Rethinking Human History 

This is the best iteration/evolution of dialectical materialism theory I have ever seen Comrade. You are literally the new Marx.

As We Have Always done is a phenominal book, can't recc that enough! I also highly recc Reconciliation Manifesto by Art Manuel and Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson

The video you linked is from a pretty zealous and unreflected materialist. I wouldn't call that just a "history video". His critique of Graeber is ironically (or maybe willfully) ignorant of how materialism is itself subject to the imagination and that the perspective of materialism and how it understands itself has changed over time and is strongly influenced by bougie ideology and interests (something Graeber talked about in several publications). But that doesn't stop this materialist from treating (his interpretation of) materialism as self-evidently true and the sheer sense of self-importance and superiority that drips from his juvenile posturing in each of his videos is pretty cringey. And in this video specifically his whole argument is one big contradiction, where he wants us to believe that material conditions lead to deterministic outcomes, but also we can totally all become anarchists if we just want to.

wow, this is a wonderful video - i’m honoured that you linked to my video here! this is especially true given that my video harshly critiques the Graeber & Wengrow article that you used as a source for some of your video, which shows rare humility on the internet. But your video goes way beyond rephrasing that article or any article, you really synthesized information from all sorts of sources, and best of all, you clearly dove deeper into the source material from the articles and books you’ve drawing from. You don’t take the authors at their word, you checked their sources! Also the art choices are wonderful, and great voice helps too… this is a great channel, and thanks again for linking to my video.

@@purrcatharsis materialism can certainly be an ideological tool, and coloured by prejudice and narrow mindedness. I’m certain that Graeber rebelled against materialism in part due to the robotic 2 dimensional marxist materialism that was common in anthropology in the 1970s. but at the same time without materialism we can’t understand the most basic aspects of life, society or politics. the dynamics involved with male dominance and patriarchy that I used in this video make this quite clear and there are infinite other examples. And there is no contradiction between agency and materialism. Materialism doesn’t entirely determine behaviour. It just limits it. I may want to go to Tanzania for lunch today because they have the best food, but I cannot fly, nor can i afford the flight, nor do i have the time to do it even if i could afford it. My free will is limited by material realities. Sometimes this does make behaviour very predictable. We are not gods we are human beings. In subsequent episodes i explain how social change happens (see episode 8 and upcoming episode 10.2, 10.3) - within the range of possibilities of given conditions. in industrial civilization, with all of our enormous wealth and productive capacity and communication and computing tech we have all the conditions necessary in my opinion to live free and equal lives. It’s a matter of realizing it and taking collective action to that end. as for graeber and wengrow’s article, it’s too long to get into here, but so many of statements that graeber makes in that article and in his new book can only be made by ignoring 50 years of hunter gatherer scholarship. i will explain this in my next episode 10.1. he’s purposefully ignoring it in order to spin a false narrative which gives us hope which is good, but which at the same time makes us blind to important dynamics that we need to understand in order to be successful in our activism. we have better reasons for hope. people do not choose hierarchy for kicks or experimentation. we choose it when it is a practical solution to circumstances, or else more often we do not chose it at all, it is imposed on us.

hope for people in 500 years, maybe. it’s done for our lifetimes. we’re fucked.

I wish this were new. I've been trying to break the glass ceiling for 41 years, and you are now noticing.

"To those that can hear me I say do not despair, the misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed and the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress, the hate of men will pass and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people, and so long as men die liberty will never perish"

@@thedistinguished5255 you've got to try your best. Find a group of friends in similar circumstances and look to curb the predations of capitalism in your lives.

based

@Papa B = clown

@Karl Hall please do, its sheer incoherence will drive you further to the left.

@Papa B 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

@Karl Hall you mean the people that explicitly reject science and the evidence that their policies don’t work?

@Karl Hall There it is! The 1000000099909 billion killion dead, Vulveza arguement. Unironically! If you say Iphone you get bingo! We could also look at Venezula from 1999 to 2013 too, ya know, before the sanctions . And accuse me of whataboutism or whatever, but America and the Western Europeans have much more bodies all around the world to account for and far less to show for it. So wah wah cry me a river about the (steadily decreasing) number of dead in Russia.

The Occupy Movement was arguably Graeber's brainchild. His death was a huge loss but we have the opportunity to carry his legacy forward, if we try.

Yeah, I have similar experience. I stumple on his influence all the time in my little political bubble. Even his posthumous articles with Wengrow still didn't fully end its impact. And their books sure make big splash too.

Hiya, your comment resonates with me as well. I just enjoyed hearing him speak, and feel his death was a real loss for mainstream society. Though, argueably, it's now easier to access/find a lot of his videos and written work now that his website has been re-organized (updated since his death I think). In addition to his book with D. Wengrow soon to be available, and "Debt, the first five thousand years", two other books that carry a lot of weight in a similar manner are Sarah Hrdy's "Mothers and Others" about human evolution/development, and another one I think that absolutely sheds a lot of light on Western Society and cultural evolution is Ian McGilchrist's "The Master and his Emissary". Neither of them are light reads however, so you need a good chunk of time to devote to them (I'm still not through McGilchrist's after close to a year of bouts of intensive reading with long periods of leaving it alone to let it sink in...). Lastly, I also recommend Robin Wall-Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass" for just an inspiring, informative, and enjoyable read that literally weaves American Indigenous perspectives to biology/ecology and western-science. And provides many inspiring visions about human-nature relationships based on the thousands of years of cultural development and traditions that evolved in North America within those societies.

I read critiques that Graeber ignores the construction of Blackness in his formulations... esp. in his book, Debt. He might include "Africa" but not Blackness. Like falls into the trap of categorizing slavery (American Chattel Slavery) as "forced labor." Any thoughts? (Please, no defensiveness).

@@urabagofcells2228 Hi, thanks. I don't really have any thoughts to offer off hand. I think that what you say is probably a very legitimate critique of Graeber. A critique, which I might say doesn't counter any of his arguments or central points he tries to make, but rather indicates omissions or re-intepretations needing to be rectified. And, in some ways, I might suggest that filling these ommissions or providing elaborations and re-interpretations is probably best done by the people with lived experience and knowledge of being a minority and living within the cultural legacies of imperial oppression, etc. I like your name. Loren Eisley, an ecolgist and evolutionary theorist/fossil hunter among other things, once wrote in reference to our cells that we are all walking bags of seawater... that cellular structure and osmotic and chemical regulation of intra cellular fluid basically mimics the chemical conditions of the sea in which life arose, and enables these fundamental life processes to continue independent of actual sea water... The book was "The Immense Journey", think it was published in the 50s...

Eurasian-centric might be a better term here, since the cultural theme of "civilisation" vs. "barbarians" was common across settled civilisations throughout Eurasia, from Europe to India to China.

But... human history isn't written from a Eurocentric perspective in non-Eurocentric cultures. Do you think that human history taught in China is taught from a Eurocentric perspective? Different places learn different parts of history that are focused on where they are. Americans learn more about American history. Canadians learn more about Canadian history. Europeans learn more about European history. It makes sense that a basic into to history in Europe would be Eurocentric. For the person interested in history, they can learn a variety of perspectives. European history is huge in terms of influence on the world today, so it is worth understanding. It is also really informative to learn about Chinese history. Hell, it's informative to learn more about ancient history, too, like the Persian empires. If you want, you can learn about Mongol history and Russian history, too. The more angles from which you learn, the more you can see the different connections and perspectives. Indeed, Mongol history interweaves with Russian, Chinese, and Roman/European history, and these all interweave with Indian history and the Silk Road, and naturally European cultures eventually interacted with African cultures. These cultures all interacted at different times and in different ways, and these are not even all the cultures! You cannot expect EVERYONE to learn all that, though. In any case, the idea of the "noble savage" was was a reasonable myth at the time, but now it is well-known to be a myth and a fallacious way of thinking. If someone thinks that way, they're just uninformed, but we're not taught that "noble savage" is an accurate depiction of the way things were (at least, I wasn't).

Another one is how history is written entirely by men. Looking up “why are there few women in history” as a kid and seeing how only .5% of recorded history involves women broke my tiny heart and soul. Role models or a matching perspective are so far and few between, it’s depressing. There needs to be more emphasis on marginalized viewpoints in our history

@@tikayscake2416 so do it. That's the problem.

@@tikayscake2416 simple, because most women simply did nothing of note. And the ones that did are considered legendary. Simple as is.

You should look into the history of cataclysmic events. It's likely that our human history has been broken up by massive catastrophic natural disasters (like what the story of Noah detailed) and this helps to explain the sophistication of ancient civilizations that seemingly collapsed out of nowhere despite being way more advanced than we are today. Atlantis was submerged after one such event. There's a much stranger truth out there than anything this guy said. This was more ideology than history imo.

Human history is a tangled mess,with civilization rising and falling all the time.It looks like we're crashing again,I wonder what they'll think about our ruins when they dig them up...

@@alexandra_isabel_official We are and can pe pretty damn sure that there has never been a civilisation as or more advanced than us. For one simple reason. While all we have build would disappear in short order after our civilisation ends, there is stuff that will be left for millions of years, hundreds of millions even. Our civilisation has left its mark on the geologic record already, and so lasting, that if 200 million years from now aliens landed on Earth they still could tell that there was an advanced civilisation here. Namnely the massive and insanely quick change in our atmosphere, all these rare and uncommon elements spread far and wide, and fissile elements and their fission products. There will be a slim layer that contains that for a long long time. Thats also why we can tell that if there were intelligent dinosaurs, they never went further than ancient/medieval high culture. Because if they had industrialised? We could tell.

Wow… you can’t make this stuff up. You just come right out and say it eh? History is not a grand conspiracy. 99% of the world’s events are lost to us. Western civilization has constructed its narrative using some first hand accounts, some archeology, some religion and some analysis of present day affairs. It’s certainly partly propaganda. The bottom like Is that you hate western culture as want to reshape it. You are going to have to use violence to get that done. There are plenty of people who are not interested in spending their lives rejecting a culture that is useful. Culture and history are tools. The work is the raising of families and leading meaningful lives. Resentment and lack of purpose motivates someone interested in destroying the culture that supports them. Rewriting history will not get you any closer to a “truth”. It will be your attempt to reshape the world in you image. I doubt you even understand what it would take to actually reshape the world. History was lived first and then written. What will you live? Or do you just intend to type up your new history and teach it to our children? We will see.

Pretty much

Absolutely! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Your worldbuilding vids are probably my favourites on this site because you go above and beyond to construct unique worlds. Keep it up!

Team-up of the century

This also connects really well with the concept of the summer family and winter family that you've set up for one of your projects, and how they have distinct social structures depending on the time of year.

Oh hey, I love your videos. Fact that you're watcher of Saint Andrewism make it even better. Never enough good leftist/anarchist propaganda.

huh didnt expect to see my other favorite youtuber here

Enclosure was the main driver towards capitalism in Britain. Traditional peasant feudal farming was no longer economically viable. Take the peasants off the land and you now have a surplus workforce ready to toil at various enterprises.

Some prefer Hydrox!

wait wasn't he saying the opposite?

@@christianrokicki after years of my dad insisting Hydrox were better I finally managed find some for us to all try on Father’s Day. And he was right!

@@LemonDove Nice!

Roooso

"Colonialist realism" is a term which doesn't show up on Google. Capitalism's framing well into the future is a projection, not an argument. There are arguments for it, which I'm sure you're talking about. However, none of them are based on the presumption that humans everywhere have lived in a capitalist or proto-capitalist "state". They rest upon the failure of anybody to present a compelling theory, never mind ever evidence for one, that there is a societal and economic structure other than capitalism which can as well serve the common good when regulated accordingly. Some commodities are considered public goods, and are therefore provided through publicly held and regulated businesses. Hospitals should arguably be treated this way to the extent roads are. People are rewarded for their effort, and given society's agreed-upon favor tokens which they can then exchange for goods and services. There are perhaps an insufficient number of social safety nets, perhaps too many depending on a person's perspective. However, in a well regulated society an appropriate balance is not difficult to achieve. Unfortunately, government officials are not effectively regulated away from taking bribes from businesses. There is anecdotal and theoretical evidence that this issue can be ameliorated. Red-herring movements such as all encompassed by leftism sap at the concerted effort necessary to compel people to attain amelioration of the issue. A cursory look at the diversity of human societies throughout time doesn't disprove the notion of capitalism's perpetuity unless you can name a single societal structure for which there is a compelling theory of a 21st century adapted version that could be lawfully or peacefully, and fairly, converted to. Additionally, I don't think you have any evidence to provide. This is leaving out the swathes of new societal structures, as well as communism since you believe the scope of your rebuttal is constrained to historical human societies.

I look forward to socialists who deny history, getting exactly the system they want.

Whether you love or hate capitalism, it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Since it utterly depends on growth it is inherently unsustainable. Oh we humans are very clever at sidestepping ecological reality in the short term. But the sand is running down in the hourglass. Pick your analogy of preference: we are on a runaway train going off the rails/hurtling over the edge of a cliff/heading for a brick wall etc. At some point there will be a massive collapse and appalling human dieoff. Entropy always has the last laugh

@@Johnnyapppleseed Ya sure made a loooot of assumptions about my beliefs based on a single paragraph... Literally all I said is that capitalistic and colonialist societies (and really every society, if we're splitting hairs to the point of pedantry) reframes history so that the current status quo is an inevitability of human nature. The video my postw as in response to goes into specific detail as to how that view of history is a contemporary construct that does not accurately reflect human societies

@@lolfemfaillol3933 lol okay. I already live in one of the "good" parts of the neoliberal hellscape. Think I might take my chances in the society that is socially conscious beyond guaranteeing the ability to virtue signal, thanks.

It would be cool if you could figure out a way to do a "pre-history 4x" styled game, where you can play as one of many early hominid species. It wouldn't really be a "civ building game" I guess, since it's pre-civilisation. But you could have it so you're basically just wandering the map "expanding your hunting territory" and thus increasing your tribe's population. And instead of having one huge "centralized empire" -- when you population gets too big, your tribe splinters into multiple smaller off-shoot tribes. And if you don't maintain good social connections with your split-tribes, they might develop their own language and culture over time, and end up becoming a rival tribe instead of an ally tribe. In short, instead of a 4x game based on expanding one single massive centralized empire, its more about constantly moving around the map (nomadic) to meet new tribes, and managing social & cultural connections, through rituals and shared. So the game's difficulty is more based on "do you want to explore a thousand miles away from your homeland, find potential new resources, and fracture away from the other tribes? Or do you want to stick close to home in Africa and maintain good relations with existing tribes?" Random events like storms, droughts, etc, could be used to "force" the player to move away from homeland, thus adding an element of pressure.

This just came out a week ago: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-i6eyxXWM2mQ.html

The best advice for smoothing inaccuracies and myths is getting people of different backgrounds to say their piece. The extra perspective is a world of difference

Would love to see this kind of take in a Historical game. About time that the dominance of tired formulaic imperialistic Civ games was challenged.

I now start to believe hierarchy was an 'invention' by some people with psychopath traits. Like Trump they invent stories, lie (which many honest people don't consider happening to them). They swindle and force people into following their commands, because "hey , a divine voice told me I'm to be king." And this tribal gang approach is military stronger than a self organised collective that has a diversity of reactions, where a tribe falls apart into flee, fight or freeze. Just consider the force Putin uses to get his army filled, and orders such as 'kill those who flee'. And what we see is that robbers also learn and copy tricks, from ancient nobility stories to modern first strike 'defence', etc. And sadly nowadays 8 sociopaths may sit in a boardroom and 200.000 nice common people get no raise, nor a word in. In ancient times in a group of 40, there would at best be two such people, who if raised with love and warmth would be an asset for the community. People raised on disconnect, lack of love and 'always take care of number one first' most often become sad and or aggressive human beings. By the way, I'm also a game designer and now developing game concepts in this direction, either exposing the lies of say hierarchy, or 'benevolent leadership'.

Boost

Folding Ideas did a video that kinda went into this. "Minecraft, Sandboxes, and Colonialism". It's not comprehensive, but it's definitely the first time I've thought about games in that way.

Hell yeah. I need more stateless grand strategy games

yeah please its so bad

@@pahko_ villagers are born to be exploited tho. Unlimited iron and mending books is 2good

Thank you for your heartfelt contribution! I, too, was wondering how Andrew manages to read so many books, create videos and write articles on Medium (Andrew Sage) and elsewhere. He's not well-off, it transpires from his essays, yet somehow he has the time, energy and focus for all of this. Let's draw inspiration from him and be the best we can be! Have faith and keep well!

Something to keep in mind is architectural inequality is rather uncommon historically, as a lot of societies held flashy houses to be in poor taste. That’s why the housing of many nobles in various Asian civilizations looked mostly the same as lower classes on the outside, but had luxurious courtyards and interiors behind the walls. Classical Athens was much the same way; had our knowledge of classical Athens been largely architectural (as archaeology can tend to be), we might think Athens was rather egalitarian.

I want to learn about this, I want to break away from the fatalism that the world spirals into inequality and hierarchy.

​@@melelconquistador right? it's so depressing, i've never liked the idea but in the realm of facts i never knew there was anywhere else to go

@@melelconquistador But there are so many voices, both in history and in psychology, that tell us hierarchy is inevitable. Its really difficult to question what you´ve been told your whole life.

A modern human is no more evolved than a bacteria 🤔 what specific conditions did our brain evolve for that a bacteria did not encounter first ?

@@graemecreegan6749 Our human brains adapted to being social omnivores in the savanna at 1-2m tall. Bacteria evolved to be single-celled organisms, 1-micrometer wide in our soil and water. They're both adapted to completely different environments.

@@LowestofheDead 🌊👋 cool avatar 🗾🇯🇵 But if the first life on earth were bacteria, and all life evolved from one form of bacteria or another, including the bacteria currently alive, then surely it follows that our ancestors were forced to evolve into ever more complex organisms by some set of external stimuli. And that these stimuli did not affect the ancestors of the bacteria which remained single cells. Therefore we are in fact are ‘more evolved’ because evolutionary processes have had more effect on our species 🤔

This is a great point. The only thing that gives me some hesitation is the continued assertion that human development is biologically determined. I’m just not big on such determinism personally, and while a lot of development and human thought is obviously connected to biology, the idea that culture evolves is such a broad claim that it would seem then that all human development is either reactionary or accidental. I’m not saying you think this, and I think this way of thinking of evolution can still be a good analogy, but I can’t say how objectively descriptive a claim like this can be. Edit: of course, maybe I’m not understanding it too well or I’m overthinking it, but that’s my impression, and perhaps that just comes from how many people I’ve seen use cultural evolution as a determinism for imperialism and indigenous people “losing” to colonialism

@@graemecreegan6749 But that's the point - we didn't evolve from bacteria. We evolved from a common ancestor with bacteria. And the two paths of evolution from that common ancestor led to us and to modern bacteria. Same story for anything else we have a common ancestor with.

let’s go 1st year anth majors! can’t believe i thought i was going to be a scientist up until this year, so happy i’m switching to anthropology. this video making me think i might have to start looking into archaeology too.

1st year archaeology student here! This is some good shit!

howd the midterm go?

@@zoejohnston9190 I literally was just in the middle of writing, it's going great between a sprained ankle, work and reading. Thanks for holding me to it, I'm rewatching currently! (It's due in 12 hours).

@@zoejohnston9190 I got an 86%!

That was my main take away from watching the video as well. I also found myself thinking that we live on a planet that has limited resources which aren't evenly distributed, so inequality is sadly only going to occur naturally. The part where he seemed to suggest that everything in hunter gatherer society was free, was also a bit of a head scratcher. Trading of skills for things would have still happened, just like it happens now, but those things are money. We're still the same species ad our hunter gathering ancestors, same mental capacity and human nature. Thinking that the past was a peaceful state of fairness and equality is a romanticism of out past, I think it comes from people looking at how bad things are now and projecting their wishes onto our past.

Specialization comes with its downsides as well. The more time you commit to mastering a specific skill, the less time you have to develop other potential interests or skills you could cultivate. People are very “narrow minded” these days. We have lost our connection with each other, and with nature. We’ve lost the bigger picture.

@@Dialogos1989 it certainly does have its downsides, but they are far far outweighed by the benefits. All of our modern medical advancements, technology, and comforts are possibly only because of specialization. It’s not free, but it’s one of the best bargains in history.

Good for you, lucky you for having such a peachy keen wonderful quality of life. My life sucks. I bet we even live within 50 miles of each other. Maybe you have benefitted from civilization and central governments and etc. and etc. but I have not. Maybe you live in a representative democracy but I live in a plutocracy of oligarchs, or an oligarchy of plutocrats, however you'd prefer to frame it

Or even Homo-Denisovan

And homo erectus…

I live with 4% er Neanderthal. She's smart, tough, and spiritual.

I don't think that's moving away from eurocentrism lol they only started attributing good attributes to neanderthals once it was realised that eurasians carry small neanderthal admixture. They were not as advanced as homo sapiens

There's a real chance humans survived over neanderthals specifically because we're stupider lol

Read the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

@@ryanrichey3245 thanks so much!!!

@@ParadoxHorde It's a novel, but don't let that fool you. It's well worth the read and has completely changed how I view just about every piece of media and the things people tell me. Quite honestly it made me a better person.

Same here :)

Perfectly put! These videos are expansive! Just like the mind that created them... 🌹

⬆️🤜🏾

Graeber also used the word "stuck" to describe our present situation in the article, and my read of it is the opposite of yours. Graeber talks about (I think in this one but definitely in On Kings) how people would have these festivals where someone would basically be made "god." The idea is that this order, inequality, was done as a temporary thing, like a game. For fun or tradition or something. So, the question isn't why did humans end up so unequal (the answer to this tends to be the raft of european bad takes illustrated in this video), but "How did we end up so stuck?" I.e. this isn't some inevitable outcome for an advanced society, but maybe somewhere along the way we forgot all of society is made up and we can stop pretending some people are more important than others, we could get ourselves unstuck.

@@spencerharmon4669 Good points, which is also why I recommend some of the Indigenous scholars publishing stuff in Canada and the U.S., such as Glen Coulthard's "Red skin, white masks", or Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's "As we have always done". Both these books take the idea of "Grounded Normativity" based on American Indigenous knoweldge/wisdom and governance, wherein human's individual and collective values, worldviews, norms, institutions/traditions, land-use practices, etc. remain firmly grounded (i.e. in relationship with) the surrounding environment and ecology of their socio-ecological system. In other words' they argue societies can avoid many problems and find answers to others by looking to the rest of life / nature. And this they argue is absolutely a key component to enabling societies to flourish over the long-term in co-evolutionary relationships with their environments (but you have to pay lots of close attention to your surrounding human and non-human "kin" alike!). This approach also enables place-based environmental and cultural diversity to arise/adapt, and explicitly recognizes the importance of letting these dynamics shape different groups in relation to place (anti-homegenization of society). However, this also necessitates protocols designed to equitably enable co-existence and cooperation amongst different groups while minimizing competitve tensions. Here, humans have come up with all sorts of social mechanisms to enable this, some of the least palatable are warfare or ritualized violence, but there are many other social institutions/mechansims/protocols described in anthropological literature if you go loooking for them. Anyway, I got a bit long winded, but the short answer they argue is: start working with nature and seeking and exploring your relationships with it (e.g. growing food, plants, learning how your behaviour affects your non-human kin) wherever you happen to be, because embodying relationships with nature in each individual's life is an important foundation for grounding these values and norms in the social institutions that shape our societies...

@@CCDR07 This was extremely well put. I think it falls in line quite closely with the technological goals of the Solarpunk movement that Andrew describes and references in many other videos. It seems to be oriented around manifesting the kind of place-based ecological diversity you're talking about in human societies. There is a strong tendency, from what I understand, to emphasize integration with naturally occurring architecture and technologies. Plant medicines (i.e. the plants "conventional medicines" are derived from) being cultivated in the place of pharmacies on every block, building stable structures around living, breathing wood instead of stacking and screwing dead wood, encouraging the proliferation of native flora, all these are things I've heard of Solarpunks doing. It seems to me that if these indigenous scholars you are summarizing were to link up with this social movement, some really beautiful things could arise from it.

@@CCDR07 thanks for these recommendations; I'll check these out for sure! I think a keyword here is "imagination." Here again, Graeber called attention to this word, referring to modern humans living under neoliberalism/neofeudalism as having an imagination problem. For me as well, looking outside eurocentric narratives to preindustrial historic record, prehistoric archaeological record, and to modern indigenous peoples' movements and narratives are all primary sources of inspiration to help imagine what a possible future may look like. Like with any creative process, being stuck isn't great, but through motivation, attrition, and inspiration like what you mention here, I think we can move past this stage. Like, society isn't so bad, it's just having a bit of writer's block.

@@spencerharmon4669 Except, maybe it's more like writer's cramp! :) Anyway, thanks for the reply, I appreciate your additional comments and I completely agree. Going back too Graeber, I've also always liked his notion of a "revolution of the caring classes", though I'm not sure where he originally outlines this idea and arguments around it, but I think it comes through in some of his talks online to do with the Bullshit Jobs stuff.

💯💯💯💯💯💯

My current understanding of environmental determinism can kinda be summed up like this: Two kids are in a classroom, one is given a pencil, one isn’t, they both need to finish a hand written essay, the kid with the pencil finishes the essay before the kid who didn’t have a pencil. Would it be fair for the teacher to compare their intelligence while basing it on which kid finished their essay first?

Well fuck. I just bought Guns, Germs, and Steel…

@@musicdev Return it and buy How Europe Underdeveloped Africa instead.

@@coppermoth6069 Yes, that's accurate. But the problem is it doesn't apply to history in any capacity and relies on some fairly racist assumptions about what an "advanced" society looks like.

@@surgeland9084 damn, that actually looks like a good read. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll definitely be ordering that tomorrow morning!

The era before kings was a similarly difficult time - the age of hunter gatherers. In one era, one had to spend each day slaving for Emperor Sargon and getting conscripted. In the other, one had to spend each day hunting mammoths and fending off giant predators. And then there were the raiders - some sites have evidence of prehistoric massacres.

Have you heard of a novel called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn?

Somehow I haven't heard of it! Yet another book to add to my Goodreads list lol.

I second this comment

Who wiped them out?

Indeed!! This also why I despise the argument that capitalism is so great because it 'beat out' the other societies... to me that's like rooting for the bully, or worse, the virus! There are PLENTY of viruses that can infect the host and then they both die (if the virus can't find another host). It's looking like capitalism is making it more and more likely that we will destroy ourselves. Then what? I think its far more practical to try and develop societies that can last as long as possible, which almost always means egalitarian, adaptable, and sustainable. If we can figure out how to build 'modern-day' foraging type of societies, or egalitarian farms and anarchic cities, that would be absolutely incredible!

@@itsdonuttime7729 A controversial and disputed civilization referred to as the "Aryans", which are variously sited as the origin of many cultures they are not in any way actually related too.

@@ThrottleKitty I see. So the modern day culture in the "Indus river valley" is from the "Aryans"?

@@itsdonuttime7729 ..... No? Both civilizations vanished thousands of years ago. That'd be like claiming America is an extension of Neolithic native American cultures.

Yeah, I liked that video too. Using a review of Humankind as a frame for the imperialist narratives 4x games push was clever.

You repeated some falsehoods here which I think detract from a nuanced discussion of the nature of humans. Humans generally resist undue authority. Throughout history and likely prehistory, many cultures and large societies have thrived without it. Ignoring these facts of the historical and archaeological record is the opposite of useful since what we need right now is a narrative which helps dismantle (as opposed to one which reinforces) the inequality and individualism that have been the central themes of western hegemony. A more realistic and useful view is that european so-called enlightenment and subsequent colonialism represent together a massive step backward in human social development in a progression that otherwise tended toward liberation from violence and undue authority. The way we frame history inevitably affects how we frame questions about it and questions about ourselves. I guess what I mean is: I reject your reality and I substitute my own. In fact, there's no evidence for what you say, so mine is more like reality and yours is little more than a fairy tale (which reinforces the myths still used to justify a system posed to destroy life on earth as we know it). I guess: what do you think *is* useful about the simplistic, wrong narrative about human progress being predicated on inequality?

@@spencerharmon4669 I'm really not understanding where you and I disagree. I'm not saying anything about "progress" being predicated on inequality. What I was trying to say was that structures that make a society more "powerful" will tend to proliferate, especially where different structures compete. That is all. Where the linear model (tribe->agriculture->industry) comes into play is that I'm saying we can explain this linear progression not through mechanism of "progress" (since it's so ill defined) but through power. The reason each structure arose and became widespread is because groups that adopted them outcompeted other groups. There's no morality or ethics or ideals involved here. To answer your question: linear model is useful because it gives insight into the nature of power and competition of systems. I'm not just following the model's conclusions or assumptions here. I'm taking something from it, and getting something out of it without agreeing with it. You can say it's an alternate model inspired by the linear one. You can also say Its an alternate interpretation of the linear model.

I think you misunderstood that segment of the video. I was explaining the common narrative, not agreeing with it. The rest of the video debunks it.

Such as?

You might like David Graeber's ideas of the REvolution of the caring classes. I once knew a guy who had an "Eat the Rich" t-shirt, which I always thought was pretty good/funny, but also a bit stomach churning as I think rich people and lifestyles makes for a healthy animal,emotionally/psychologically or physically.

No need for eco-. Fascism is fascism.

@@ricopena2053 Eco-Fascism is still a valid ideology lmao

Good idea as a support, but too much of us right now to approximate something along the line of gatherer practices.

why would we devote our time to gathering apples for others?

South American crop cities are incredibly old. The density of edible plants peaks around population centers. It for sure would work. Many things would "work", in the end we just do. So it's been done before, maybe we will do it again.

Because most people want to do other things with their lives besides being assigned as a farmer and gatherer.

@@leonelegender yes because for food to be planted as a civic service, everyone would have to be doing that work. Like how when roads get repaired, everyone has to stop their normal jobs and work on the roads, cause otherwise it couldn't get done.

At its best anarcho-primitivism is just a critique of civilization. Many have abandoned the term because primitive is so laden with racist connotations. If you want an anti-civ critique of the Tucker/Zerzan primal anarchy check out Corrosive Consciousness by Bellamy Fitzpatrick. Available on anarchist library or in audio book on Immediatism.

It's going to be better than this dune movie. 😂

sometimes, maybe

Yea, pretty nice no?