First, some house keeping. I had my best month ever in September, in terms of "hits" to my blog. Over 8100, which exceeded my previous best by 1500. The vast, vast majority were from Singapore, as I have previously mentioned. So, again, please feel free anyone from that country to leave me a comment telling me why the interest.
As this will be a philosophical post, I checked some that I have written before. Here are links to four that I thought might generate some interest.
Most people, when asked to retell events which they recall as life changing, can come up with a few. Perhaps the day they met their spouse, or their wedding day. The birth of a child or their children. Maybe graduation from high school or college, the purchase of their first home, a special trip. For some, world events such as D-Day, 9/11, the assassination of a world leader, or world influener. Perhaps even the day of a particularly exciting sporting event.
I commented once, many years ago, that discovering Laphams Quarterly was one such day. Not that I can recall the actual day, but the fact that this wonderful magazine existed without me having the least inkling. It was life changing, in that in the intervening years I have read and been exposed to ideas, concepts, opinions, and facts (this is especially important) that have altered my perception of the world and its workings.
I recently began reading a book that is replicating this feeling. A book whose title I found in that wonderful 2021 Christmas gift from my daughter who filled a glass jar with 100 titles in order to provide me with new reading material.
"The Dawn of Everything; A New History of Humanity" by David Graeber and David Wengrow is the title.
At this point, I am about two thirds of the way through it. I find I can only read so much at a time so as to absorb its mind blowing words, but I also don't read it everyday because I don't want to finish it. As if, by putting it down, and away, I will lose the importance of its meaning over time, as I read other works, and as I am bombarded with the endless nonsense that we must wade through, nonsense that so easily passes for news, so easily is thrust upon us as if the world of data and information is experiencing a massive bout of diarrhea, with no end in sight.
It is hard to summarize what I have read so far. The 2 Davids, as I like to refer to them, are relentless in demolishing virtually everything I have been taught throughout my life.
For instance, there is a lot of interest in aliens right now. Not just as to whether they are with us in secret today, but how many times they have visited in the past and which of the unexplained man made wonders of ancient times must they have built. Since we can't seem to build a house or a road to last more than a few decades, how could pre-industrial man have built the pyramids, etc, which have lasted thousands of years? Must have been aliens!
Now, the 2 Davids don't necessarily address this phenomenon, at least not yet, as again, I still have many pages to go. But what they do address is the idea that men who lived thousands of years ago couldn't have accomplished these tasks alone. That they weren't smart enough, or didn't have the right tools, or the right math.
And it isn't just the building of great architectural structures that they address, but philosophical concepts of equality, social structures, gender relations, government, justice and fairness.
In other words, this book takes on the entire sphere of propaganda that we have been taught via all our current institutions, religious, political, national, social, cultural, etc, and turns them all on their proverbial heads.
But don't get me wrong. I don't view the author's purpose in a negative light. They are not anarchists trying to upend our very existence, or back to nature freaks who think we should go back to living in caves. I view them more as educators trying to explain that its the conclusions that we have been taught about history, especially humanity's progression from hunter gatherers to farmers and city dwellers, that is off base. And, that this progression should be considered with less of a value judgement (ancient men were less smart, more barbaric and violent, not capable of complex thoughts about life, for instance) and certainly not as a function of inevitable evolution where today's version of man is "better" than previous ones.
Or not worse for that matter. Just different.
We have been indoctrinated (a loaded word in today's 24 hour news cycle) to believe all sorts of "facts" about how men lived before the miracle of modern technologies, how men interacted with each other, how the genders valued each other. But regardless of the teacher (religious, political, cultural, national), we are always taught that we are evolving towards a more egalitarian existence. That we are becoming more enlightened in terms of recognizing the value of diversity in man, as well as the environment.
Well perhaps that is too strong, but that certainly, we are more kind to each other than our ancestors of 10,000 years ago were to each other. That concepts like democracy and freedom and equality didn't exist before the Europeans crossed the oceans to "civilize" the barbarians they "discovered".
Graeber and Wengrow address these kind of conclusions, and attempt (successfully, so far, for me) to provide some different conclusions that fit the facts just as well, even better in some instances.
Pick up the book, if you can. I will share more thoughts about it when I have finished.
Singapore is a popular place for script kiddies. It's probably a general attack on Blogger.
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