The Ecology of Freedom

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

I have ordered the book but it is on pre-order so it isn't even available yet. So these few reviews are from prepublication copies.

The problem is that the view Graeber and Wengrow are attacking is NOT the consensual contemporary anthropological view. Sometimes to my own frustration anthropology consistently has pointed to the uniqueness of circumstances and cultures and has been loathe to find commonalities across cultures. Nobody in contemporary anthology ascribes to some fixed set of stages from hunter-gatherer to modern state.

Of course, there are unique circumstances and variabilities as well as commonalities.

Everywhere we look in the world where we have found large populations we have found some form hierarchical organization with inequality. In almost all cases, these political units have been also been expansionistic.

Go around the world.

1- Middle East,- Egypt, Babylonia, the Greek and Roman empires, the Persian Empire
2- India - Rajahs and Sultans
3- China - the Chinese Empire and Dynasties
4- Southeast Asia - Khmer empire
5- North America - Mississippian culture
6- Mesoamerica - Olmec, Maya, Aztec
7- South America - Inca (we don't know much about Amazonia)

Nobody is saying that these diverse cultures were the same or followed the same trajectory but there are commonalities between them.

Can you point to a single place where you have a large population and no hierarchical organization?

You can probably find cultures on the cusp that may have preserved some degree of equality and eschewed hierarchy.

The question for Graeber and Wengrow would be how and why is it that such similar forms of organization come about almost everywhere?

Unless they can explain that, then trying to find a different future by looking to the past is going to be problematic.

The question for Graeber and Wengrow would be how and why is it that such similar forms of organization come about almost everywhere?

My view is naive and simple: The structures you describe are more effective for expansion, conquest and domination, which does not mean that they were more civilized or more evolved in their worldview. It just means that, in the expansion of population and struggle over the scarcities that their own ways helped to produce, they are the victors until a systemic crash arrives, which is where we may be now.

My enthusiasm for the thrust of G&W is based on its challenges to an evolutionary model that asserts modern is necessarily higher than an earlier shamanic. Mark Vernon raises precisely this question in a more critical way in the above youtube review posted by Dana. He does not assert the absence of hierarchies but instead points out that spiritual hierarchies do not necessarily compel large material inequality. It's an intriguing point.

Returning to the Kogi example that we often argue about, they are civilized, practice some form of agriculture and have limited population expansion and ecologically destructive ways. Yes, they have a hierarchical priesthood organized around spiritual ways. It's not an effective structure for conquest but seems rather good at warning its "Younger Brothers" (us) about the foolishness of our ecological ways.

Interestingly, the dominating colonizing structure seem heavily allied with the materialist metaphysic.

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

One other thing. I'm fairly sympathetic to Graeber's direction. I just don't see how reinventing a past with so many counter examples to his argument helps. I think it would be better to understand how and why hierarchical societies emerge rather than arguing there were some exceptions to them. The best the exceptions do as to make it possible to envision something different. But the exceptions don't tell us how to get there.

I think that is going to come down to technology and, if there is to be a better future, I think that will come down to technology too. Dynamics could change significantly with:

1- Reduced population
2- Medical advances
3- Freedom from scarcity
4- Planetary worldview

I guess one can argue that G&W are reinventing the past, which may be what Mark Vernon is critiquing. However, at the level of the little I know, I receive their message more as an effort to renew a past sense of diverse possibility, wonderment and sacred enchantment. Of course, this does not tell us exactly how to get there. It just suggests that a more humble wayfinding and embrace of mystery may be superior to a more arrogant techno-fixing.

BTW, I wonder what your view is of the current demographic challenge in China? After leading the world's most draconian effort to reduce reproduction they are finding that there will not be enough future youth to be workers in support of their increasingly elderly population. Now they are having difficulty convincing folks to return to pro-natal ways. Will the answer be robots? Where will the resources come from? Will war be the solution? Will any techno-fix short of reducing cumulative material consumption work? And, thusly, we arrive back at the common theme of the axial religions, which were born out of times of reduced natural abundance (more scarcity): true wealth is not material.

[Lou Gold]

7- South America - Inca (we don't know much about Amazonia)

Can you point to a single place where you have a large population and no hierarchical organization?

You can probably find cultures on the cusp that may have preserved some degree of equality and eschewed hierarchy.

Minor quibble: The Inca capital Cuzco is in the upland Amazon Basin.

Yes, we know little of the societal structures in the central Amazonian lowland in Brazil where there is great evidence of terra preta agriculture, which renewed rather than depleted the soil. With little or no stone for remnant ruins it's hard to know much today. But we do know from the journals of Francisco de Orellana (affirmed by recent LIDAR sensing carbon in the soils) that there were high density large riverine settlements. This does not suggest the absence of hierarchy but, rather, that agriculture can be ecologically improving and not only depleting. It would seem that societies that discovered how to increase long-term abundance would have less ecological incentive for conquest but this is pure speculation. Just a possibility that is tantalizing as our world careens toward eco-crisis and competition over scarcities.

[Jim Cross]

Lou,

You've made a lot of points and I can't address them all.

The notion of Western culture as "more civilized" dates from the 19th and early 20th century. It persists in many people today. It was usually tied to racial views. Anthropology doesn't accept this view. The San bushman and the Harvard professor are equally civilized. There's no hierarchy or stages of civilization.

There are objective differences between cultures that can be measured: population size, modification of the environment, number of stone monuments, presence or absence of written language, etc.

Interestingly, the dominating colonizing structure seem heavily allied with the materialist metaphysic.

I'm not quite seeing that. Western civilization over nearly the last two thousand years was dominated by religion. Kings and queens claimed divine rights. These are same kings and queens that sent the people to colonize the New World. They may have been materialistic in the sense they were looking for wealth but I wouldn't consider them materialistic in the metaphysical sense. The state and the church were intimately involved and still are, even in the United States where we have attempted some separation. Much of the colonization and expansion, in fact, has been justified on religious grounds either requirement to convert the natives or a manifest destiny mentality. Outside Western civilization religion and politics have always been interwoven. The Mayan and Aztec kings presided over what were primarily religious rituals. Their powers were derived from the Gods.

If anything, I would say the opposite: an expansionistic structure is allied with religion; however, the examples of societies based purely on a materialistic metaphysics are few, maybe non-existent, so it would be hard to determine if a truly metaphysical materialistic society would be expansionistic or not.

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

You've made a lot of points and I can't address them all.

The notion of Western culture as "more civilized" dates from the 19th and early 20th century. It persists in many people today. It was usually tied to racial views. Anthropology doesn't accept this view. The San bushman and the Harvard professor are equally civilized. There's no hierarchy or stages of civilization.

There are objective differences between cultures that can be measured: population size, modification of the environment, number of stone monuments, presence or absence of written language, etc.

Interestingly, the dominating colonizing structure seem heavily allied with the materialist metaphysic.

I'm not quite seeing that. Western civilization over nearly the last two thousand years was dominated by religion. Kings and queens claimed divine rights. These are same kings and queens that sent the people to colonize the New World. They may have been materialistic in the sense they were looking for wealth but I wouldn't consider them materialistic in the metaphysical sense. The state and the church were intimately involved and still are, even in the United States where we have attempted some separation. Much of the colonization and expansion, in fact, has been justified on religious grounds either requirement to convert the natives or a manifest destiny mentality. Outside Western civilization religion and politics have always been interwoven. The Mayan and Aztec kings presided over what were primarily religious rituals. Their powers were derived from the Gods.

If anything, I would say the opposite: an expansionistic structure is allied with religion; however, the examples of societies based purely on a materialistic metaphysics are few, maybe non-existent, so it would be hard to determine if a truly metaphysical materialistic society would be expansionistic or not.

Yes, I misused the term materialist metaphysic. I meant to say that they were materialist in the sense of wealth and power.

[Lou Gold]

Lou,
The notion of Western culture as "more civilized" dates from the 19th and early 20th century. It persists in many people today. It was usually tied to racial views. Anthropology doesn't accept this view. The San bushman and the Harvard professor are equally civilized. There's no hierarchy or stages of civilization.

Perhaps we generally agree, although I think it goes back to earlier times and clearly the San bushman were never organized as a civilized state or in a societal/institutional structure commonly known as a civilization. Don't you really mean to say that the professor and the bushman are equally cultured?

I'm curious as to how you feel about so-called "stages of consciousness". Is the 'shamanic' lesser or lower than the 'modern'?
Again, I think of the Kogi and their "advice to the younger brother."

[Jim Cross]

Lou,
The notion of Western culture as "more civilized" dates from the 19th and early 20th century. It persists in many people today. It was usually tied to racial views. Anthropology doesn't accept this view. The San bushman and the Harvard professor are equally civilized. There's no hierarchy or stages of civilization.

Perhaps we generally agree, although I think it goes back to earlier times and clearly the San bushman were never organized as a civilized state or in a societal/institutional structure commonly known as a civilization. Don't you really mean to say that the professor and the bushman are equally cultured?

I'm curious as to how you feel about so-called "stages of consciousness". Is the 'shamanic' lesser or lower than the 'modern'?
Again, I think of the Kogi and their "advice to the younger brother."

It's a question of how you define civilization. If you define it as monuments and large political structures then the San wouldn't be "civilized" I don't think you define it that way but that is the measuring stick some people use.

The real question is about the dynamics that causes human to group into large hierarchical political structures. Why does it happen? I'm hoping the book when I get it will shed some light on that. Without understanding that, we don't really have a pathway to get beyond those structures. It's nice to know that there are/were people somewhere at some time who could organize themselves differently but so far those have mostly been small and somewhat isolated groups.

The Kogi are good example. I don't actually know much about them. Apparently they fled to the Sierra Nevada, when the Caribe invaded the lowlands. In other words, they have been isolated in a somewhat marginalized area. So they demonstrate the general point. They are probably a good model for what we are looking for in their relationships with each other and their environment. The problem is how to scale that up for millions or billions of people.


(BTW, my daughter's husband is from Barranquilla and I have visited the general region. The Lost City is on my bucket list.)

[Lou Gold]

The real question is about the dynamics that causes human to group into large hierarchical political structures. Why does it happen? I'm hoping the book when I get it will shed some light on that. Without understanding that, we don't really have a pathway to get beyond those structures. It's nice to know that there are/were people somewhere at some time who could organize themselves differently but so far those have mostly been small and somewhat isolated groups.

The Kogi are good example. I don't actually know much about them. Apparently they fled to the Sierra Nevada, when the Caribe invaded the lowlands. In other words, they have been isolated in a somewhat marginalized area. So they demonstrate the general point. They are probably a good model for what we are looking for in their relationships with each other and their environment. The problem is how to scale that up for millions or billions of people.

Yeah, I don't know what explanation(s) G&W might offer. My naive speculation is that there was an ecological adaptation occurring in the once abundant regions that are considered in the axial paradigm as having birthed 'civilizations'. It goes somewhat like this 1) nomadic hunter gatherers arrived in highly productive wetland regions and discovered they could settle down; 2) as their population increased and so did deforestation and associated climate change occurred they adapted with new scarcity strategies of agriculture, walled cities, central granaries, armies, etc; 3) the barbarians outside the walls also adapted by attacking the cities for easy pickings in a region that had lost its prior natural abundance; 4) the city-dwellers had lost the skills of nomadic hunter-gatherers and organized warfare rather that territorial raids or skirmishes became the norm and weaponized technologies were more and more favored.

My speculative model would have exceptions for peoples who chose to flee such as the Kogi or for peoples who built cities as great gathering centers. In these cases the emergent hierarchies would be more prone toward mutual respect, less material inequality, be less warlike and more likely to emphasize spiritual rather than material technologies.

Yes, the Kogi may be the exceptions but when scale becomes the problem (too many of one kind) the exceptions become precious. I'm reminded again of potato farming on the Andean slopes: I once read about indigenous potato cultivation in the Andes where there can often be unseasonal shifts in the climate which are hard to predict. The strategy was to plant vertical plots on the mountain slope, one of the selected cultivars and the next left to wild varieties, alternating across the slope. In the case of damaging unseasonal weather like an early frost there would be still be some wild varieties that survived, provided food and new cultivars and across time this could keep changing in an ongoing adaptive process.

[Jim Cross]

The real question is about the dynamics that causes human to group into large hierarchical political structures. Why does it happen? I'm hoping the book when I get it will shed some light on that. Without understanding that, we don't really have a pathway to get beyond those structures. It's nice to know that there are/were people somewhere at some time who could organize themselves differently but so far those have mostly been small and somewhat isolated groups.

The Kogi are good example. I don't actually know much about them. Apparently they fled to the Sierra Nevada, when the Caribe invaded the lowlands. In other words, they have been isolated in a somewhat marginalized area. So they demonstrate the general point. They are probably a good model for what we are looking for in their relationships with each other and their environment. The problem is how to scale that up for millions or billions of people.

Yeah, I don't know what explanation(s) G&W might offer. My naive speculation is that there was an ecological adaptation occurring in the once abundant regions that are considered in the axial paradigm as having birthed 'civilizations'. It goes somewhat like this 1) nomadic hunter gatherers arrived in highly productive wetland regions and discovered they could settle down; 2) as their population increased and so did deforestation and associated climate change occurred they adapted with new scarcity strategies of agriculture, walled cities, central granaries, armies, etc; 3) the barbarians outside the walls also adapted by attacking the cities for easy pickings in a region that had lost its prior natural abundance; 4) the city-dwellers had lost the skills of nomadic hunter-gatherers and organized warfare rather that territorial raids or skirmishes became the norm and weaponized technologies were more and more favored.

My speculative model would have exceptions for peoples who chose to flee such as the Kogi or for peoples who built cities as great gathering centers. In these cases the emergent hierarchies would be more prone toward mutual respect, less material inequality, be less warlike and more likely to emphasize spiritual rather than material technologies.

Yes, the Kogi may be the exceptions but when scale becomes the problem (too many of one kind) the exceptions become precious. I'm reminded again of potato farming on the Andean slopes: I once read about indigenous potato cultivation in the Andes where there can often be unseasonal shifts in the climate which are hard to predict. The strategy was to plant vertical plots on the mountain slope, one of the selected cultivars and the next left to wild varieties, alternating across the slope. In the case of damaging unseasonal weather like an early frost there would be still be some wild varieties that survived, provided food and new cultivars and across time this could keep changing in an ongoing adaptive process.

Your theories are about as good as others.

People do seem to have a tendency to aggregate in larger groups when the opportunity and circumstances permit. I think even the San during certain times in the year will gather in large groups. This is critical for genetic diversity and maintaining cultural continuity. Long range blood ties with others serve in backups for survival in bad times. Also, some believe that people began to gather in large groups for religious ceremonies that involved alcohol (from grain) and herbs before there was a established agriculture. That established agriculture emerged as a byproduct of seasonal religious celebrations. The ones hosting the celebrations become the religious and political elites in a new order over time.

In this scenario, religious celebrations (possibly with motive of communication with the dead) and those who control them could be the origin of hierarchical social structures. Religion is what draws people to live in larger groups and submit to rule. Larger groups, of course, also allow for broader ties to others; hence, more apparent security. I emphasize "apparent" since bad crop failures could undo any security gained during times of good harvests.

[Lou Gold]

This has been a nice dialog, Jim. Thank you.