david (w) on beyond
david wengrow on beyond via david tweet [https://x.com/davidwengrow/status/1809185281083375921]:
“At the start of the Common Era, 3/4 of all people on Earth lived under Empire.” Or did they? .. my new essay @aeonmag challenges some zombie statistics, and considers a new human past emerging from the ground. [https://aeon.co/essays/an-archeological-revolution-transforms-our-image-of-human-freedoms]
notes/quotes:
Beyond kingdoms and empires – A revolution in archaeology is transforming our picture of past populations and the scope of human freedoms – july 2024
we need a revolution that let’s go of past ness.. since forever been in sea world
The suggestion is that if the subjects of empire in times past could have escaped, they’d have been unwise to do so, and anyway the *majority would have preferred life in imperial cages to whatever lay beyond, in the forest or marshes, in the mountains and foothills, or out on the open steppe. Such ideas have deep roots, which may be **one reason why they often go unchallenged.
*hari rat park law et al.. hari present in society law.. et al
**graeber rethink law.. sinclair perpetuation law..
It is from such sources that we get, not just our notion of empire as handmaiden to civilisation, but also our contemporary image of life before and beyond empire as being *small-scale, chaotic and largely unproductive. In short, everything that is still implied by the word ‘tribal’. Tribes are to empires (and their scholarly champions) much as children were to adults of Gibbon’s generation – occasionally charming or amusing creatures, but mostly a disruptive force, whose destiny is to be disciplined, put to useful work, and governed, at least until they are ready to govern themselves in a similar fashion. Either that, or to be confined, punished and, if necessary, eliminated from the pages of history.
*if only.. ie: ginorm/small; carhart-harris entropy law; norton productivity law; et al
Scholars of the ancient Near East once tookʿApiru to be an early reference to the Hebrews, but it’s now thought to be an umbrella term, used almost indiscriminately for any group of political defectors, dissenters, insurgents or refugees who threatened the interests of Egypt’s vassals in neighbouring Canaan (much as some modern politicians have been known to use the word ‘terrorist’ for rhetorical effect today).
In Babylonia, such groups – when not given tribal or ethnic labels – might be variously described as ‘scattered people’, ‘head-bangers’ or simply ‘enemies’.
need the not yet scrambled ness of carhart-harris entropy law et al
Empires have always created vivid and disturbingly violent images of tribal life on their frontiers, placing in a different, paternalistic light the violence at the heart of their own political projects. In such ways, we convince ourselves that these things are somehow deeply related, that violence and domination are the necessary substratum of ‘civilisation’, or that Europe after the fall of Rome achieved something unique – unnatural even, on a global scale – by breaking decisively from ancient cycles of empire and forging a singular path to liberty and prosperity. Once entrenched in our imaginations, such ways of thinking are fiendishly difficult to reverse. Even experienced scholars of empirically grounded disciplines may find themselves advancing such arguments based on the flimsiest of source
rather.. that civilization ness is what legit free people would even be curious about
First, it is worth reflecting on what it means to talk of the ‘competitive advantage’ of states governed by extractive elites. *At the least, this introduces questions about the long-term strength and viability of certain types of society, and the endemic weaknesses of others. Only the ‘winners’, one assumes, get to forge viable paths to the future. These, however, are matters of opinion, not statistics. They brush over irritating questions like ‘How many benefited from living in imperial structures?’ or **‘What is a viable path into the future?
*rather.. that if all were legit free.. that we could even label/type society/whatever ness
**hari rat park law.. need to get out of sea world first.. ie: sabbatical ish transition
One way to control the quality of historical conjecture is by using rigorous sources that are up to date
perhaps a better/best one is to let go of the cancerous distraction of history ness.. let go of the conjecturing.. and just let the dance dance
In a recent interview with the Long Now Foundation, Guinnane explains how he was inspired to write his article after seeing one scholar after another make ‘references to data of this type’..t
perhaps all data to date non legit.. because from whales in sea world
How, on such feeble foundations, did we pump into our heads the notion that there is something natural about living in societies where rulers exercise arbitrary authority over subjects?
Guinnane names prominent economic historians who continue to use the Atlas in various ways. As he rightly emphasises, the blame shouldn’t really lie with individual scholars. He is also, surely, correct to say that, so long as reputable publishers of academic books and journals continue to accept work based on such sources, we’re unlikely to see much progress: ‘estimates will not improve unless we care enough about good data to stop naively using the old.’.t Archaeology, I suggest, has a vital role to play here.
rather.. unless we care enough about legit freedom to try diff data.. to try self-talk as data
ie: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us
On a global scale, we are witnessing a revolution in our understanding of ancient demography. To ignore it, these days, is to indulge in a cruel sort of intellectual prank, by which the genocide of Indigenous populations – a direct consequence of the planetary revolt against freedom, in the past 500 years – is naturalised as a perennial absence of people. Nor can we just assume that if we want to understand the prospects for our modern world, the only ‘big’ stories worth telling are those of empire.
The world we live in today is not just the one created by the likes of Tiberius of Rome, or even Emperor Wu of Han. *Until surprisingly recent times, spaces of human freedom existed across large parts of our planet. Millions lived in them. We don’t know their names, as they didn’t carve them in stone, but we know that many lived lives in which one could hope to do more than just scratch out an existence, or rehearse someone else’s script of ‘the origin of the state’ – in which one could **move away, disobey, experiment with other notions of how to live, even create new forms of social reality.
*i don’t think we’ve had any spaces free enough for the dance of legit free people.. for one.. has to be all of us
Sometimes, the unfree did this too, against much harder odds. How many, back then, preferred imperial control to non-imperial freedoms? *How many were given a choice? How much choice do we have now?..t It seems **nobody really knows the answers to these questions, at least not yet. In future, it will take more than zombie statistics to stop us from asking them.. ***There are forgotten histories buried in the ground, of human politics and values..t
*need to try curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is part of the unmooring ness of us
**perhaps asking them is a cancerous distraction.. again.. need to facil curiosity over decision making (predetermined questions et al)
***perhaps all history ness is a cancerous distraction.. need to listen deeper .. to what is already buried in each heart (itch-in-the-soul)
*Investigating the human past in this way is not a matter of searching for utopia, but of freeing us to think about the true possibilities of human existence. **Unhampered by outdated theoretical assumptions and dogmatic interpretations of obsolete data, could we look with fresh eyes at the very meaning of terms like ‘civilisation’? ..t
*again.. to me.. history ness as cancerous distraction.. keeping us pontificating/whac-a-mole-ing .. in sea world
hari rat park law
**rather.. could we quit looking for meaning/terms.. naming the colour ness is blinding us from the dance
For those who seek to change course, such uncertainty about the scope of human freedoms may itself be a source of liberation, opening pathways to other futures.
graeber make it diff law.. graeber rethink law.. et al
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us.. ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental expo labeling).. to facil a legit global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
______
_____
______
______
______
_____
________
be you. 