Tuesday 1 February 2022

The Dawn of Everything

I've just finished reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. There is a lot to think about. The things that stick in my mind at the moment are the three basic freedoms that the two Davids derive from a study of societies at various times and in various places particularly, perhaps, the North American societies encountered by Europeans in the sixteenth / seventeenth centuries:

To walk away

To not obey (i.e. make your own choices and decisions)

To imagine new ways of doing things, in concert with other like-minded people

These three freedoms are underpinned by what you might call 'the reasonable expectation of care'

The two Davids ask the question "What went wrong?"

One of the things that went wrong was the subversion of 'the reasonable expectation of care' into something that might be called  'the divine right to be cared for'.

I need more time to think about this