Interview with Barbara Ehrenreich
April, 2014
When Barbara Ehrenreich was 14, she started a notebook to
keep track of what she called "The Situation." Roughly, this referred to
anything shared by humankind: "ecstatic springtimes and bitter winters,
swirlings and shrinkings, yearning and terror. All followed by death." She
wondered: What was the point of our brief existence? Why are we here? Ehrenreich
also chronicled the perplexing dissociative—and possibly mystical—episodes
she experienced in her teens. Eventually she set her journal aside, not
knowing what to make of the events that caused her to question her sanity and
her rigid atheistic upbringing.
Fast-forward to middle age. Ehrenreich is now a bestselling
author known for books concerned with social justice (most famously Nickel and
Dimed) and cultural temperature-taking (Bright-Sided).
While planning a new nonfiction work about the history of religion, she found
and reread her girlhood notebook, a discovery that took her project in a different
direction. The result is a personal narrative, Living
with a Wild God, which, she insists, is not a true memoir. The
self-described rationalist and atheist half-jokingly calls the book "a
metaphysical thriller. How much it thrills, I don't know, but there is one
overriding mystery." The pleasure of the book is watching Ehrenreich wrestle and
dance around that mystery—for every moment she gets close to defining it
as a religious experience, she dives into the rational, applying imagination
and rigor to both modes. She spoke with Goodreads interviewer Margaret Wappler about
reconstructing "what I once thought was better left unsaid."
Goodreads: You were raised as a hard-core atheist. When
did you first start to question that as being the only way to make sense of the
world?
Barbara Ehrenreich: The questions arose before I had any
strange experiences. Clearly the rationalistic framework that I grew up with,
and that I continue to adhere to, didn't offer a clue as to why anything was
happening to me. The big thing that really blew me out of the water was what I
would now describe as a mystical experience when I was 17. This experience is
what some people would call experiencing a deity. I didn't see it that way—instead
I was embarrassed and ashamed and put it aside for years.
GR: Without giving away too much, you're talking about
what happened in the desert when you were on a road trip. What embarrassed you
about it?
BE: When this experience happened to me, I didn't understand
that anything like this had ever happened to anyone else. I thought it was a
sign of insanity. I didn't dare tell anyone. In my later years I began to come
back to it a lot in my mind. I became determined that I was going to understand
this in some way that was rational. I was not going to say, "Oh, this is
spiritual, therefore I can't understand." I don't like the word spiritual;
it creeps me out. I don't like leaving something as a mystery. I'm not
accepting that there are just some things we'll never know.
GR: That's interesting what you say about the word
"spiritual." Many people nowadays are more comfortable saying they're "spiritual"
rather than "religious."
BE: Yes, that's true. I don't know what people mean when
they say "spiritual." Are they referring to experiences that don't translate
into words? If so, why don't they just say that? I don't like the idea that
there is a mysterious realm that only some of us have access to. I remember
being on a radio show in the Bay Area, and the interviewer put some crystals
out on the table between us, "to get the right spiritual vibe." I
thought, "Oh, no." [laughs]
Ehrenreich, age 16.
GR: So you kept a notebook as a teenager to track certain
dissociative or mystic episodes you had as a kid—was it hard to
figure out how to use that notebook in the text of Living
with a Wild God?
BE: I ended up treating it like a primary source. The funny
thing about that journal is that it doesn't touch much on real life. The
journal is evasive in many ways. There's some occasional reference to moving
because we were always moving, but there's very little of the texture of daily
life. I thought of it as the place where I'm going to put down my thinking on
the path to truth. I didn't write about those episodes until I was deep into
them, because I didn't know how it related to the quest. What did those moments
have to do with finding the truth? It's ridiculous to think about it now, but I
was a kid and I just dismissed them as a kind of perceptual alteration that
must've arisen from sleep deprivation. I finally came around to acknowledging
it.
GR: What was the biggest challenge for this book? What
issues or ideas did you grapple with most?
BE: There was the writerly problem of working certain kinds
of philosophical or metaphysical ideas into a narrative. The hardest thing was
to decide to say, Yes, I think this was an encounter. It was not just in my
mind; there was something else. Even at the end of the book, I was fighting
that. In fact, up to the very end of the book. I kept thinking, You can't say
that, that's crazy. But the deal with this book is that I tell the truth and
that there's some crazy involved in that. [laughs] So far, no one's
coming at me with butterfly nets.
GR: Goodreads member Mgraham5898
asked, "Has recent brain research stating that humans are 'wired to believe in
God' impacted your current views on religion or spirituality?"
BE: I don't know that there is any neuroscience research
showing that people are wired to believe in God. Not at all. If you consider
the kind of deities that humans have worshipped or been involved with over the
last few thousands of years, only very recently do we have the monotheistic,
presumably male god that we have in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Look at
the Hindu pantheon. It's not the same thing. I'm pretty skeptical about a lot
of neuroscience research that simply says what areas of the brain are
metabolizing more. I don't think that tells us a great deal. It does seem that
we have a huge capacity for awe, ecstasy, and self-love, but I don't think
that's anything to do with a deity or belief.
GR: Does this book have any connection to your book Bright-Sided:
How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America? Particularly in how religion
can be yet another structure that enforces the tyranny of positive thinking?
BE: I do think there's a connection there. When I was
writing Bright-Sided
and talking a bit about religion, especially strands like evangelical
Christianity, I was thinking that the ultimate in positive thinking is
believing that there is a benevolent, all-powerful god. If only! Then we could
say every disgusting and cruel thing that happens is really part of some
beautiful plan.
GR: There's also the idea that if you just pray and worship
and do all the right things, you'll go to heaven. Or even in this life that
you'll be taken care of.
BE: That's connected, too. I find that so full of
contradictions that I don't know where to start. If God is so perfect and
wonderful, why does he or she demand to be worshipped? I find that
extraordinarily conceited, not to mention insecure, on the part of the deity.
GR: Another Bright-Sided
question for you from Goodreads member Kim Bosch: "In
the book you write about how there is an immense pressure placed on us to be
constantly happy or searching for happiness. I am curious if you feel there is
an imbalance of pressure placed on women more than men? Or is it a different
version of 'happiness' that is applied to the genders?"
BE: I think that it is very important for women to smile.
Women over a certain age are almost always smiling, especially white women.
It's like this insecure, "pardon me for still existing on this planet" kind of
expression. There's a pressure on women to be more positive and smiling and
appearing to be nurturing with other people. I don't think men have the
pressure to smile as much or to always show pleasure. Certainly in a business
world, men are under pressure to be positive, wildly enthusiastic, and
passionate about what they do.
GR: Goodreads member Ciarran
asks, "In the April 7, 2008, edition of The Nation magazine, you and
several other progressives wrote an open letter supporting Barack Obama in his
campaign for president. I was wondering if you regret supporting him or has he
met your expectations?"
BE: I have to say that like most of the people who supported
him in '08 and '12, we're very disappointed. On the other hand, there are
things that I would applaud. Finally he's taking the issue of raising the
minimum wage a little more seriously. And I've seen people in my family really
benefit from Obamacare, so I can't be churlish about that. He's also fighting
to have overtime defined in some way, like who's eligible for it and when it
should apply, and these are all very important causes.
GR: What specifically is disappointing to you about his
presidency?
BE: It would be a very long list. The war in Afghanistan has
dribbled on, he hasn't challenged Wall Street, and we don't have any better
method of regulating market madness. I don't even know where to begin.
GR: Goodreads member John Maas
writes, "In your book Nickel and
Dimed, you wrote of the struggle of barely getting by in America. Do you think
the latest rustlings about raising the minimum wage will do anything more than
palliate the problem when in fact income inequality is structurally integrated
in our current system?"
BE: It's not going to solve the problem in income
inequality. It will make things a tiny bit better for a lot of people, and
that's good. But raising the minimum to $10 is still nowhere near enough to
live on in most places; it's laughable in most cities now. In cities like Los
Angeles you need to make $25 an hour to live in any degree of safety, not to
mention if you have a child. It's just not doable.
GR: Goodreads member Kkraemer writes,
"[Since Nickel
and Dimed was published,] there have been so many changes: increasing
globalization, technology, etc., and an even wider split between those who 'thrive'
and the many who toil without reward. If you were writing that book now, in
2014, what changes can you imagine there would be?"
BE: When I talk about Nickel and
Dimed today to college kids who are assigned to read it, I say remember
this was written about ten years ago and what you're reading about may sound
awful, but those were the good old days. Employers have gotten harsher; they try
to squeeze more and more out of employees.
GR: To go back to Living
with a Wild God for a moment, the book ends with "The Nature of the
Other." What are some of the ideas speculated on in this chapter?
BE: There is not a lot of respectable speculation about
conscious others in monotheistic religions. It's more like "Shut up, and we'll
tell you what God is." One of the only streams of speculation about other types
of deities is in science fiction, the idea of ETs for instance, but more than
that, of deity-like beings. I was very influenced by Arthur C.
Clarke's book, Childhood's
End. It concerns another kind of being that interacts with humans, the
Overlords. He would not call it God, and it's not necessarily nice. There are
parallels here to accounts from Christian mystics. They generally called what
they had encountered a deity, but when you read closely, it's not the Christian
monotheistic deity. The most popular Christian mystic is Meister
Eckhart, and he would say, If you're expecting a good, cozy, comfortable
God in your vision, then forget it.
GR: At one point you say "animism" has entered into the
scientific worldview. Can you say more about that?
BE: This might get me in trouble, but from the viewpoint of
Newtonian, Cartesian science, the world is dead. Things move because other
things pushed them. We want to see it as a bunch of molecules doing what they
have to do according to laws of chemistry, but there are cracks in that. If you
take the nature of animals, in the late 1970s and '80s, you couldn't say that
animals had feelings or consciousness. Now we have discoveries that animals
have culture and make art; they have feelings. I would like to see science
collectively issue an apology about animals now. Of course now there's even a
debate about plants, that plants might have consciousness, too. There are
studies that seem to show that they have a kind of memory; Michael Pollan
wrote about it in The New Yorker. Some people responded with outrage,
but look what we thought 30 years ago about animals. The world is more alive
than we're willing to rationally admit.
GR: Describe a typical day spent writing. Do you have any
unusual writing habits?
BE: I don't write every day because I don't always have
something to say. I don't sit down and fill out the pages. Most of the work is
research and thinking. And then after that, maybe I have something to say.
Sometimes writing is pure hell. I'll write something and look at it in a few
hours and say, "This is crap. What will I do with my life? I'll never
write again." It's a bipolar business, and you bounce back. You become
gripped with some new insight that shows the way.
GR: What writers, books, or ideas have most influenced
you?
BE: That is impossible to answer! There are so many books
right now [in my office] that they are lined up from floor to ceiling.
GR: What are you reading now?
BE: I've been reading The Immune
Self: Theory or Metaphor. It's extremely dense and fascinating. It's
leading into another project that is germinating right now. I'm always reading
a novel; right now it's The Flamethrowers.
As far as nonfiction, I love reading about adventures. I love anything set in
the cold and ice. I just read Into the
Silence by Wade Davis.
It's about the first British expedition to get up to the top of Mount Everest.
These men who did it were World War I veterans very used to the idea of dying
at any moment. It totally enthralled me. I don't want to go into that weather
myself, I don't want to do any of it at all, but I love reading about it.
