The Dawn of Everything

Dette var en interessant bok. Den var overraskende lettlest uten at jeg fant sitatvennlige avsnitt på annenhver side. Bokens store prosjekt er å skisse på en fortelling av vår fortid som skiller seg fra den vanlige eurosentriske fortellinga der man blikket man ser fortiden med er farget av det kapitalistiske samfunnet vi lever i og hva som er politisk mulig nå — og dermed gi en annen fortelling av hvem vi er (gjetter jeg).

Jeg har alt for lite bakgrunn i feltet til å bedømme om argumentene som legges fram er godt underbygde eller ikke. Det er vanskelig når man skriver om en tid som ligger så langt tilbake at man ikke har tilgang til hvordan de som levde da så på seg selv, man kan bare anta. De påpeker flere steder at andre forskere har tolket funn utifra sin egen samtid, sikkert med fare for å snuble i samme fella selv.

Noen saker jeg har lært i denne boka: * Folk før i tida var sånn omtrent som folk er nå. Folk før i tida var minst like opptatt av politikk og filosofi som vi er nå, men den kunne ta andre uttrykk. Mennesker i urtiden var mer opptatt av frihet enn likhet, men det andre var ofte en konsekvens av det første. * Jordbruksrevolusjonen for sånn omtrent 12 000 år siden var ingen revolusjon i det hele tatt. Det var en prosess som gikk ganske langsomt og som begynte med at man eksperimenterte med å så, men at man lenge levde som jegere/sankere. Det var ingenting som pekte fra det første sådde frøet til dagens industrijordbruk. * Mennesker har levd i mange forskjellige typer samfunn gjennom historien. Vi har både gått fra små samfunn til store samfunn, og fra store til små. Vi har både gått mot mer auktoritære samfunn og mot mer egalitære. Politiske strukturer har tidvis hatt mye makt, tidvis hatt begrenset makt. * Mange samfunn har vekslet mellom auktoritære og egalitære samfunn utifra årstid eller situasjon, likeså med om man lever som jegere/samlere eller jordbrukere. * Vi er på mange måter mindre frie nå enn hva vi var for både noen hundre og noen tuser år siden.

The Dawn of Everything utfordrer oss først å fremst til å drømme og diskutere hvordan vi vil at samfunnet vi lever i skal se ut, ettersom vi har dette i oss. Graeber og Wengrows blikk på fortiden, selv om også dette bilder er mangelfullt, sier i det minste: om de kunne, så kan vel vi — så forskjellige er vi ikke.

There are several flaws in this book. We already know this. The theory Graeber and Wengrow put forward has been in vogue for nearly half a century. It's not new and it even is cliched. No one really thinks the analytic constructs of the theories of the State correspond to actual historical truth, not even the original theorizers thought like that. Its influence is another thing. Speaking of influence, the authors again try to conjure up a false categorical connection between how a certain concept emerged, and whether this concept is really in the object that those made heavy use of it. This, coupled with a complete overlooking of medieval history and scholastic developments in the field of jurisprudence, led them to devise a totalizing narrative that while reducing the principle underlying the status quo to contingency, and simultaneously totalize the so-called freedom of the native Americans (ironically just like Rousseau, and even more like Tacitus) as if it itself is not contingent. Everyone with a knowledge of the development and evolution of the concept of state will find the narrative given extremely confused and stupid. History is contingent, but nearly everything is historically conditioned, and this contingency is not something that can be gotten rid of instantly and on a whim. There are too many a-historical and pseudo-historical arguments in the guise of history (similar to the current status of historical studies in humanities). In fact Greber and Wengrow go full totalizing mode and blatantly make noramtive value claims when it comes to the views that they themselves deem right, without actually arguing for that, since they'll find that when they really go on and try to do that, they'll be repeating what the thinkers of the 17th and 18th century said. Furthermore, this book, similar to all other popular, propagandizing, rhetoric-driven book, gives a false impression that history is a simple thing which is more about facts rather than interpretations. Everyone with a minimum real education in any of the humanities will be able to see clearly that what are presented here are not and should not be the final words, but this is not and will not be the case for the general public, who are the majority of the readers of the book. I'm not against the "against totalising state" narrative, but I'm against intellectual confusion and rhetoric devoid of any meaningful content. Pointing out that a community is "imaginary" may give those who fall into the rhetoric a false impression that there must be something real that holds a community together, but they won't stop and try to think about what then is this real thing that holds a community together - it must not be blood I guess. Similarly, the book's narrative never venture toward its almost necessary intellectual conclusion, or rather, it tries to give a conclusion that not at all follows from the archaeological studies etc. presented in it as evidences to something that is vague and in itself imaginary.

The archeological rigor and discovery explained in this book do indeed shed new light on our arrogant and foreordained conceptions of prehistory and the development and status of what has become known as "civilization." I have always found the notion of near-instantaneous "revolutions," whether agriculture, industrial, or computer, to be inherently questionable (and most often preceded by a blizzard of trial and error and half-steps and experimentation over centuries). I find it much easier to believe in an ebb, neap, and rip tide of different intellectual and cultural phenomena and traditions (moving into and back from the cultural shore that it changes) to be a more likely scenario. The new archeology would appear to support such a story.

If I have a misgiving about this book, it is the authors' sharp tongue for what amounts to enlightenment political philosophers who, while they may have had their views of the nature of man, were neither archeologists nor social scientists, and lacked the wealth of modern discoveries and tools available to these authors. So too, the work of prehistory scholars (such as Gordon Childe, Robert Redfield, Henri Frankfort, and many others) is dismissed readily, some sub silentio, for want of the more modern discoveries, when many of these older scholars took pains to point out the anomalies in what record they did have, which they could not resolve. Finally, this is a book about prehistory, not history. It spends scant time discussing the impact of writing on cultural development, and concedes in its silence on the point that it is mostly making informed judgements from a physical record, rather than reading how prior cultures and periods conceived of themselves. Notwithstanding these minor matters, this is a book not to be missed (as many others have concluded).

This book suffers from two things in terms of its writing and structure. First, there's Graeber's desire to compress as much information into one space as humanly possible, even to the detriment of his own argument and the discussion he wants to push people to have. The second is that it seems, if I'm reading into both authors' writing styles correctly, Wengrow's desire to flesh out those concepts with more detail to further support them. (I say that because I've checked a few of his articles, and he has a tendency to develop even more focused detail than Graeber.)

I could be wrong about who was doing what, but regardless? The end result is a book that is a slog to get through and frequently leaves me forgetting half of what I've read, going back to skim it and remind myself about what they were discussing, and then trying to figure out what most of it has to do with the point being made. Which, yeah, the topics discussed do relate. But it's such a winding detour through excruciating detail that it makes it hard to focus on the overall picture that they're trying to get us to see.

So much of this would've benefitted from focused case studies rather than intertwining and switching between each of them. It also would've dealt better with more clear (instead of verbose and annoyingly lengthy) section titles that could serve as functional reminders rather than quippy sayings.

Overwhelmingly, I wasn't amused with most of this. Despite the obvious amount of time this had to have taken in order to gather all the resources and research, the writing feels rushed and confused. It doesn't feel nearly as solid as it really could've been.

I usually find Graeber's work a bit annoying as I agree with the conclusions, but I find his arguments for how to get there lacking. I had high hopes for this book as the premise was interesting. Unfortunately, this book was even more frustrating that his others. I enjoyed the critique of eurocentric views on civilization, and I liked that the book argues against a narrative of progress through feudal lords and then capitalism.

However, a main argument in the book is against the idea that large population governance is not inherently oppressive. I wholly reject this idea. The arguments Graeber and Wengrow make are hundreds of pages long and never get beyond "well there is no evidence of a monarchy so they must have had people's assemblies and been democratic." The city, they infer, is therefore a structure we can have without oppressive relations. There is then much advocating for the city as a body politic.

I just don't see this as being likely or even desirable. The culture of the city and the community life that brings are something that I think can be valuable, but I find no need or desire for an overarching body politic for a physical space just because we conceive an arbitrary line around it. I don't care how "democratic" it is. I believe politics, justice, and governance are pluralistic and need to be worked out on a case by case basis, depending on context, and involve those effected.

Can we have a future with technology and high standards of living in such a pluralistic society? I think so, but admittedly it would look nothing like what we have now, and would not look like early agricultural adoption either. We can make the future what we want without trying to erect our pet political strategies onto a group of people living in a single location.

That's what's so frustrating I guess. The book begins to give us the space to dream of a possible future, but then just settles on another system of governance that is appropriated from an incomplete picture of some Indigenous groups and some early Europeans.

One of the earliest recollections I have about thinking about ancient peoples was while playing Age of Empires (@AgeOfEmpires): as an omniscient god, I commanded villagers to build and farm until buildings of the army and university created scientific breakthroughs I could use to make better dudes to kill other civilizations.

Graeber (@DavidGraeber) and Wengrow (@DavidWengrow) show that the myth of prehistory doesn't really stray far from the gameplay of Age of Empires in #TheDawnOfEverything: after humanity fell from the "eden" of egalitarian hunters and gathers, agriculture required individuals to give up autonomy to brutal rulers to avoid returning the Hobbesian horrors of an "eden" that is both paradise and hell. According to the myth, the continued progress of humanity requires the social contract because humans are incapable of organizing without the threat of violence.

In the Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow demolish the myths of prehistory with modern scholarship on the people of prehistory and their inclusion in recent works of anthropology like Harari's (@harari_yuval) Sapiens.

In the place of prehistoric myth, Graeber and Wengrow provide evidence of "bold social experiments representing a carnival parade of political forms" including seasonal monarchy and despots, ceremonial kings, civilizations taking up and abandoning agriculture, and the egalitarian and complex structures of Nebelivka and the Huron.

If you haven't visited "precivilizational", "prehistorial", or early human history since high school, Age of Empires, or Sapiens, Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything should help you demolish ideas now unsupported by archaeology and research so you can imagine and work toward a more liberated future.