doe on 3rd freedom

on david graeber and david wengrow‘s dawn of everything (book)

because of and referring to this nov 2021 (77 min) video on fb shared by simona ferlini:

British library presentation of #thedawnofeverything, with David Wengrow, Emma Dabiri, Ayça Çubukçu and Ahdaf Soueif @asoueif What about discussing in this discussion forum Ayça’s question: “How can we know that these freedoms were simply assumed? “The text she’s referring to is this one:

The freedom to abandon one’s community, knowing one will be welcomed in faraway lands; the freedom to shift back and forth between social structures, depending on the time of year; the freedom to disobey authorities without consequence – all appear to have been simply assumed among our distant ancestors, even if most people find them barely conceivable today. Humans may not have begun their history in a state of primordial innocence, but they do appear to have begun it with a self-conscious aversion to being told what to do. If this is so, we can at least refine our initial question: the real puzzle is not when chiefs, or even kings and queens, first appeared, but rather when it was no longer possible simply to laugh them out of court.

ch 4 p 132-33

graeber and wengrow freedom law

she asks question at 48 min – (haven’t listened to whole convo.. just jumped here and caught @asoueif’s response.. couldn’t not add page)

49 min – ayca: so that’s the question i’d like to pose.. including the freedom to imagine another form of social existence.. my question is how did that freedom get lost.. when you talk of convergence of systems of violence and systems of care and how it effects the loss of these freedoms

steiner care to oppression law

51 min – ahdaf @asoueif: on a book that upends thinking.. and a lot of people find it intuitively true.. have thought it but never seen it crystalized.. i can’t think of a more useful contribution to the moment we’re living in

52 min – ahdaf: great thing about this book is they don’t come w answers.. they come with evidence..examining the past w how it can help us in the future

?evidence? of whales in sea world

53 min – ahdaf: and.. how to help a future come into being is the question now.. t

55 min – ahdaf: central question for me.. that invites david to speculate.. when you show people societies thinking/acting politically .. you also show them in remarkable cases deciding their society had gone on a wrong path.. and changing/dismantling the whole thing and going a diff way.. and it seems to me that this is what we need to do now..

56 min – ahdaf: the question which is tied to what you say about tech that the idea that history is driven by tech advance is so patently untrue.. is it still untrue..t i mean tech advance now is so tied into ideas of dominance and ideas that this is the only way that things can be.. ai, surveillance, … so where is this relationship now w tech and what we actually want to do w ourselves..

simona ferlini responding to this tweet:

@monk51295 @asoueif it’s determinism that is untrue

Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/sonmi451it/status/1470748663576240130

me replying to simona: so what we need.. is a means (tech/whatever).. to help us let go of our obsession w/determinism.. to help us get back/to alive ness.. (out of sea world) graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al

simona: even more since determinism usually relies on selection and simplification of determinants. Conditions exist, technologies exist, but neither of them mechanically determines the events

me: perhaps they (conditions & techs) have mechanically determined events..just not for good..not setting us all free ie: we’ve been/become like robots, whales in sea world.. we need a tech/mech that will ‘determine’ our freedom (i might have misunderstood what you’re saying)

simona: I’m saying: conditions & techs determine possibilities, not results. Agriculture is not a superior technology destined to win, but a possibility that may or may not be actualized by people’s self-conscious choice

me: what if we assume no one is making legit self-conscious choices.. and to @asoueif’s question/hope (i think) .. we need a way to detox/wake-up all of us at once.. otherwise conditions & techs will (are) determining results.. keeping us stuck.. in sea world

and when people stopped and changed the way their society going and turned it round.. they were limited.. they were a particular community.. and now it seems the whole world has to do this.. and do it all in one go..t

ginrom ginorm ginorm.. yes that

has to be a leap.. not only because we now can.. but this is why it’s never gotten us to legit freedom before..

humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to  simultaneous  spontaneity  .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..

i don’t know what do you think.. it’s unfair i know

57 min – david: it occurred to me the other day.. it’s quite a good time to be a tech determinist right now.. people that believe the form a society will take is literally determined by the mode of livelihood you choose or the kinds of machines you operate..

david: and traditionally i think this has been quite a conservative position.. the idea that you classify all of human societies according to how they extract energy from the environ.. this is how we get the whole distinction between ie: h g’s, farmers, industrial/commercial civ, ..

58 min – david: but actually if you take that seriously.. what it means is .. assuming we’re not going to deny all the evidence of climate change and where we’re heading environmentally, you would actually be obliged to accept that radical social change is now inevitable.. that would be the logical position for a tech determinist to take.. it’s either that or bust.. end of planet, etc.. , which i find it rather interesting that all the tech determinists have suddenly gone quiet.. if you’re going to defend that position.. why not follow it thru to it’s logical conclusion .. that we have to change .. radically.. forms of social org..t

again.. biggie is that we now have the means to org around legit needs

david: i’m not personally a tech determinist.. and i think we present a lot of evidence in the book that things don’t generally work that way at all.. but it’s for that reason.. i think you really hit the nail on the head

59 min – david: we’re not arguing that other ways of life or previous ways of life were innately *better/worse.. or that they are models for where humanity should go next

*to me.. this is because all have actually been same.. diff cope\ing ness strategies.. but all to date have been what we do in sea world

david: it’s precisely what ahdaf was talking about .. simply the possibility of changing.. possibility of change.. the flexibility that our ancestors seem to have taken for granted.. and managed even on a urban (100s of 1000s) scale

60 min – david: this seems to us the key issue.. this is our 3rd basic freedom if you like.. the freedom to imagine and then enact other kinds of social orders/existence.. this seems to be.. if anything.. what we’ve lost.. what we’ve lost is not equality.. that never existed.. what we’ve lost is apparently this capacity to do that.. and obviously that’s what the future really hinges on

ahdaf: what we have is this idea of a *failure of imagination.. the ability to imagine how to go forward.. how to be different..t maybe we’ll get inspiration from the many changes that go on in doe

yeah *that.. so imagine if we just focused on listening to the itch-in-8b-souls.. first thing.. everyday.. and used that data to augment our interconnectedness..

**actually what we need is a means to undo our hierarchical listening.. meaning.. there is a nother way.. we just can’t hear it..

1:01 – david: i do think there’s a serious point about ed .. actually there was one very generous review of book that came out today that said.. if you had an ed system.. let’s say we took this version of human history (doe) as a basis for what we teach kids.. a society that did that would be a pretty diff kind of society from one we’re living..

would not be diff enough.. any form of people telling other people what to do is screwing with us.. it’s keeping us in tragedy of the non common

oi.. such a frustrating answer..

1:02 – david: so there is a point about telling better stories in the sense not making up myths.. nothing wrong w myth.. but better in sense of more accurate more sci grounded.. but also better in sense of stories that don’t shut down possibilities..

oi.. science and accuracy ness is what’s gotten us here.. and too stories.. in the sense of history ness.. i think legit free people wouldn’t spend their days telling stories trying to convince others to do/be a certain way.. we’re so caught up in lit & num (aka: colonialism)..

1:03 – ayca: how did you go about narrowing down to these 3

david: they’re really summaries.. we realized that very outdated ideas are still around (stages of development et al) is they are quite elegant.. wrong but elegant.. as david put it we need buzz words.. something that summarizes our findings.. that’s all the 3 freedoms are.. they’re summary statements of empirical things we observed.. ie: 1\ b&f ness ..*not speculation.. grounded in evidence/lit.. but one needs a way of expressing that simpler/shorter ie: freedom to move around

oh my.. yes.. maybe not speculation.. but speculation of what goes on in sea world is still non legit data for legit free people..

1:05 – david: reading on how loss of 1 type of freedom leads to another loss.. this is from conclusion.. it was one of david’s fav bits of book ‘if there is a particular story we should be telling.. is it this.. how did we find ourselves stuck.. ‘

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