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You'd be surprised how long oral history can live. There are people who tell the same cautionary tales for thousands or even tens of thousands of years. (We kno

by kqr 5y ago

You'd be surprised how long oral history can live. There are people who tell the same cautionary tales for thousands or even tens of thousands of years. (We know among other things because they clearly reference landmarks that we today find geological traces of that help us date their existence.) But yes, you're onto something with the neighbour hypothesis too -- egalitarian and hierarchical (or beaurocratic and violent) societies often come in pairs, right next to each other.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
'There are people who tell the same cautionary tales for thousands or even tens of thousands of years.' The people retelling the story don't understand it - we have stories and kings and feudalism, go on the street and ask a random person any question about how feudalism works: What rights did peasants have? What right does the lord have over his peasants? could peasants be sold and how are they different from slaves? Which 'levels' of nobility does what? Who pays taxes to whom? If put theae people into a feudal society tomorrow, and just renamed 'baron' and 'lord' to something else, they would not know it. We could call it 'landlord' and 'investor'
bee_rider 5y ago
> But yes, you're onto something with the neighbour hypothesis too -- egalitarian and hierarchical (or beaurocratic and violent) societies often come in pairs, right next to each other. This is going to sound sarcastic or something, but I'm actually curious -- do they? I would tend to assume that they appear to come in pairs, but this is largely because we happened to find history books written by the self-professed egalitarian society, and not their rivals, to whom they allocate every vice.
- kqr 5y ago
  Visible history is generally written by the beaurocratic/violent society, not their egalitarian neighbour. If you think further back in history, I'm sure you'll recall "the great periods" as we call them, marred with obvious artifacts from oppressive societies. Their egalitarian neighbours where only just starting to discover. In part because their traces are less obvious, and in part because we've had a mental confirmation bias against finding them. I refer back to The Dawn of Everything if you want more details!
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    Interesting, thanks!

by kqr 5y ago

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

'There are people who tell the same cautionary tales for thousands or even tens of thousands of years.' The people retelling the story don't understand it - we have stories and kings and feudalism, go on the street and ask a random person any question about how feudalism works: What rights did peasants have? What right does the lord have over his peasants? could peasants be sold and how are they different from slaves? Which 'levels' of nobility does what? Who pays taxes to whom? If put theae people into a feudal society tomorrow, and just renamed 'baron' and 'lord' to something else, they would not know it. We could call it 'landlord' and 'investor'

bee_rider 5y ago

> But yes, you're onto something with the neighbour hypothesis too -- egalitarian and hierarchical (or beaurocratic and violent) societies often come in pairs, right next to each other. This is going to sound sarcastic or something, but I'm actually curious -- do they? I would tend to assume that they appear to come in pairs, but this is largely because we happened to find history books written by the self-professed egalitarian society, and not their rivals, to whom they allocate every vice.

kqr 5y ago
Visible history is generally written by the beaurocratic/violent society, not their egalitarian neighbour. If you think further back in history, I'm sure you'll recall "the great periods" as we call them, marred with obvious artifacts from oppressive societies. Their egalitarian neighbours where only just starting to discover. In part because their traces are less obvious, and in part because we've had a mental confirmation bias against finding them. I refer back to The Dawn of Everything if you want more details!
- bee_rider 5y ago
  Interesting, thanks!