#davidwengrow on birdsite:

"Yay - 5 years, 1 pandemic later we have results to share about this project. Key aspects of Mesopotamian #kingship may germinate in the sphere of rituals linked to adolescence, long before they break out into society as a whole. Scientific publication in the works. End spoiler."

Watch out #archeology #anthropology

... qualifications to enter bureaucracies are typically based on some form of knowledge that has virtually nothing to do with actual administration.

#DawnOfEverything : A New History of Humanity by #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow ; Ch 11.

@donar @Pierrette @xChaos

https://trojkatretiho.cz/viewtopic.php?p=1508#p1508

Each day the adult men of a town would gather to spend much of the day arguing about politics, in a spirit of rational debate, in conversations punctuated by the smoking of tobacco and drinking of caffeinated beverages.

#DawnOfEverything : A New History of Humanity by #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow ; Ch 11.

@donar @xChaos

11 https://trojkatretiho.cz/viewtopic.php?p=1507#p1507

Living in unbounded, eternal, largely imaginary groups is effectively what humans had been doing all along.

#DawnOfEverything : A New History of Humanity by #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow ; Ch 8.

9/9 https://trojkatretiho.cz/viewtopic.php?p=1334#p1334

@donar @xChaos

Humans tend to live simultaneously with the 150-odd people they know personally, and inside imaginary structures shared by perhaps millions or even billions of other humans. Sometimes, as in the case of modern nations, these are imagined as being based on kin ties; sometimes they are not.

In this, at least, modern fora... MESSAGE CLIPPED

#DawnOfEverything : A New History of Humanity by #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow ; Ch 8.

FULL TEXT: 8/8 https://trojkatretiho.cz/viewtopic.php?p=1333#p1333

@donar @xChaos

... the mere fact that much of the world’s population now live in cities may not determine how we live, to anything like the extent you might assume...

#DawnOfEverything : A New History of Humanity by #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow ; Ch 8.

7/7 https://trojkatretiho.cz/viewtopic.php?p=1332#p1332

@donar @xChaos

Very large social units are always, in a sense, imaginary. Or, to put it in a slightly different way: there is always a fundamental distinction between the way one relates to friends, family, neighbourhood, people and places that we actually know directly, and the way one relates to empires, nations and metropolises, p... MESSAGE CLIPPED

#DawnOfEverything : A New History of Humanity by #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow ; Ch 8.

FULL TEXT: 6/6 https://trojkatretiho.cz/viewtopic.php?p=1331#p1331

@donar @xChaos

"Far from being expected to demonstrate personal charisma or the ability to outdo rivals, those who aspired to a role on the Council of Tlaxcala did so in a spirit of self-deprecation—even shame—and were required to subordinate themselves to the people of the city."

#DavidGraeber, #DavidWengrow, 2020

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/democracy/hiding-plain-sight

(1/3)

This is not, then, a book about the origins of inequality. But it aims to answer many of the same questions in a different way. There is no doubt that something has gone terribly wrong with the world. A very small percentage of its population do control the fates of almost everyone else, and they are doing it in an increasingly disastrous fashion.

#DawnOfEverything : A New History of Humanity by #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow ; Ch 2.

️Neuerwerbung der Gustav-Landauer-Bibliothek Witten:

David Graeber, David Wengrow:

Anfänge

Eine neue Geschichte der Menschheit

David Graeber und David Wengrow entfalten in ihrer Menschheitsgeschichte, wie sich die Anfänge unserer Zivilisation mit der Zukunft der Menschheit neu denken und verbinden lässt. Über Jahrtausende hinweg, lange vor der Aufklärung, wurde schon jede erdenkliche Form sozialer Organisation erfunden und nach Freiheit, Wissen und Glück gestrebt. Graeber und Wengrow zeigen, wie stark die indigene Perspektive das westliche Denken beeinflusst hat und wie wichtig ihre Rückgewinnung ist. Lebendig und überzeugend ermuntern sie uns, mutiger und entschiedener für eine andere Zukunft der Menschheit einzutreten und sie durch unser Handeln zu verändern.

(Quelle: perlentaucher

#Witten #GLBibW #DavidGraeber #DavidWengrow

(comment on Anfänge)

If... future... hinges on our capacity to create something different... then what... matters is whether we... rediscover the freedoms that make us human in the first place... We are projects of collective self-creation... What if we treat people, from the beginning, as imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures who deserve to be understood as such?

#DawnOfEverything : A New History of Humanity by #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow ; Ch 1.

@donar @xChaos

Reading this book while I wait for hours in the hospital. Hopefully reading a dense book will stave off COVID brain fog

It's a really great book. The authors are an anthropologist and archaeologist who basically rip unscientific "State of Nature" arguments about social/political evolution to shreds by looking at data that Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, etc. wouldn't have had access to and couldn't have known.

I picked up this book because I heard it has new insights into the daily lives of ancient humans, which is a thing I enjoy thinking about. The book delivers that for sure, but also, it’s a super radicalizing indictment of assumptions in social sciences and colonialism/capitalism in general, and suggests encouragingly that we have a choice about how our lives are organized. So glad I read it. #TheDawnOfEverything #DavidGraeber #DavidWengrow

#YanisVaroufakis Meets #DavidWengrow | A #New #History of #Humanity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNI12ak1mmI