Elise Boulding (1920–2010)

2018
I read this to PT. For both of us, the fabulous title left us disappointed. The notion that we are "born remembering," but "live forgetting," is not a new idea, nor is it an idea I am especially resistant to. I think many of us are born knowing God. At least my belief in God was firmly entrenched in my being from a preschool age. But it reminds me of the young 4-yr old who wanted time alone with his newborn sister and was overheard asking her, "what do you remember of God?" I think my show more faith/belief/whatever faded the longer I was in school learning critical thinking. It was only later that I began once again on a faithful trajectory, and was open to believing once again.

In this sense, I think Boulding was on a similar path. But along with PT, I question exactly why Boulding did not convert outwardly to Catholicism. Why did she maintain her tie to the RSoF?

She reminds me of the 19th c. transcendental sociologist, Thoreau. He retreated for two years to a cabin he built in the woods on Walden Pond. Except that his mother brought his meals to him daily. She took his laundry home and brought back clean clothes. Just as Boulding retreated to her "hermitage," she ate meals prepared for her by her husband, she went into town once a week to meet with friends, and went into her university office once a week to take care of her business. Neither Boulding nor Thoreau lived the life they thought they were living, and both have therefore perpetuated a falsehood. Neither the Religious Society of Friends nor the Roman Catholics would embrace this. show less

Volume one of two. This classic in feminist literature provides an account of women's creativity in every age from pre-history to the present, and attempts to view women's roles in the context of the total time span of human experience. Boulding takes us on a breathtaking tour through time: the hundred-thousand-year wanderings of the Paleolithic into the great transition from hunting and gathering to herding and planting; from life inside city walls to the great primary civilizations of the show more Middle East and Asia, as well as the feudal civilizations on its fringes; and from the sweep of culture generated by the Greco-Romanic-Islamic empires to "European Enlightenment" and the last two centuries and the gradual industrialization-urbanization of the planet. show less

This book is volume one of a two-volume set. This classic in feminist literature provides an account of women's creativity in every age from pre-history to the present, and attempts to view women's roles in the context of the total time span of human experience. In clear and elegant prose, the author takes us on a breathtaking tour through time: we move through the hundred-thousand-year wanderings of the Paleolithic into the great transition from hunting and gathering to herding and show more planting; from life inside city walls to the great primary civilizations of the Middle East and Asia, as well as the feudal civilizations on its fringes; and from the sweep of culture generated by the Greco-Romanic-Islamic empires to "European Enlightenment" and, finally, to the last two centuries and the gradual industrialization-urbanization of the planet. show less

Is it possible to drown children in a constant flow of stimuli, allowing no time for inward growth?