![]() ![]() ![]() G&W make these points in the context of a consistent attack on any idea that we became socially and morally human during the course of a revolution. G&W seem to be arguing that if our ancestors were so adventurous, then surely, they would have experimented not only with egalitarianism but also with harassment, abuse and domination by aggressive, bullying males. 86-7), were abusive dominance hierarchies like those of chimpanzees. In their view, they would just as likely have chosen to be oppressedĪs they put it: ‘If the very essence of our humanity consists of the fact that we are self-conscious political actors, and therefore capable of embracing a wide range of social arrangements, would that not mean human beings should actually have explored a wide range of social arrangements over the greater part of our history?’ Among these possibilities, as the authors readily acknowledge (pp. But instead of building on this experience so familiar to us all, Graeber and Wengrow (henceforth: ‘G&W’) oppose the whole idea that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were egalitarians. To this day, all of us feel most relaxed and happy when able to laugh, play and socialize among companions who are our equals. I prefer the standard anthropological view that the political instincts and social emotions that define our humanity were shaped under conditions of egalitarianism. In recent times, however, we’ve all got stuck in just one system and we must try to understand why.Īll this is new and refreshing but hardly credible. History takes a rhythmic form, oscillating between one extreme and the next. We are told that humans are politically adventurous and experimental – so much so that after a spell of freedom and equality, people are inclined to choose oppression just to make a change. The Dawn of Everything’s central idea is challenging. ![]()
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