Saw on you tube a captivating discussion with David Wengrow. Was so interested that I checked if it was commented in my favorite intelectual paper of record -NYRB. Turns out the review is even more fascinating (for a macro history illiterate like me) as it recapitulates various hypothesis of human evolution.
Graeber and Wengrow believe that social evolutionism is a con, aimed at making us think that we had no choice but to forfeit our freedom for food and that the states we find everywhere are the inexorable result of developments ten or twelve thousand years ago,,,
They emphatically agree with many evolutionists of the past couple of centuries that “something did go terribly wrong in human history.”
Wonder if the current civilization has a history of zig-zags - left, right and ultimately adelante. Probably I am still under the influence of the marxist dialectic I was taught in high-school. Right, left... like in ballroom dance. When I told my dance instructor I want to dance two minutes without making any wrong step, she told me - one cannot avoid, everybody makes mistakes.
