Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.27 AVERAGE
4.27 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
This book started out very interesting, and had lots of interesting ideas throughout, but ultimately felt very long to me. Many parts were engaging and enlightening, and so many of the ideas presented are worth pondering. Not mad I read it, despite the places where it dragged.
After reading and passively learning accounts of human history that emphasized social evolution and determinism, The Dawn of Everything was a refreshing account of the human tendency to collectively shape our own destiny, and how societies have continuously developed and dismantled systems of domination and control. While the book leaves us with the present-day trap of seemingly inescapable global systems that limit the three essential freedoms - the freedom to relocate, the freedom to disobey, and the freedom to de- and re-construct worlds - it also cuts through the spell of fatalism and the myth of a single inevitable human progression. In the words of David Graeber's colleague Mark Fisher, "There are alternatives; there are tomorrows; there is a world to be transformed."
I understand why Graeber and Wengrow provide such in-depth archaeological evidence which form the basis for their arguments, but admit that my eyes glossed over through some sections. Unlike other books crafting a narrative of human history- Sapiens comes to mind- The Dawn of Everything is transparent in its arguments. The first two and final three chapters were most compelling for my goldfish brain, and I couldn't stop writing down passages. Here are two quotes that inspired me early this morning, even as the world grows darker:
"If something did go terribly wrong in human history - and given the current state of the world, it's hard to deny something did - then perhaps it began to go wrong precisely when people started losing that freedom to imagine and engage with other forms of social existence, to such a degree that some now feel this particular type of freedom hardly even existed, or was barely exercised, for the greater part of human history (pg. 502)."
"Perhaps if our species does endure, and we one day look backwards from this as yet unknowable future, aspects of the remote past that now seem like anomalies - say, bureaucracies that work on a community scale; cities governed by neighbourhood councils; systems of government where women hold a preponderance of formal positions; or forms of land management based on care-taking rather than ownership and extraction - will seem like the really significant breakthroughs, and great stone pyramids or statues more like historical curiosities. ...
In some ways, such a perspective might seem even more tragic than our standard narrative of civilization as the inevitable fall from grace. It means we could have been living under radically different conceptions of what human society is actually about. It means that mass enslavement, genocide, prison camps, even patriarchy or regimes of wage labour never had to happen. But on the other hand it also suggests that, even now, the possibilities for human intervention are far greater than we're inclined to think (pg. 523)."
I understand why Graeber and Wengrow provide such in-depth archaeological evidence which form the basis for their arguments, but admit that my eyes glossed over through some sections. Unlike other books crafting a narrative of human history- Sapiens comes to mind- The Dawn of Everything is transparent in its arguments. The first two and final three chapters were most compelling for my goldfish brain, and I couldn't stop writing down passages. Here are two quotes that inspired me early this morning, even as the world grows darker:
"If something did go terribly wrong in human history - and given the current state of the world, it's hard to deny something did - then perhaps it began to go wrong precisely when people started losing that freedom to imagine and engage with other forms of social existence, to such a degree that some now feel this particular type of freedom hardly even existed, or was barely exercised, for the greater part of human history (pg. 502)."
"Perhaps if our species does endure, and we one day look backwards from this as yet unknowable future, aspects of the remote past that now seem like anomalies - say, bureaucracies that work on a community scale; cities governed by neighbourhood councils; systems of government where women hold a preponderance of formal positions; or forms of land management based on care-taking rather than ownership and extraction - will seem like the really significant breakthroughs, and great stone pyramids or statues more like historical curiosities. ...
In some ways, such a perspective might seem even more tragic than our standard narrative of civilization as the inevitable fall from grace. It means we could have been living under radically different conceptions of what human society is actually about. It means that mass enslavement, genocide, prison camps, even patriarchy or regimes of wage labour never had to happen. But on the other hand it also suggests that, even now, the possibilities for human intervention are far greater than we're inclined to think (pg. 523)."
this really had a profound way of changing the way i think about the history of humanity and founding of society. it honestly brought me a lot of hope and helped shake away the pessimism in me that our lives HAVE to be this way.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
It took me a long time to get through this book but it was worth it. This is a fascinating exploration of early human history and civilization, questioning our base assumptions about how society began and our journey to the current political structures we’ve created. The fundamental thesis of this book is: nothing was inevitable.
I picked this book up because I wanted to learn more about early hominids, not just humans, but I stuck with it because the underlying premise was so interesting. Often I think we view early humans as animals, as if they didn’t have the same level of reasoning as us because they didn’t have the same technology. That simply can’t be true. They were just as complex, just as curious. They thought critically about the kind of world they wanted to live in and made deliberate decisions in pursuit of that world.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
hopeful
informative
slow-paced