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What is the value of that model if it's wrong? Just make up your own "paradigm" to fit your 21st century political views, throw in a disdainful mention of "neol
by kspacewalk2 4y ago
What is the value of that model if it's wrong? Just make up your own "paradigm" to fit your 21st century political views, throw in a disdainful mention of "neoliberal" something or other, straw-man centuries worth of history writing you skimmed over in college, and Bob's your uncle.
- jonahbenton 4y agoHa. All models are wrong. Some are useful. More to the point, I really like a quote from the Rupert Murdoch character on "Succession"- "The future is real. The past is...all made up." Even the most carefully documented histories are more or less fiction. Those fictions are retold over the years as old narratives are discredited, and new ones emerge that fit known evidence and are realigned to the gestalt and updated mental models of the time. The history I had included nothing about pre-historical peoples and their societies which of course existed in spectacular complexity but about which there was really no narrative starting point. Graeber's book creates that. Just like the history of trade I learned focused on ideas like barter being the basis for economic engagements (rather than credit), a juvenile fiction that Graeber addressed in Debt. What Graeber did in both works was create a vividly imagined holistic and narratively compelling fiction- with some factual bases- that serves as a useful and improved mental model for non-specialists. Useful even if it is wrong. Cheers.