- Oct 2022
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Rousseau’sheretical view was that anything which was outside children’s experience wouldbe meaningless to them, much as Plato, Comenius, and others had warned. Hisinsights had condensed principally out of the prevailing intellectual atmosphereat the time—empiricism, explicated by philosophers such as John Locke. We’lllook at Locke and Rousseau in more detail in Chapter 2.
Just as the ideas of liberty and freedom were gifted to us by Indigenous North Americans as is shown by Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything, is it possible that the same sorts of ideas but within the educational sphere were being transmitted by Indigenous intellectuals to Europe in the same way? Is Rousseau's 18th century book Emile, or On Education of this sort?
What other sorts of philosophies invaded Western thought at this time?
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localhost:8083 localhost:8083
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This effort, which Americans have supported almostfrom the beginning of the national existence and which is oneof the cornerstones of our democratic way of life, has hadremarkable results.
Read in juxtaposition with the knowledge of orality and along with Graeber & Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, one could certainly argue that there are other ways of knowing which provide potentially better pathways to democracy.
Further, the simple fact of basic literacy doesn't necessarily encourage democracy. Take a look at the January 6th (2021) insurrectionists who were likely broadly literate, but who acted more like a damaged oral society and actively subverted democracy.
Literacy plus "other things" are certainly necessary for democracy. How do we define these other things, and then once we have, is literacy still part of the equation for democracy?
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- Mar 2022
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adjacentpossible.substack.com adjacentpossible.substack.com
- Jan 2022
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adjacentpossible.substack.com adjacentpossible.substack.com
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www.focaalblog.com www.focaalblog.com
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http://www.focaalblog.com/2021/12/22/chris-knight-wrong-about-almost-everything/
Chris Knight is a senior research fellow in anthropology at University College London, where he forms part of a team researching the origins of our species in Africa. His books include Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture (1991) and Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics (2016).
Another apparent refutation of Graeber and Wengrow.
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www.persuasion.community www.persuasion.community
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https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-humanity
David A. Bell teaches history at Princeton and is the author, most recently, of Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).
Critique of Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything
Where is he right? Wrong? How does this dovetail with the evidence within the book?
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www.dawnofeverything.industries www.dawnofeverything.industries
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www.noemamag.com www.noemamag.com
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Unfortunately, the ideas most economists use have been too influenced by “methodological individualism,” rather than the more scientifically supported view of us as a super-social, super-cooperative, intensely interdependent species. Often, this economics-style individualism is of the Thomas Hobbes variety, which paints humans in “a state of nature,” waging a “war of all against all.”
This statement in the framing of biology is quite similar to the framing in anthropology and archaeology that David Graeber and David Wengrow provide in The Dawn of Everything.
Perhaps we should be saying (especially from a political perspective): Cooperation is King!
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nymag.com nymag.com
- Dec 2021
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www.journaldumauss.net www.journaldumauss.net