By Bill Plotkin
This book is not quite the casual read given its sheer size. However, Plotkin weaves a comprehensive and layered theoretical approach to healing that is striking in its complexity. The book follows a life cycle layout that is written in a cyclical fashion. Plotkin pulls from a variety of teachings across various groups that share this cyclic lens, or wheel of life, and layers myth and poetry to further illustrate each stage. While not nearly a novel concept, it is in fact an ancient one, onto which Plotkin overlays a variety of psychological theory for both the individual and the group. He explores what gives maximum potential meaning in each life stage and on the contrary, what blocks growth.
Plotkin’s primary illustration is that modern, capitalist, Western society is living collectively, in a state of stuck “pathological adolescence.” He explains that our society at large is in an ego driven state that mirrors adolescence with the following themes, “self-criticism, codependency, perfectionism, emotional suppression and conformity.” He explores in detail the many ways our culture fails to evolve as a whole into a place of wise eldership, and the intergenerational cost of this, economically, environmentally, psychologically and spiritually. Most folks would say they would not want to go back to their adolescent years, knowing how challenging and painful they were. Now, imagine that we are all in that stage as a collective, in perpetual adolescence that we cannot extricate ourselves from, Motivated to try something different…?
A primary thread woven throughout is the value of time and deep connection spent with nature at every life stage. While his analysis on what has gone awry is complex, his solutions are graspable and inspiringly laid out. Plotkin offers a mass of varied suggestions on how we can each push forward our individual evolution depending on what stage we find ourselves in. This book will surely humble the reader who has aligned themselves with modern societal teachings of what constitutes a meaningful life. But ultimately it will offer the tools we need to take our cultural psyche to the next level of insight, wisdom, connectedness and peace.