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Stephen Houseman (1936-2018) was a leading British watercolourist in the tradition of the Norwich School and John Sell Cotman in particular. Like many other major painters, he also engaged passionately with ideas and wrote about them throughout his life. In this book he challenges, persistently and uncompromisingly, the assumptions by which we currently live our lives. As a generalist writing for generalists, he posits that human nature should be understood as part of an evolutionary continuum going back to the animals. He argues that the currently dominant forces of Hierarchy and Personality have blinded us to the realisation that we are to be defined at pattern-seekers and eternal questioners. In chapters that range from ‘Asking the Questions’ and ‘How Intelligence Evolved in Man’ to ‘Sex and Pleasure’, ‘Selves and Cultures’, and ‘A World of Appearances’, Houseman presents a really radical case for ‘a more coherent view of ourselves’ and our future. |
