact in subtler ways?
It’s an evocative phrase—“the last public space.” It’s one I heard over and over while reporting this story, often invoked as a kind of badge of honour. For the library CEOs who need to justify their budgets to unsympathetic city councils, the phrase emphasizes the importance of their institutions: like the “last old-growth rainforests” or “the last Galápagos tortoises,” “the last public space” sounds like something we should probably spend some money to preserve.
Most people understand that trees and forests play an important role in reducing climate change — that’s one reason there are so many popular efforts aimed at planting trees. But what many people don’t understand is that not all forests are alike, and that using our forests to mitigate climate change is a lot more complicated than just planting more trees.
It turns out the age and composition of forests makes a big difference in what role they play in preventing wildfires and storing carbon. Old growth forest is the best at both, but there is very little old growth left in either the western or eastern United States.
In a sense, West is a book of ghosts—not the white-sheeted apparitions of the popular imagination but specters of the past that flicker imperceptibly in the present, shaping our lives in ways we cannot grapple with until we recognize them.
As Theise writes, perhaps too optimistically but very reassuringly: “Complexity comforts us, revealing, unequivocally, unavoidably, that however separate and alone we might feel, each one of us is — in each and every single moment — a pure expression of the entire living, conscious universe. Nothing separate, nothing left out, but true, pure, and complete, just as we are.” The sheer density of Theise’s insights occasionally makes them difficult to parse, but time spent reading this slender work offers a compelling retreat into the exhilarating and oddly reassuring world of complexity.
Being a Black critic in a time of exceptional art made by Black people has immense rewards and myriad risks. “Wannabe,” the debut essay collection from Aisha Harris, a co-host of NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” is at its best when engaging with those risks and the thorny questions of her profession. In what ways does identity inform a critic’s work? And should it?
Because I have an English poem
in my lap, of green-wooded sex,
I think somehow I must try
to find a mother’s want in me.
Please, dear human friend, go away
from this gore of shyness