Conor here: A useful reminder. Although I’m unsure how much has to do with Western values and culture Neuberger cites as opposed to how a system that rewards sociopaths will ultimately warp culture and values. Nowadays there are certainly non-Western societies that are just as rapacious as those in the West.
There are also still small communities not organized around capitalism, such as Ashaninka villages in Peru that practice real direct democracy on a smaller, manageable scale and live in reciprocity with the environment. Long ago this used to be commonplace, but I’d have to disagree with Neuberger’s conclusion that we could have this the minute we want to. The rich that will never surrender their ill-gotten wealth and power and a whole lot of people who want that wealth for themselves. Even countries that try to experiment with new modes new modes of production, distribution, and reproduction are targeted relentlessly and ruthlessly by the capitalist gangsters. Best to have a plan for that.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
The spread of the ancient and warlike Indo-Europeans (source)
“Is modern capitalist man the inevitable end of social evolution? Many believe it is. Or is our current culture merely a choice, and a bad one, a choice that somehow went global?”
—Yours truly, here
The questions about capitalism that are more and more being asked — Is it inevitable? Is it the cause of our grief? Are there really alternatives? — are related to the questions we’ve been exploring in our “Dawn of Everything” and “Western hegemony” series.
Capitalists would have us believe that the forward march of what they call “civilization” is linear; it’s not a flowering bush with a great many ends, but a single-stemmed rose topped by what we experience as rapacious capitalism, or some other flavor of that — control for the few, exploitation for everyone else.
There’s no avoiding capitalist state organization, according to them, and there’s nothing further ahead — no Star Trek utopian world where greed disappears, social hierarchy is flatter and money’s an artifact of a less evolved time. That’s fantasy, they say; freedom means freedom to chase money and food, or starve.
And yet…
The West Is Not the World
And yet, while the West, overrun and ruled by warlike Indo-Europeans since pre-literate days, lived lives organized like this…
Europe in 1500 (source)
…and further east, organized like this…
The Ottoman Empire and its neighbors, the Safavid Empire and the kingdoms and empires of Europe (source)
…not all of the world followed suit.
Life in Non-Hierarchical America
If states and empires, exploitation and greed, rigid social hierarchy and exploitation of labor are the inevitable endpoint of “evolving” toward “civilization,” what accounts for this? How did it remain stable?
Major language groups in pre-invasion North America (source)
Note: These are language groups, not nations.
Yes, some of these places held kingdoms — the Aztec, the Mayan — but most did not. Most held people who lived in villages and tribes, with flat social hierarchies, no enforced labor, no communities of men and women starved for food while those around them ate well and picked at their bones.
Can you imagine Original Americans allowing most to die while a few hoarded all the food? The hoarding itself would have been thought a crime, and punished severely.
When Original Americans (those we call “Indians”) encountered Europeans, they were appalled at the way they lived. For example, here’s how whites treated whites along the Oregon Trail (transcribed by the author from an Oregon Trail museum display):
Many travelers expressed mixed feelings about the forts [that dotted the trail]. They were eager to see them, but complained about what they found. The prices were too high, the inhabitants too savage [the museum’s language], and their appearance disappointing.
Chester Ingersoll wrote in 1847 that Fort Hall was “the worst place ever for emigrants that we have seen — they are almost destitute of honesty or human feelings.”
In contrast, when the “emigrant” whites, those in the wagon trains, encountered Original Americans, they found help. This is another transcription from a museum display about life on the Oregon Trail:
The First Ones
Cayuse. Walla Walla. Nez Perce. People who have lived for centuries in a land you’ve never seen before. Superstition and fear [of Original Americans by the emigrants] gradually fade as the Indians offer guidance for the lost, horses for the hobbling, and food for the hungry.
Tonight, after trading with a Cayuse fisherman, you’ll enjoy fresh salmon. The cost? Two fishhooks and a red flannel shirt.
The difference between the two in treatment of others? Culture. Ways of living. Values. The culture of the West as displayed by those in the fort. The culture of non-Western Americans as displayed by their welcome. Life in the 1500s on two different continents.
Bottom Line
“Civilization” and “freedom” as we know it, we in the father-god West, was a choice by our conquering ancestors, an inherited culture, just one way to live. There were and are other ways, with much different values.
Life doesn’t evolve on a line from “savage” to “civilized.” That’s a myth of the West, almost its founding myth. What we call “civilization” is actually savage, and others have chosen differently.
As can we, the minute we want to.
Thanks for this Connor. I think that you’re right about the wealthy and the wanna-be’s wanting to keep the status quo. The 90% are going to have to become very threatening before anything like a New Deal could happen again. Such a shame, really, very little of the ultra wealthy lifestyle would need to change change in order for the rest to flourish.
A favourite anecdote from a Canadian history course I took in university … the Hudson Bay folks offered the indigenous peoples more in return for beaver belts assuming the hunters would bring more pelts the following season. Much to their surprise the hunters the fewer pelts – they could work less hard to get what they needed.
I read something about a study by economists related to New york taxi drivers. Basically it turned out most would quit working once they made a certain amount. If it was busy they’d make that quicker and then go home or do whatever. The way the study author looked at this was as if they were an alien species. They just could not comprehend why they didn’t work for longer during busy times. They were incapable of understanding that not everyone is interested in grabbing every dollar they can.
Interesting right? When I first decided to become a librarian I wasn’t really thinking about future earnings or wealth except beyond assuming that having my MLS when I graduated seemed a much more sure way to a job than a Masters in history. As I matured and learned more about the world I became content with my government wage and guaranteed pension(well, as much as anything can be guaranteed these days). Seeing friends and neighbours strive for more and more and working crazy long hours, helping the owners and shareholders of the companies they worked for get richer never made any sense to me. Except for some busy times, I rarely worked more than 40 hours per week and had plenty of vacation time. We couldn’t afford all the toys of western affluence but luckily we didn’t want them. I have a friend whose daughter-in-law is not much interested in a high paying fast track career (she has dabbled in acting and is currently working on a yoga teaching certificate) – it drives my high-achieving, very driven friend crazy that her DIL is not more ambitious, that she doesn’t want more from life. I just shrug my shoulders and say we’re all different. I wonder what makes some of us tick one way and some of us another?
Those of you who have seen the magnificent documentary on Japanese sushi maker, “Jiro dreams of Sushi”, would recall the consternation of the interviewer when he realizes that Jiro does not want to expand into Las Vegas, Paris, New York, etc., that he is happy with the very decent earnings he’s making, but does not want to be a multimillionaire…. Even stranger to western sensibilities, bludgeoned into a stupor by market propaganda, was the assertion of the high-end rice supplier who refuses the offer by the Hyatt hotel chain to buy his entire stock, probably on very good terms, because he does not believe that they would be able to cook his rice the way it deserved…Japan, alone perhaps among developed countries, amazes one with the decent outcomes generated by its non-market institutions
It should be born in mind that that map of Europe in 1500 is in reality a “snapshot” that does not reflect the forces at work to produce the situation on the ground. Here is a video showing what I mean-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjWVFZ5e_vo (10:59 mins)
Thanks for this. To me, it’s useful to put current events into historic context- borders change, polities change, but life goes on!
These borders did not change without ‘tension’. As members of the current Ukraine army is discovering, not all “life goes on!”.
Life never goes on for everyone. It does go on tho’…….I feel sorry for the Ukrainians “led down the primrose path” to be the bleeding edge of the empire.
Ultimately it is not very reflective of the actual situation on the ground.
I am speaking from a very narrow perspective, of course.
But as a generality, the map doesn’t handle well the issue of vasality or actual administrative control.
For instance, in 1526, Hungarian Army was defeated, the king killed on the batelfied at Mohacs. 1/3 of Hungarian kingdom was taken by Habsburgs, 1/3 by Ottomans under dierct administration under a pasha, with mosques built over the place, and 1/3 (Transylvania, which always had autonomy, wit a Diet and a voievod of sorts) becoming vassal to the Turks.
These differences are only suggested by the persistence of names. I.e. the Romanian Principalities are always under this or that seniorage. But that is the claim that others had on those places and meant nothing to the locals, other than repeatedly the sovereign, be it Hungarian, Pole, or Turk, was beaten back when actually trying to impose their rule on that piece of land.
Reminds me of the map of US and its unified military comands across the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_combatant_command#Command_authority
It makes one think that the US controls the entire world, eh?! We all know that that is not the case.
Europe in 1500 is the world map that Machiavelli knew before history happened. No one could believe it could happen until it actually happened.
The “warlike indo-Europeans” spreading all across Eurasia in 2000 BC is a meme invented by Maria Gimbutis under the rubric “Kurgan Culture “. It’s not supported by either archaeological or linguistic evidence. The indo European languages are more ancient than this academic comic book version and their spread much earlier, deep in the Neolithic. They were farmers- when they got to the Orkneys in the mid-late Neolithic, for example, they built their houses by digging into the shell middens of the existing inhabitants. Skara Brae – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae
Our current predatory society is not uniquely indo- European and of much more recent formation. In Scotland the defeat of the last feudal society in Europe, the Highland Scots or Caledonians in the 18th century was the victory of this predatory capitalism over what was essentially a socialistic society, which was dispersed and incorporated into UK inc. When Lady Butte was co-opted by the victors and replaced her tenants with sheep, she cleared villages that had been continuously inhabited for over 5,000 years. With common ownership of land – but each family was responsible for their assigned plots, responsibility for which was rotated among the families so no one had the best or worst plot for long. Grazing land was in common.
The predatory capitalism we live under is récent and to assign it to some warlike mythological indo Europeans seems to me to be racist. And rather detracts from the author’s thesis – yes, there are better ways to live in society that are more just and equal. And less stressful and diseased. How we get back there is the main problem. Perhaps we should study the social organization of the ancient Celts (and probably most long-lived peasant societies) for clues. The leaders and people lived in a framework of mutual obligation- does Peter Thiel think he has any obligation to anyone but himself and accumulating wealth? To me this is the nub of the problem- no social obligations means no society. Dog eat dog. We can do better as we have in the past.
It is my understanding that the Indo-European migrations, alternatively termed the Yamnaya expansion, was facilitated by novel technical advances such as domestication of the horse and other draft animals, and their invention of wheeled carts. I’ve read that genetic evidence strongly suggests coercive force was involved in that they genetically replaced the males in areas to which they migrated. Or perhaps having a fine set of wheels made them simply irresistible to the womenfolk. In any event, attributing a particularly warlike nature to this group ignores the fact that there are any number examples of this proclivity among human groups across the globe. For as Sartre simply and succinctly put it: “human groupings encounter one another in fields of scarcity”, either real or imagined, I would add. The latter variety being perhaps the more dangerous at this historical juncture.
Yes – more so a Bronze Age phenomenon. People, mostly men, spread into new areas seeking tin and copper and carrying the bronze technology. As such they were a technological elite who had their pick of women….the result in Europe is that female lineages are more diverse and older and male lineages are less diverse and newer. There are parts of Ireland where 40% plus of men have a common ancestor from the Bronze Age or Iron Age.
I liked the general idea of this post but also your reply. I agree that blaming too much on proto-Indo-Europeans, especially European capitalism and colonialism, seems like a big stretch. As a total amateur anthropologist, I was under the impression the Kurgan hypothesis was still the leading one so it’s really neat to get a contrarian take.
From the other end, it might be a mistake to assume the Native Americans never had any kind of hierarchy or extensive states. There’s a line of thought that many of the native societies Europeans encountered in mainland North America were remnants of an earlier collapsed system (probably overlapping the Hopewell and Mississippian archaeological cultures). Even if there’s an argument the monumental works (earthen mounds) and large trade networks could be coordinated without a state, there were other things that seem to imply a elite (especially Mesoamerican imports like the ball-game and other cultural markers).
More generally, I think it’s a major analytical mistake to identify a civilization tightly with language. Still agree with the overall thrust of this article though, that even if deep history keeps us locked into certain social structures, we shouldn’t give up on imagining new ones and changing.
Yes. We make the future- as Terence Mckenna said “the future is already here it’s just not evenly distributed “ . I’m optimistic.
In the Romanian principalities, such organization was also common until 1600. Because of the wars against the Ottomans, the then ruler of Wallachia (for short time of Moldavia and Transylvania as well), to get the support of bigger landlords, decreed the tying of peasants to the land and depriving them of any rights.
Ultimately he lost everything and his life, while the boyars got more land and free labour.
The Slavic/Russian communities had a similar system of organization, and David Graeber spends time describing some archeological sites, 7000 years old in present day Ukraine that show an agricultural society (huge communities of many thousands) that was very equalitarian.
“The Great Transformation” – by Karl Polanyi describes that shift from basically a pre-industrial society predicated on reciprocity and social relationships to the invention, and then enforcement, of price determining markets, and the monetarisation / commodification of both land and labour.
“Can you imagine Original Americans allowing most to die while a few hoarded all the food? The hoarding itself would have been thought a crime, and punished severely.”
Matt Stoller, in his latest Substack article, addresses the same issue: “The new moral challenge we have as a society is, in a sense, a much older one. We have to get back to seeing the vices laid out in most ancient religious traditions – gambling, speculation, greed, and a disdain for those who work for a living. ”
Stoller points out that we have, in the past decades, changed our views on a number of ‘moral’ issues: slavery, gay marriage, sexual harassment in the workplace. So, why cannot we come to view the accumulation of massive amounts of money, and the abject impoverishment (and imprisonment) of an increasingly large segment of society, as evil.
The vices have been rebranded into virtues in the enlightened nomenclature of capitalist values:
Gambling and speculation = risk appetite
Greed = Boundless ambition
Disdain for the downtrodden and working class = Meritocracy and individualism
Add the constant fawning over billionaires and so-called “self-made” people and you start to see how deeply embedded the programming around wealth and entitlement is, and how its grip on pop culture is solidifying, not loosening. Now that AI is apparently a $10 trillion dollar opportunity it’s only a matter of time before some enterprising betting house starts taking bets on who the world’s first trillionaire is going to be. The world, led by the west, is turning into real life Hunger Games where the top 1% live lives of incredible opulence while the rest die slow, miserable deaths.
Yes. Back in the day, religion was bigly into entertainment with festivals and cathedrals and witch hunts. Today’s media and other education systems are very similar.
1 Timothy 6 said “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil”, but it’s a phrase that is rarely heard in church (perhaps it has been used, slightly altered, as a selling point for indulgences). So unlike Stoller, I hesitate to suggest that a religious perspective will eradicate any kind of evil.
IMHO material equality will most effectively promote peace and hamony, but the masses won’t dare crticize a rich man until they’re laid off. Still, there’s heavily ironic hope we’re getting there…
“There are also still SMALL* communities not organized around capitalism, such as Ashaninka villages in Peru that practice real direct democracy on a smaller, manageable scale and live in reciprocity with the environment.” *EMPHASIS MINE
“Long ago this used to be commonplace“ ( the linked read also highlights size).
It may have been Jared Diamond (and anthropologists in general) who point out that size matters. Studies show that human groups more than about 60 in size lose the ability to shame selfish and sociopathic members. As alluded to above still today small groups effectively use shame to root out the darker angels of our nature.
(Not sure if we’re allowed long posts here; if not, apologies. Just wanted to share this little sob story which I’ve found in socmed today and might be a little reflection of what has become of our so-called Western way of life).
“My Boys Think We’re Camping—But They Don’t Know We’re Homeless”
They’re still asleep right now. All three of them, piled together under that thin blue blanket like it’s the coziest thing in the world. I watch their chests rise and fall and pretend—for just a second—that this is a vacation.
We pitched the tent behind a rest stop just past the county line. Technically not allowed, but it’s quiet, and the security guy gave me a look yesterday that said he wasn’t gonna kick us out. Not yet.
I told the boys we were going camping. “Just us guys,” I said, like it was an adventure. Like I hadn’t sold my wedding ring three days earlier just to afford gas and peanut butter.
The thing is… they’re too little to know the difference. They think sleeping on air mattresses and eating cereal from paper cups is fun. They think I’m brave. Like I’ve got some kind of plan.
But truth is, I’ve been calling every shelter from here to Roseville and no one has a spot for four. The last place said maybe Tuesday. Maybe.
Their mom left six weeks ago. She said she was going to her sister’s. Left a note and half a bottle of Advil on the counter. I haven’t heard from her since.
I’ve been holding it together, barely. Washing up at gas stations. Making up stories. Keeping bedtime routines. Tucking them in like everything’s okay.
But last night… my middle one, Micah, mumbled something in his sleep. Said, “Daddy, I like this better than the motel.”
And that just about broke me.
Because he was right. And because I know tonight might be the last night I can pull this off.
Right after they wake up, I’ve got to tell them something. Something I’ve been dreading.
And just as I started unzipping the tent—
Micah stirred. “Daddy?” he whispered, rubbing his eyes. “Can we go see the ducks again?”
He meant the ones at the pond near the rest stop. We’d gone the night before and he’d laughed harder than I’d heard in weeks. I forced a smile.
“Yeah, buddy. As soon as your brothers are up.”
By the time we packed up our few things and brushed teeth at the sink behind the building, the sun was already baking the grass. My youngest, Toby, held my hand and hummed quietly, while my oldest, Caleb, kicked rocks and asked if we’d go hiking today.
I was just about to tell them we couldn’t stay another night when I saw her.
A woman, maybe late sixties, was walking toward us with a paper bag in one hand and a giant thermos in the other. She wore a worn-out flannel shirt and had a long braid down her back. I figured she was going to ask if we were okay—or worse, tell us to move on.
Instead, she smiled and held out the bag.
“Morning,” she said. “You boys want some breakfast?”
The boys lit up before I could answer. Inside the bag were warm biscuits and boiled eggs, and the thermos held hot cocoa. Not coffee—cocoa. For them.
“I’m Jean,” she said, sitting down on the curb with us. “I seen you out here a couple nights now.”
I nodded, unsure what to say. I didn’t want pity. But her face didn’t show pity. Just… kindness.
“Used to be in a tough spot myself,” she added, like she could read my thoughts. “Wasn’t camping though. Slept in a church van for two months with my daughter back in ‘99.”
I blinked. “Really?”
“Yep. People passed us by like we were invisible. Figured I wouldn’t do the same.”
I didn’t know what came over me, but I told her the truth. About the motel. About the mom. About the shelters saying “maybe.”
She just listened, nodding slowly.
Then she said something I didn’t expect: “Come with me. I know a place.”
I hesitated. “Is it a shelter?”
“Nope,” she said. “It’s better.”
We followed her old sedan down a long gravel road, my hands gripping the wheel, heart pounding. I kept looking back at the boys, who were laughing at something Toby said, completely unaware we were chasing a miracle.
We pulled up to what looked like a farm. Fenced in, big red barn, a small white house, a couple goats in the yard. A sign on the gate read: The Second Wind Project.
Jean explained on the porch. It was a community—run by volunteers—offering short-term stays to families in crisis. No government red tape. No ten-page forms. Just people helping people.
“You’ll get a roof, some food, and time to get your feet under you,” she said.
I swallowed hard. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” she said. “Just gotta help out a bit. Feed the animals. Clean up. Maybe build something if you can.”
That night, we slept in a real bed. All four of us in one room, but with walls and light and a fan that hummed soft and steady. I tucked the boys in and sat on the floor and cried like a child.
The next week, I chopped wood, fixed a fence, and learned how to milk a goat. The boys made friends with another family staying there—a single mom with twin girls. They chased chickens, picked wild berries, and learned to say “thank you” with every meal.
One night, I sat with Jean on the porch. “How did you find this place?” I asked.
She smiled. “I didn’t. I built it. Started small. I was a nurse, had a little land left by my grandma. Decided I wanted to be someone’s signpost instead of just their memory.”
Her words stuck with me.
Two weeks turned into a month. By then, I’d saved up a little from doing odd jobs around town. A mechanic shop let me shadow their guys, and one day the owner, a wiry man named Frank, handed me a paycheck and said, “Come back Monday if you want more.”
We stayed at the farm for six more weeks. By then, I had a steady part-time job, enough to rent a tiny duplex on the edge of town. The rent was cheap because the floor slanted and the pipes groaned at night, but it was ours.
We moved in the day before school started.
The boys never asked why we left the motel or why we stayed in a tent. They just kept calling it “the adventure.” To this day, Micah tells people we lived on a farm and helped build a fence with goats watching.
But something happened three months after we moved.
One Sunday morning, I found an envelope tucked under the doormat. No name. Just Thank you written on the front.
Inside was a picture—an old one—of Jean, young, holding a baby on her hip, standing in front of the same barn. Behind it, a note in blocky handwriting:
“What you gave my mom, she gave to you. Please pay it forward when you can.”
I asked around, but no one knew who left it. Jean didn’t answer her phone anymore. When I drove back to the farm, it was empty. A handwritten sign hung on the gate: Resting Now. Help Someone Else. So that’s what I did.
I started picking up groceries for the older lady down the street. I fixed my neighbor’s leaky sink. I gave my old tent to a man who lost his job and didn’t know where to go.
One night, a guy knocked on our door—looked scared, had two little kids clinging to him. Said someone at the food pantry told him I might know a place.
I didn’t hesitate.
I made cocoa.
Let them sleep in our living room for the night.
That was the start of something new. I talked to the mechanic shop, and Frank agreed to take him on, same way he did for me. I called a few friends. Got them furniture, clothes, shoes for the kids.
And slowly… our home became someone else’s second wind.
I used to think rock bottom was the end.
Now I know, for some people, it’s the start.
We were never just camping.
But somehow, in losing everything, we found more than I could’ve imagined.
And every time I tuck my boys in now, I still hear Micah’s words.
“Daddy, I like this better.”
So do I, buddy. So do I.
Sometimes, the lowest place you land is exactly where you’re meant to grow.
If this story moved you even a little, please share it with someone who needs hope. You never know who’s camping tonight.”
– Someone’s Daddy
A truly beautiful story.
Many hunter-gatherer/aboriginal societies were involved in constant warfare with rival tribes over hunting territory, resources, women, etc. and frequently took captives as prisoners to serve as slaves or war brides. The native American tribes often had intercine conflicts throughout their entire history and were also making and breaking war alliances with other tribes to help defeat, subjugate, or wipe out their perceived tribal enemies.
The Nez Perce had a semi-rigid social hierarchy with slaves on the bottom and their version of “aristocrats” on top. The Comanche were well known for their constant attacks on surrounding tribes long before they ever encountered the Europeans.
I am not saying that any of this was a “good” thing, just that war and greed are hardly unique to either European civilization or modern societies. People have always been people ever since the dawn of time, for good or for ill, and I do not think that a lot of past societies were any better than the ones we see now as they had their own social issues that they had to contend with.
I highly suggest the book, War Before Civilization by Lawrence H. Keely for those who are interested.
I agree, we too easily fall into comparing all the travails of our current society with the wonderfulness of life in the societies of “noble savages” or “exotic” civilizations. But the reality is that cruelty and exploitation feature in many different societies throughout history and across the globe. For instance, Abraham Lincoln said, “If slavery is not evil, nothing is evil.” But slavery, which is evil, was a feature of innumerable societies, including in the Americas before Columbus, in Africa, and in Asia, not just an invention of those dastardly Europeans. Evil is in the human heart and has to be resisted everywhere. Perhaps in some smaller societies with more space to roam in, it was easier to offer resistance. In densely populated societies with more advanced technology and hierarchical organization, it seems more difficult. The problem is that anything that makes society more efficient and effective makes it efficient and effective for bad actors to perpetrate all the wrong ends, unless some strong safeguards are put in place and rigorously enforced from the beginning. And we generally lack the foresight to do so and are misled by techno-optimism and so ignore the possible misuses of the latest innovation. (Think of how the internet developed.) Early capitalism was conceived as an improvement over the rentierism of landlords and crown-granted monopolies, but it soon was directed to oppressive ends. After a very active fight to make it less oppressive, it managed less than three generations before the bad actors got fully back in the saddle and drove it to our current sorry state. We don’t even disguise that we consider the Seven Deadly Sins as our basic set of instruction for how to live now. It is certainly not the only way to live or the inevitable result of Progress, but it seems like a dead end that may have to lead to crash/collapse before enough people can embark on a more moral way of living.
There is going to come a time when LLMs and other technologies have eliminated enough jobs that people will consider these ideas more seriously. When all the marketing/communications positions, all the benefits of “who you know”, all the “fake it till you make it” have dried up and blown away, we’ll start to ask questions about what to do. By then it will be far too late.
I look at friends and family who can’t swing a hammer, can’t dress meat, can’t forage, can’t treat themselves for simple ailments, don’t have additional food on hand, don’t have redundant systems in place, and I wonder, what the family blog are they thinking? Isn’t it obvious that between Gaza-fication of the undesirables and economic devastation pushed down from on high, things are going to get much worse?
I hope we’re able to reconsider our humanity sooner rather than later.
…, what the family blog are they thinking?
They think that they are exceptional, and that bad things happen to other people that are less special, because they deserved it. They won’t be able to reconsider their humanity until they hit the rock bottom, ’cause then they really might know what it’s like to sing the blues (as a song says).
P.S. Judging by the hammer swinging skills, Rishi Sunak might be your friend or family member. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xo_KUpWJh4
I think mankind has always been a very resource-hungry race.
Is it in our genes? I don’t know. But anthropologists still refer to
cro-magnon man as ‘anatomically modern humans.’ A few tens of thousands of years have not been sufficient for further evolution to
have taken place. IMHO, that is the crux of the ‘problem’ with our
behavior today
The idea that North American Amerind cultures were all nonhierarchal, or most of them were, sounds dubious to me. First, we are talking about dozens, or hundreds, of different cultures and languages, which all get homogenized into one “Original Americans” group. Second, we actually don’t know much about their pre-contact societies. Third and most importantly, the claim is false for at least some of the cultures that we do have some knowledge of, because we know that they had slaves, obtained by raiding other peoples, which sounds pretty hierarchal to me. And given a situation of food shortage the slaves starved before the people who had enslaved them.
Also, “Indo-European” is not synonymous with “Western,” as you can see by the “Indo” part. Which should actually be “Indo-Iranian.”
The Iroquois had basically an empire and were in a constant state of war, motivated by their peculiar beliefs about the nature of death.
This “let’s project modern Western values onto pre-Columbian civilization” thing (which is what it is) is not going to work, because… surprise! They are modern Western values.And you know that if you have even the most superficial knowledge of Amerind history, which is marked by constant warfare (in some cases, apparently for purposes of religiously-motivated cannibalism,as in the aforementioned Iroquois case).
In contrast to the Iroquois who were warlike, most Native Americans in proto-California were fairly peaceful, it isn’t a one tribe fits all deal.
Absolutely; like I said in a previous comment, this essay amalgamates dozens of different societies into a single “Original Americans” category. Which is opposed to the “Indo-Europeans/Western society” category, which is perhaps even more totalizing, since it excises Indians and Iranians, and Eastern Europeans for that matter.
Thanks for a stimulating article, Conor. And thanks to the Commentariat for a very interesting thread.
I’ll just offer another recommendation of Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, a novel in dialogue form about worldview, myth, Takers and Leavers. It will help reveal your own worldview as it exposes you to the non-Western Leaver culture whose attitudes some commenters have already mentioned.
Ishmael is a short, very readable book, but if you want an introduction, Tom Murphy of “Do the Math” did a chapter by chapter review of it.
‘Western life’ is the wrong term–all kinds of people living all kinds of alternatives in the west, and capitalism is a global system, but yes!