The Circle of Life is Broken: An Eco-Spiritual Philosophy of the Climate Crisis" (Earth Spirit)

The Earth Spirit from Moon Books is a particularly eclectic collection. More so than many esoteric imprints, the authors have incredibly diverse backgrounds that they draw from to write books of fascinating depth. Case in point, Brendan Myers's The Circle of Life is Broken: An Eco-Spiritual Philosophy of the Climate Crisis comes to us as a deep examination of where we currently stand in the Climate Crisis, the failures that have led us to it, and a wholistic way of existing in the world that can hopefully move us forward.

Myers has an academic background, both in his studious youth and in his career as a teacher, most recently as professor of philosophy at Heritage College in Quebec. He therefore begins his book by circling back around to the foundations he had been taught: that humankind needed to adopt an ecocentric worldview and, as a result, will do what needs to be done to curtail the foretold climate catastrophe. In a succinct few pages he squeezes all of the optimism out of that thought, concluding with sound reasoning that this simply did not happen, since there are no results that would indicate that it worked.

Having neatly dispensed with what is old and failed in environmentalism, he does not simply say "so here's what we do," because he's perfectly aware that it can't be so simple or we'd already have done it. Instead, he explores three "root questions", which also defines the sections of the book. The questions are "What is the Circle of Life?", "Who Faces the Circle of Life?", and "Can the Circle Be Healed?" Myers digs deep in every section, and it is worth noting here that he presumes the reader wants the full breadth of his understanding on the matter or they wouldn't be there, and as such what we are presented with nearly two hundred dense, well-reasoned, and extensively footnoted pages that takes us on a grand tour of past and present thinking on the subjects of environmentalism and the climate crisis. It is not what you would call "beach reading," but then something as important as the health of our planet deserves such serious treatment.

So in the end, what do we conclude about The Circle of Life is Broken? It's a well-crafted and sturdy book to be sure. The reasoning is sound, the proposed conclusions daunting but understandable. If you find yourself looking at the Immensity of the situation (a word, by the way, that he puts much weight on) and feeling overwhelmed at the possibility of understanding it, this is a fantastic book that will guide you, but not hand-hold you, to a much better grasp of where things stand and what really is at stake.

~review by: Wanderer

Author: Brendan Myers
Moon Books, 2022
212 pp., $19.95