The book starts slow and feels pretty bleak, the history and accounts are relevant to understanding the process being shown, but still it’s a rough start. Once you get past that, the second half of the book more than makes up for the initial struggle. This book gives a big picture journey through the process by which colonization oppressed any culture that threatened it, targeting specifically rituals of collective joy, in the name of creating obedience by killing the connection and resilience that threatened colonial sterility. The book shows what we lose when these rituals of collective joy and resilience are limited, while offering hope in the persistent examples of humans constantly seeking out similar ways of recreating these lost or nearly lost rituals. This book is ultimately very hopeful while also being very direct about the importance of returning to mindful collective rituals of joy and connection.

Emma Goldman - "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution"

Have we done ourselves the great diservice. Too disembodied from our minds and hearts to feel that human connection. Distancing ourselves from the grosser and sensual pleasures of collective enjoyment, we live luxirous privileged spoiled lives, but languish in feeling complete or fulfilled. There are ways we still connect as a group in sporting events, rock concerts, and online forums. But the story Ehrenreich tells is one of lost freedoms to express.

Ehrenreich's storied and thought-provoking chapters give us perspective on how ecstatic rituals, dance, and communion with others promoted community. Worships found the Greek God Dionysus akin to a divine presence that wandered as a rock star. With his blessing there would be sordid dancing or saturnalia. In these pagan days, we are reminded people didn't just worship a "God", they identified with one.

Boldly Ehrenreich describes how the early Church was full of low-class dancing, bawdy hymns, graveyard singing. But as the Church became a societial pillar holidays and structured events were reserved for celebration. The spontaneous joy and pagan festiveness was less tolerated, and by the time Martin Luther came around, almost any joy was seen as sinful. We chart the historical chapters on Calvinism, imperialism to the Americas, Nuremburg rallies, all to see how European dominance forced native people to abandon their indigenous ways. Religious forces are generally condemned in the book as a barrier to expression and possibly real connection.

Festivity may be the cure for melancholy. May be the only way to bond and pull together to fight the existential crises of our identity and world. In the judging, self-aware world of today, some communities of the past seem impossible. Few of ourselves will lost ourselves in trance dancing,
sexual orgies, or ritual hunting. But in collective action there is always power, and ability for real change, so let's find our rhythm and shuttle forward

Ehrenreich not only gives a history of collective joy, but explains why it's innate to humans and very necessary for our mental and emotional health. Let's go dancing!

so insanely good and also reaffirming my earlier statement that I would like to have a bacchanalia

A beautiful history of humans told from the perspective of collective movement - dancing, chanting, marching. Cool to hear about how this kind of choregraphed movement may have made humans appear like a larger or at least scarier threat. Interesting to hear about how the oppression of lower classes also goes hand in hand with preventing them from dancing together, aspects of Carnival right down to raves.