In part 9 of 13 discussions with Claude about the parables of the two valleys, the topic is David Graeber (and Wenrow's) evolution of domination.
👉https://philosophics.blog/2026/02/28/comrade-claude-9-david-graeber/?utm_source=masto
As usual, with a touch of Foucault.
#philosophy #blog #podcast #graeber #critique #power # ##subjugation #contracts #Locke #modernity #freedom #control
#graeber
I think about this David #Graeber quote a lot:
> [S]tructural inequality—what I've been calling structural violence—invariably creates highly lopsided structures of the imagination. Since […] imagination tends to bring with it sympathy, the result is that victims of structural violence tend to care about its beneficiaries far more than those beneficiaries care about them. This might well be, after the violence itself, the single most powerful force preserving such relations.
Came across this in a post about #SolarPunk a few weeks ago (post may be gone)... Anyhow, I've been reading #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow's book, "The Dawn of Everything," and thought the question posited by #Graeber was relevant to #SolarPunkSunday...
Are You An #Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
"Every time you treat another human with consideration and respect, you are being an anarchist. Every time you work out your differences with others by coming to reasonable compromise, listening to what everyone has to say rather than letting one person decide for everyone else, you are being an anarchist. Every time you have the opportunity to force someone to do something, but decide to appeal to their sense of reason or justice instead, you are being an anarchist. The same goes for every time you share something with a friend, or decide who is going to do the dishes, or do anything at all with an eye to fairness"
David Graeber, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World, p 243, published 2009
"Chances are you have already heard something about who anarchists are and what they are supposed to believe. Chances are almost everything you have heard is nonsense. Many people seem to think that anarchists are proponents of violence, chaos, and destruction, that they are against all forms of order and organization, or that they are crazed nihilists who just want to blow everything up. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. But it’s one that the rich and powerful have always found extremely dangerous.
At their very simplest, anarchist beliefs turn on to two elementary assumptions. The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. The second is that power corrupts. Most of all, anarchism is just a matter of having the courage to take the simple principles of common decency that we all live by, and to follow them through to their logical conclusions. Odd though this may seem, in most important ways you are probably already an anarchist — you just don’t realize it.
Let’s start by taking a few examples from everyday life."
Read more:
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-maysurprise-you/
#SolarPunkSunday #BuildingCommunity #BuildingResilience #NoKings #NoRulers #Inequality #PowerCorrupts
Globalinfo: **Hoe Deerhoof geïnspireerd werd door de ideeën van David Graeber**
https://www.globalinfo.nl/recensies-enzo/hoe-deerhoof-geinspireerd-werd-door-de-ideeen-van-david-graeber/
De experimentele muziekband Deerhoof komt op tournee. Op de website van de ons veel te vroeg ontvallen anarchistische antropoloog David Graeber wordt gewezen op het…
#Recensiesenzo #Anarchisme #Antropologie #Cultuur #Graeber #Kunst #Muziek
@BlumeEvolution Vgl. Keynes: Er hatte vor rund 80 Jahren prognostiziert, dass im 21. Jhdt. nur 20% der Werktätigen reichen würden, um alle gut zu versorgen. Aus welchen Gründen trat dies nicht ein? David #Graeber: #Bullshitjobs, wir beschäftigen zu viele "Schläger", Klinkenputzer. Lakaien, Kesselflicker, Unternehmensberater ... Eine Transformation hin zu post-kapitalistischen Wirtschaften erscheint mir über kurz oder lang unumgänglich, wenn nicht alles zusammen brechen soll.
J'ai rêvé, cette nuit, que j'étais avec David #GRAEBER à Paris. Oui, à chacun ses idoles. Seulement, à chaque endroit où nous allions, il se se faisait frapper. J'avais beau essayer de le défendre, je n'y arrivais pas.
Je crois que ce rêve représente mes convictions qui se font fracasser tous les jours. À chaque fois qu'il fait froid, je me dis qu'il y a des gens, même des enfants, qui sont sans abri.
À chaque fois, je pense aux génocides qui ont lieu et mesure mon horrible impuissance. Depuis, quelques temps mon militantisme consiste à convaincre des gens de l'inverse de ce qu'ils entendent à la télévision. (1/2) #NouvelleAnnee #2026
@pisipapi_ btw that #quote is from The Dawn Of Everything by #Graeber and Wengrow, I think paraphrasing another philosopher
A theme that keeps returning in my political and philosophical reading and thinking is the lack of #imagination.
I just read an essay about Günther Anders, a philosopher who wrote about living in an age where our capacity to imagine thing is dwarfed by our capacity to act. For exemple: we can't imagine tackling climate change because it's so big, but at the same time, we are causing it.
There's a link here with #Graeber his critique of #neoliberalism as a system to suppress imagination. Any attempt to go beyond the limits it constrains us in, people are ridiculed (at best) or violently repressed. There Is No Alternative - by force if necessary.
Original affluent society: Anthropologist's view that hunter-gatherer societies were affluent, that people had everything they needed to live well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
#huntergatherer #anthropology #scarcity #society #history #sahlins #graeber #+
"#DavidGraeber was the #anthropologist who re-framed economics by showing that its most basic assumptions were myths.
Where conventional economists traced money to barter and exchange, #Graeber traced it to trust and relationships. He argued that the origins of money lay not in #markets but in #morality: in obligations, promises, and the human capacity for cooperation."
#TheDawnofEverything”: David #Wengrow & the Late David #Graeber On a New History of #Humanity #yt
@matiu_bidule #graeber is so duly missed 😭 much like #hitchens
"Companies like CNN or the Associated Press, they argue, are capitalist firms; it would be utterly naïve to imagine they would been willing to provide a friendly venue for anyone actively opposed to capitalism—let alone to carry anti-capitalist messages to the public." from https://www.davidgraeber.org/wp-content/uploads/2007-On-the-phenomenology-of-giant-puppets.pdf
Surely he read the prescient words of Walter Lippmann!
"Sandel deutet den Populismus als eine Reaktion auf die technokratische Politik der Mitte-Links-Demokraten, denen es an Wertschätzung für die Arbeiter gefehlt habe und die mit ihrem Ruf nach mehr #Chancengleichheit via #Bildung nur die Demütigung jener verstärkt hätten, die gar nicht darauf hoffen können, auf diesem Weg jemals Erfolg zu haben (S. 33–37)."
Einen ähnlichen Gedanken habe ich auch schon bei #Graeber gelesen. Ich glaube das ist ein wichtiger Aspekt der vieles gut erklärt.
> "La palabra civilización procede del latín civilis, que en realidad se refiere a esas cualidades de sabiduría política y ayuda mutua que permiten a las sociedades organizarse a través de la coalición voluntaria. Dicho de otro modo, originalmente se refería al tipo de cualidades exhibidas por las asociaciones ayllu andinas o las aldeas vascas, más que a los cortesanos incas o a los miembros del linaje Shang."
-- David #Graeber y David #Wengrow
El amanecer de todo
Argh. Whoever made this poster for “a carnival celebrating the life, work and ideas of David #Graeber” NEGLECTED TO INCLUDE THE DATE.
On 2nd September, 2020, IWW member and #anarchist #anthropologist David #Graeber died at the age of 59. He participated in various mobilizations such as occupy wall street.
His work was quite extensive and several are his contributions to #anarchism, to anthropology and to the relationship between the two, among his work we find:
Fragments of an anarchist anthropology.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://edicioneslasocial.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/fragmentosdeaafin___.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjksuLjqM3rAhU2ILkGHQHGBgoQFjASegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw0orzQz1RRD0riPyi-7SxPj&cshid=1599144196816
-Shitty jobs.
https://www.rentabasicauniversal.es/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Trabajos-de-mierda_-Una-teoria-David-Graeber.pdf
-The utopia of rules.
-In debt
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://untdfdinero.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/graeber-2014-una-historia-alternativa.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjai8i7rc3rAhXIF7kGHYx2DtM4KBAWMAV6BAgFEAE&usg=AOvVaw2MTSvJrfDzvUbelFcBWOhd
-We are the 99%
https://papayas.pe/index.php/es/textos-pdf/textos-no-clasificados/item/11658-somos-el-99-pdf-david-graeber
-lost peoples
-The democracy project
-Direct action. An ethnography.
-He was doing an anthropological theory of value.
-Possibilities.
-On kings.
-Revolutions in reverse.
-Uprisings: An illustrated guide to popular rebellion!
David Wengrow: "On the 5th anniversary of his death, David #Graeber’s unwilling exile from US academia has a particular salience. This account of what happened in 2005, from The Chronicle of Higher Education, is worth reading in the perspective of 2025."
https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-radical-anthropologist-finds-himself-in-academic-exile/?sra=true
Via https://bsky.app/profile/davidwengrow.bsky.social/post/3lxtvf4wogc2z
I've been reading here and there online that #Graeber and Wengrow were planning to write a trilogy, and The Dawn of Everything would be the first installment. Does anyone know if that's true? I can't find it anywhere officially.
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