nika on hidden truth
nika dubrovsky‘s intro for david graeber‘s ultimate hidden truth of world (book) [ultimate hard copy]
notes/quotes from her intro to it:
(this is linked to ultimate hard copy page.. wanted a separate page of it .. was so good/deep.. thinking will want to read over and over.. then decided to just link it there since ended up so long)
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intro – nika dubrovsky
since david’s death in 2020 much of my life has been entwined w his vast archive.. david once said that the real care for a ‘great man’ begins after his death and is almost always done by women.. now i know what he meant
on david dying.. nika on david.. et al
when david talked about care, he always added that it has real significance only if it enables freedom.. t
graeber care/free law et al
our western conception of freedom traces back to the legal authority of roman patriarchs over their fam and slaves.. based on idea of private property..
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david’s understanding of freedom was antithetical to western notions derived from ancient rome.. in his lectures he frequently obserced that perhaps we are the only civ that has been built almost exclusively on the bizarre link between private property and freedom.. all of david’s work advance his theory that true freedom is an underlying principle of the universe.. manifested in play and social relationships.. freedom to david does not derive from laws and it s not based on individual property rights.. t
legit freedom – something we have no idea about – black science of people/whales law et al
writing was an exercise of freedom for david.. a rebellious project.. often creed w others to collectively change the social order.. literally revising an existing social code.. david believed that ‘revolution happens when there is a transformation of common sense’
need means for legit global detox leap
david *lived w the deep understanding that ‘the ultimate hidden truth of the world’.. the **code that drives the invisible social mechs of our society that make us kill one another in wars or build free housing, work for years in bs jobs or take on caretaking jobs.. even if they pay very little ‘is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently’.. t
*the thing(s) you can’t not do ness
**huge huge.. hari rat park law et al.. graeber make it diff law et al..
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could be said that david’s main intellectual project outside of publishing was the democratization of the writing process itself
lit & num as colonialism et al.. against written thought et al..
he wanted to change our collective common sense and this task can only be accomplished collectively
beyond the monastic self et al
it seems to me his social project has been remarkably successful.. from book to book and essay to essay, david was able to challenge assumptions we hold dear.. the way we think.. the very essence of our collective social code..t
graeber rethink law et al
i selected 18 essays for this collection in collab w david’s students /colleagues from both dgi and m of care.. w aim of mapping his key life projects.. the essays in this collection are a history of his social relationships.. they center around the dialogical nature of human consciousness.. coop as political freedom, and ultimately.. the origins of ‘common sense’..t
university of dgi et al.. museum of care.. et al.. david and nika on museum of care
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david articulated many of the central ideas of this project in the 2013 journal ‘dead zones of the imagination.. but he had begun thinking about this larger project as early as grad school. when to madagascar on advice of anthro prof marshall sahlins
dead zones of imagination.. david on marshall.. marshall on culture.. madagascar.. madagascar love.. et al
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david’s work builds upon sahlins’s critique of western econ and cultural models.. incorporating insights gleaned from russian thinkers – primarily kropotkin and bakunin.. but also dostoevsky and bakhtin.. it is noteworthy that he took only two books w him to madagascar: dostoevsky’s brothers karamazov and bakhtins’ rabelais and his world..
pëtr kropotkin.. mikhail bakunin.. fyodor dostoevsky.. mikhail bakhtin.. rabelais and his world
*one of basic ideas to which david would return again and again in his sci and political projects as well as anthro studies.. was that ‘man is not a final and defined quantity upon which form calcs can be made; man is free, and can therefore violate any regulating norms which might be thrust upon him’..t **bakhtin and dostoevsky described human nature as a potentiality that emerges thru polyphonic, carnivalesque dialogue w other people.. t
*graeber violence/quantification law et al.. graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al..
**for polyphonic and carnivalesque dialogue.. need idiosyncratic jargon ness et al.. nika on idio jargon ness et al.. ie: self-talk as data and tech as nonjudgmental expo labeling et al
david used to say ‘all human being s are projects of mutual creation.. most of the work we do is on each other’.. this is how david understood himself and the purpose of his writing..
interpretive labor – primary form of labor – fashioning people et al
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in the against econ section i chose essays i saw as key to david’s thinking about power and justice..
the question of how the power structure of our society works and more important, how it might work was always front and center for david.. when he coined the phrase ‘care and freedom’ care wasn’t a buzzword yet..
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this truth belongs to all of us and it is this: we are free to change it as we see fit..
david was releasing forces that were already w/in us.. our common human yearning for freedom and care.. t
already on each heart ness.. and need to org around legit needs.. deep enough that every souls already craves = no prep.. no train..
huge
that’s how we get to the global detox leap.. the ‘going viral’ we’ve not yet seen..
we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8b today.. via a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8b today.. in an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8b legit free
ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8b today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8b today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8b legit free
in our essay ‘another art world’ we fumbled for a description of what this other world might look like.. ie: gigantic network of popular amateur artistic collectives .. independent of control.. t
art (by day/light) and sleep (by night/dark) as global re\set.. to fittingness (undisturbed ecosystem)
sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do..
the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
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: imagine if we listened to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & used that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
need to try the unconditional part of left to own devices ness..
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
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be you. 