m of care – mar 17
david graeber and david wengrow‘s dawn of everything (book).. ch 12 – conclusion (493-570)
via nika dubrovsky fb share next day:
Simona at the 29th minute says:
“war is a very special process related to the constructing of an enemy, with a “forbidden metamorphism” or, as David Greber would say, is an opportunity to rethink oneself. War is when you cannot stop being “Italian” or “Russian” when the natural process of internal pluralism stops. “
david on war.. marsh label law et al
then next day.. from murray bookchin‘s social eco and communalism:
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tribes .. rooted in bio facts of life held social communities together.. gave them a sense of internal solidarity so strong that the tribes largely excluded the strangers/outsider whose acceptability depended on canons of hospitality and the need for new members to replenish warriors when warfare became increasingly important
oi.. to nika quoting david above..
so barriers drop so we can keep fighting
notes/quotes from meeting:
steve: book (as simona put it) meant to be a gift.. but i lack the creative mind to think in so many diff ways.. so ‘we now know we’ve been stuck so long because we’ve lived a myth.. built on premises.. human existence is dominance.. et al’.. social sci says we were pure before the fall.. so developing a trajectory about how we are not free..
hari rat park law et al
steve: leaves us w question.. what good is science, history,
yeah that.. science ness and history ness
steve: answers they offer.. used for comparative ness.. ie: correlation between gender freedom and innovation; .. challenges conventional methods of sci method.. how can we become unstuck where care is built on violence.. we can’t even come to answer that question till we recognize full extent myths that are limiting the imagination of our questions..
living in sea world.. hari rat park law
steve: i don’t see how anyone who has written a review has been able to do so because i feel the book needs multiple readings
rather.. that’s the gist.. not saying anything concrete.. rather.. that we have no concrete.. graeber revolution law et al.. let go of all the need to know ness.. and realize anything is possible.. so now to graeber unpredictability/surprise law
steve: on starting a playground revolution
not even a playground but wilderness.. ie: playground already has so many limits/assumptions
steve: what does it even mean to talk about social science anymore..
maybe that’s the point.. to stop talking science/intellect/knowledge
mary: major thing.. had to rethink everything
(steve says this a lot too)
maybe again.. living isn’t so much about thinking.. esp because then we think we know.. et al
graeber model law (graeber revolution law): ‘you’ll never ever be able to convince a person thru logical argument or even brilliant rhetoric that a free and just society is possible.. you can show them.. you can start doing it‘ – David Graeber
ellen: on tools to make the world diff
what we need most: means to undo our hierarchical listening to self/others/nature
ellen: on her uni wanting people to get retrained so we can teach indigenous things.. something to be said about meaningful play
whoa.. again.. is teaching legit indigenous?.. why does play have to be meaningful?
ellen: richard lee on innovation.. how we carry a baby while we do our work.. can’t build theory on that but it’s an interesting observation
nika: thank you to steven for doing this.. small question to ask about war.. how the war is almost unavoidably leading to the loss of internal freedom.. we can see that now.. i remember how david after success of social movements in us.. iraq and sept 11 happen.. and a lot of freedoms were taken away.. i don’t think it’s like we can see correlation.. but we can see how it happens.. and how we can undo that .. what kind of tools can we develop.. ie: if war could be playful..
shaw communication law.. need: means to undo our hierarchical listening as detox
simona: actually as i do.. i cheated w this book and started w this conclusion.. which makes book so much clearer.. because so much in it.. and at times they are playing.. but there is a sense of the book.. what david would say about war is in this ch.. pg 505.. they take from archeo evidence.. that war is not natural.. not embedded in human society.. there were centuries of peace.. just as slavery has been abolished many times.. so has war.. and war is a specific type of violence.. it’s organized violence.. play kings cease to be play kings when they start killing people.. so when play then killing starts.. on crowds and power.. on crowds tearing down walls.. becomes another thing when it becomes closed.. the very essence of borders.. ends ability to metamorph.. to reinvent ourselves.. so what is connection between borders.. freedom .. property that is about creating exclusion.. and states as construction of borders.. forbidding metamorphosis and mutliple id’s.. war is about being stuck in one id.. obliged to be just russion, italian, a women..
marsh label law: group affiliation is essential for the dehumanization of ‘others’.. encourage pride in whatever noun people id as – Heather Marsh
siddiqi border law: every border implies the violence of its maintenance – Ayesha Siddiqi via tweet
simona: our idea of enlightenment is a project that then has to be imposed on society
mark: i will not stop rereading this book for i don’t know how long.. all the evidence.. what i love about the authors is they’re not giving the answers.. but putting comparisons together.. leaving a thought experiment for us to work out.. so ie for re writing our history in n america.. elders at chipawa mtgs brought up davids’ book.. calling it the big yellow book.. incredible book.. giving us tools for our imagination..
i think key is to quit trying to figure things out..
nika: i think david was thinking we could figure out how to live w/o war/torture.. it’s very possible..t
yeah.. that.. let’s just focus on that.. ie: hari rat park law
steve: reinforces an idea that’s been w this group from the start in reading other works by graeber.. his ultimate positions that idea are inherently collective.. a reminder that this work can be very serious and lives are at stake.. but that scholarship is a form of play and political ideas ought to be approached in a playful dialogic way.. but w creative refusal.. it challenges people to state up front what they are unwilling to do.. then everything else is just play.. a creative version of what we are generally not taught..
beyond the monastic self ness et al
yeah.. let’s get out of sea world and legit play
mary: the davids reframe it as play.. what we call play us part if their (indigenous) spiritual practice.. it’s playful form of worshipping.. meaningful ness.. had underlying concept of spirituality.. what happens when people don’t have a way for a ritual of violence.. you end up with actual war.. there’s a lot of studies on that.. it’s a really big subject.. i’m interested in not just decolonization.. but how indigenous did things better and learning things from them.. i’m sure we’ll find a lot of play and how that leads to innovation..
michael: how we define tech (on ellen’s comment as to body bag).. ie: a pacifier.. a technique in child rearing.. has done a huge amount for child rearing.. my take on book.. on gender relations and war are used to build power dynamics.. in that care gets conflated w a type of violence/control.. and that builds w/in people an inability to imagine a diff way.. in some sense book is amazing for amt of circulation it’s got and undoing a myth.. and very well timed..
[alex shared in chat: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-lamborn-wilson-islam-and-the-internet]
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notes from chapter:
514
it seems to us that this connection.. or better perhaps.. confusions.. between care and domination is utterly critical to the larger question of how we lost the ability freely to recreate ourselves by recreating our relation w one another.. it is critical that is.. to understanding how we got stuck and why these days we can hardly envisage our own past or future as anything other than a transition from smaller to larger cages.. t
huge huge huge
diff part of sea world.. need to get out.. hari rat park law et al
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we are optimists.. we like to think it will not take that long
today we have the means (imagine if we) for 8b people to leap
humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..
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we know now we are in the presence of myths.. t
stories from sea world.. stories from diff perspectives of (the elephants) from whales.. perpetuating myth of tragedy and lord et al
part\ial ness .. keeping us from us
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be you. 