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brycepowell 's review for:
The Dawn of Everything
by David Wengrow, David Graeber
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)."