Pill Pod 127 - Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber & Wengrow
Added 2023-06-16 17:43:45 +0000 UTCWe plumbed the first few chapters of a new history of humanity by an anarchist and an archaeologist: The Dawn of Everything (https://amzn.to/3PcqXRn). Though not without some minor quibbles from us, its an easy, recommended read.
Comments
People with an academic background actually take anarchism as seriously as they take Marxism seriously challenge (impossible). Top of my head, I feel Zoe Baker is the only person to be the exception that generally proves the rule. The main obstacle to a widespread (classical) anarchist-type society is the same one that the Marxists run into tho: the assumption of a society composed of rational subjects who just need to become class conscious in order to rationally reorganise mass society into the communist promised land.
anacidcommie
2023-06-23 18:14:39 +0000 UTCPills point on whether “ideas matter” really was characteristic and also a good point. Ideas may not matter when it comes to what will really happen. Though I don’t know what we would do with our time if we weren’t debating “ideas”
Qoheleth
2023-06-21 00:50:49 +0000 UTCThe book “Debt the first 5000 years” might cover this a bit
Qoheleth
2023-06-21 00:40:52 +0000 UTCBut we would have to have a good argument for that… or why they would be fundamentally different and show or don’t that scale increases need for hierarchy with resulting inequality. To what degree? Would anarchists argue we should scale down?
Qoheleth
2023-06-21 00:32:59 +0000 UTCI also think it is a fair point that egalitarian “city-states” could still be fundamentally different in scale than entire countries.
Qoheleth
2023-06-21 00:29:17 +0000 UTCnice episode! I would note that the concept of needing stability or safety for contracts or agreements might brake down a different way when we consider markets as they are constructed now are built with those sorts of guarantees. However they may not have even had to make contracts without these markets. Agreements that were made came together to work out in a different way. But maybe we should still consider this when we consider the “complexity” of society. What does it mean to be “complex”? Maybe our “complex” markets need contract stability in it’s form. However non state social arrangements of the past were equally complex in other ways that they dealt with social agreements and more…
Qoheleth
2023-06-21 00:27:46 +0000 UTCEach sign exchange is a compression of information. Modernism was a monumental compression event. The agricultural revolution was even vaster a compression; of DNA, culture, geology. Tracing paths through these compressions is a lossy compression. Much diversity is lost in these compressions, but with the momentum shift of destruction comes an increased potential for complexity (eg. the Dinosaur comet was a very lossy compression, then mammals). Critique can help us identify what is at stake, and Theory potential gains.
Alex B
2023-06-20 20:00:13 +0000 UTCI appreciated the discussion and, as others said, maybe the answers you’re looking for are there later in the book. I think the Indus Valley civilization addresses the question regarding an alternate approach to organizing a complex multi settlement society over a large geographic area. One interconnected with neighbours that more closely aligned with the mainstream image of a Bronze Age society. But that image, and the ruler narratives that shaped them, are being challenged across the board now by new approaches to archaeology and what it reveals about population health and mobility (check out the Tides of History podcast). So people in Greece turning palaces into stables may not be indication of a collapse, but instead just a transition. And maybe regular folks were ok in the intermediate periods in Egypt. Which is the real value of the book, as you’ve correctly identified. It shows that history is not sequential (despite the Civ games series which I dearly love), that there is a narrative other than the narrative of kings and that time and again people have turned away from a way of being that has ceased to work. Maybe recognizing that is the first step in determining an alternative now.
Gavin McLachlan
2023-06-20 01:27:31 +0000 UTCThank Glob comments truncate, otherwise I would feel the need to self-exile for this one 😅 Blessed be the Pill for the Age of Empires ref at 1:01:30 🙏🙏🙏. Wololo. I hope yinz continue covering the book and exploring this tributary, as long as you find it interesting. The moment Eriks excitement-gong falls silent it's time to move on 😄. For what it's worth, for an anthropology of anarchism/stateless societies >; Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos. While he unfortunately slips into the "this is THE way" trap at times, I discovered so many fascinating nuggets to feed my imagination from reading it, and I imagine the same will be true of this book. Fundamentally, what is the point of anthropology? Is it to own people by selecting things that support your narrative, some claim to fundamental knowledge of something that is dead and gone, or is it to unearth alternatives in order to apply and adapt them to one's current situation in the present day, using what is useful and setting aside what is not, making this determination through direct experimentation, imagination and play? For me, I'm interested in the latter. I learn about the Igbo's practice of Sitting on a Man, it lights up my imagination, makes me giddy like Baudrillard, and I organize a Sitting on a Man chapter in my neighborhood, which proceeds to make a relentless scene outside an abusive man's house. The man leaves or is shamed into reform. Subarashii! They see it works, so they continue playing with it, making it their own. Anthropology as uncovering dusty old, long forgotten weapons and refurbishing them, using them as inspiration for yet to be drawn out blueprints. Now we're talking. Fire up that siege workshop. And now ... My usual timestamp musings 🪄 Booze tolerance > lol nice cheap date joke Erik. Lots of animals get drunk and some trip, McKenna said we came from apes who ate poop shrooms. Floridaman teens still do this! 🍄 15:20 Pills recounting grade school hunter gatherer to ag progression education > i learned this from playing age of empires. Again, AOE shoutout ⚔️ well recieved haha 🙏 21:00 middle earth > there was a cheesy Shannara tv series adaptation recently (and other examples abound of post apocalyptic fiction) which imagined middle earth coming *after* our times. Bomb shelter ppl becoming dwarves, people above ground caught in radiation orges n trolls, island people unaffected by nukes are elves. Something like that 30:00 hobbs fear of death motivator > what ultimately never gets addressed is addressing the fear of death itself. Being Fear & Trembling Towards Death. Many societies had a healthy relationship towards death, some still do, our contemporary western ones unfortunately do not, and it would seem Hobb's didn't either. And if the claim is that this fear is still and always will be an unavoidable animalistic instinct, then what a waste of conciousness and rationality. Until one performs sufficient death meditation, all these systems are bound to fail to meet the mark. Overcoming fear of death and coming out more alive requires much practice and insight. Erik picks up on death at 1:07:30. I'm hoping the Davids coverage of societies will cover this to greater extent, I think it is fundamentally important to any shot at a harmonious, healthy society. 45:00 counter examples to cherry picking > yeah, this strategy is simply to show the arbitraryness of the presiding predominant narrative, to bring the scales back into some semblance of balance. The fundamental reminder from the counter examples is that all narratives ARE narratives, not some ultimate reality or truth. If the question is which version is correct, it should be based on lived experience. Does it work for me, here and now, or doesn't it? Does it make me feel alive? Does it make me suffer? If it works, continue playing with it, if it doesnt, set it aside and be mindful to observe changes in condition which may be more favorable. 55:00 legitimate as long as it keeps you safe narrative > big time oversimplification I think coming from being born in a time devoid of myth, ritual, ancestors, and relatively speaking, lived experience vs screened experience. I have to imagine, and I'm sure examples will be presented, that members of these societies had a much more wholesome attitude towards the inseparability of life and death, and of deaths fundamental nature of life. I was about to say braver, but I think that would imply they thought it was something bad or to be avoided in the first place. I think this is one aspect where despite our supposed civilization, we are very unwise comparably. 55:00 the king answers to no one > if you've ever been in a position of authority you know this is false. I was the chair of my community non profit and jfc was it a drag lol. I was certainly glad to step down and just be in charge of the community gardens, out of sight and no longer in the firing line for each and every petty grievance. This brings to mind Baudrillards masses, who are slyly aware it sucks to be in charge, and gleefully let the king live in fear of knives in the back, to deal with the managing the whole hot mess. I think the only way a king can find anything but misery is if they let the empire crumble and engage in hedonism. I think this was Trumps strategy, although in his case not so much a strategy as his way of life lol. 59:30 surplus necessarily leading to classes > although this reality won out (for now), there were and still can be other ways a surplus is distributed and used (feasts, festivals, offerings, gifts). Erik hammers this home at 1:00:20 ish, per the anarchists contemporary perspective, that means of the past are not foreclosed to the future, that anything can be rediscovered, particularly when you are able to adjust your zoom and focus on your immediate neighbors, block, neighborhood, city. Nature abhors a vacuum just as it abhors accumulation. Treating contemporary socio-economic outcomes like law of physics just doesn't make logical sense. Like anything else, surplus and classes are subject to birth and death. Now one could argue that the death of our contemporary conditions will require the death of the species, that's fine, but there will be an end to these norms just as there was their beginning. 1:01:15 Victor "literally nothing (new?) I could find in the introduction to apply to current complex problems" > well first, uh, wasn't this just covering the **introduction** 😅. But c'monnnnn. Nothing!? A practice I find useful when I have this all or nothing, "I'm already convinced of so and so" thought is repeating Hakuin's mantra "is that so?" Because something failed in the past, under past conditions, can we know with all or nothing certainty that it can't thrive under contemporary conditions or future ones? Can we predict any outcome? What does our daily experience of life (not just thought 😉) tell us about this? Are not all things in existance constantly composted and made anew? Recharge that imagination, maybe hook up some mycelial jumper cables 🍄🪄. 1:12:25 how bands of people moved 15 ton blocks > well the ancient aliens guy has a bone to pick with you Erik!! 😂 1:18:00 not even being able to imagine living within a prior society or one outside our own > true, but also oof. Play and imagination is absolutely essential. If we can't imagine our way backwards, what hope do we have for imagining ourselves forward through our play in the present? If we're unable to do this, we foreclose 99% of all possibility, and what is the result? 8 billion people staring at screens for half their day, crippling their imagination like atrophied muscle. Yikes. This is why I prefered what's his butt Rauol V. over Debord (if I had to choose). He hammered play and imagination over and over again. No prescription, just fuck around, that the essential way to find out. This is why I enjoy Baudrillard as well, he essentially said it himself in his interview that was just covered, he got giddy from it, I don't think you get Baudrillard's thought or whatever you want to call his body of work without Baudrillard's play. I agree with Pills sentiment. We need to stop looking at everything as if we were looking for Daddy to tell us what to do. You can't evaluate the worth of everything like that, you'll just get stuck in the absolute least fun game of "my daddy's stronger than your daddy!" Last impression on the general sentiment expressed in these accounts of that "uncivilized" cultures were just flat out more desirable... Today I was hiking some ancient-ass trails in Japan, coming upon random-ass stone carvings and beautiful shrines nestled into hillside forest. like, that just seems more fun, interesting, imaginative and fulfilling to me than any technological-media bell or whistle at my disposal. They could have zero purpose and I'd still feel that way. In fact, I'd prefer them to have zero actual purpose other than act of creation and a lighthearted play that ensues. Can you imagine just going into the woods nowadays and doing that? Making a shrine, chiseling a loved one into a rock, leaving offerings, going on mythic quests. Having a dream about a dog and then searching for one as if it was an omen. Can you imagine the relief of putting down the seriousness and engaging in play as a **gasp** responsible adult?!?! (faints) Modern life is so extraordinarily boring from an imaginative first person experience perspective as an adult. Great. I got a screen and I can know everything about everything without knowing anything about anything. It's all laid out on the table, the mystery is pre-solved, bunch of check boxes to complete. Top score. It just seems so hollow, so empty, so alienating in comparison, particularly when i make the effort, which really is a bad way to put it since it feels effortless, to play with these alternatives in my own day to day life. God died from a lack of imagination, and we will too, paradoxically while we're still alive.
ageOfBumFires
2023-06-18 12:15:43 +0000 UTCThis episode was great - the best one in a long time I think. I think the podcast works best when everyone has equal knowledge regarding the topic, from different perspectives of course. But then you all work together to try and understand the text, instead of one single person ”lecturing” the others.
Anthony
2023-06-17 19:58:27 +0000 UTCI agree with the need to look deeper into what anarchism actually is. Seems to be given quite a facile reading whenever it's brought up in the conversations. As said, it's not about having zero control measures in a society, but rather, who is getting the power to decide them. Anarchists arguing that top-down hierarchical power structures are detrimental to the majority of those who live under them. Even perhaps an episode on some foundational text such as Malatestas' "Anarchy" would be interesting to hear.
Tony Douglas
2023-06-17 19:50:55 +0000 UTCAcademics are so committed to the final answer. The perfect answer. No one will ever come up with a good answer to anything as long as they are sure that there is a perfect answer out there.
Stephen Nelson Willis
2023-06-17 18:31:25 +0000 UTCFor me the exciting part is that social structures are flexible and can change but the non technical audience usually thinks it isn’t in my experience
Akepa
2023-06-17 17:46:19 +0000 UTCEarly women just gamble, eat hot chip, and lie
cigarette_butter
2023-06-17 13:13:49 +0000 UTCAwesome topic! Finally some anthropology on this podcast. David Graeber was amazing in both his writing and his other ventures
WarriorsPony
2023-06-17 11:49:11 +0000 UTCA couple of things: 1. Gotta read the whole book. 2. They're not picking on Hobbes and Rousseau because they have a problem with Hobbes and Rousseau, per se. They're are picking on them because people like Pinker rely on those, perhaps oversimplified and underread, narratives of what R&H wrote. The real enemies remain Pinker and the like, but to show the shaky foundation of their arguments is to show where those 6th-grade origin narratives began and went wrong. 3. Some basic anarchist "theory" would go a long way in some of your conversations (not just this one.) Anarchism doesn't actually argue law and order should be done away with. The argument is that people in general are able to enforce their own laws and order without hierarchal power structures and bureaucracies. Of course there are plenty of arguments against that claim. But in your conversations about anarchism, some basic understanding of anarchic theory is always pretty lacking. 4. The underlying argument is that the either/or between capitalism and its attendant power structures or bedlam is based upon false assumptions about how we got here in the first place. 5. You guys are right. They never provide any actual ideas about what those kinds of societies would look like. Supposedly this was supposed to be a trilogy of books where those questions would be answered later on. The point of this book was simply to get us to understand that we can be more creative and imaginative than we currently are.
Joe Green
2023-06-17 01:45:11 +0000 UTClikewise, this book was very eye-opening for me. maybe the only book ive bought more than one copy of
vigasz
2023-06-16 18:00:47 +0000 UTCThis book fucked me up a year ago. Excited to see this Something I jotted down messily after reading: https://link.medium.com/jvpSy6irGAb
Keanu Clark
2023-06-16 17:50:19 +0000 UTC
