4 ms·

One of the things that's talked about in "the dawn of everything" is the large number of what seem to be extremely egalitarian societies...ones that spanned lar

by mannyv 3y ago

One of the things that's talked about in "the dawn of everything" is the large number of what seem to be extremely egalitarian societies...ones that spanned large areas. And that social groups form and get their values/norms/behaviors from being explicitly against certain values/norms/behaviors. According to them, human beings are not instinctively anything. Hierarchy is just one form of social organization. Due to the way history is made it seems to be dominant, but that may or may not be accurate. It may be that hierarchy is easier to understand when you're dumb as a rock. And as any student of humanity knows, there are plenty of those kinds of people all over the world.

hef19898 3y ago
I know you did noz mean it that way, so just to point out that rock dumb people are to be found on levels of a hierachy. Not that people think hierachies are somehow resulting in the smartest and best leaders, no matter how much evidence we have to the contrary in our everyday, personal lives. Nor does it mean the opposite, so far I think the rock dumb folks are equally distributed on all level,. Maybe with a slight bias for a*holes the higher up you get.
thworp 3y ago
This is a claim so extraordinary you should at least have linked some obscure paper from a *-Studies department. Every human has their own hierarchies. Hierarchies of need, of goals and of peers (this is basically each individual's social hierarchy). But when these people form large groups they are somehow able to blank the slate and not make it hierarchical? All mammals that form groups instinctively form hierarchies and constantly validate their own and other's position in it (any dog owner will know first-hand). Arguably the first multi-celled organism formed a hierarchy and pretty much every animal with a few Neurons has Serotonin receptors, which can be described as a pathway to continuously re-order its hierarchy of needs. The only way in which anything social isn't hierarchical is if you look at a tiny tiny cross-section. Otherwise any "egalitarian" and "flat" organization just swapped one way to determine a hierarchy for another. As a case in point, the Liberal model of the 19th century was a project to replace an aristocratic hierarchy (based on attributes that were no longer a good fit) with a competence hierarchy. This was often called egalitarian, but practically it was just a more adapted way of forming a hierarchy. We are so adapted to hierarchies that 6-month olds understand physical dominance and 3-year olds easily form more complex hierarchies based on social support, resources etc. edit: Ironically calling other people "rock-dumb" is a way to signal ones own place in the hierarchy.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > This is a claim so extraordinary It's your claim thats is extraordinary. Humans are beholden to a single form of organisation? I feel that you are so stuck in this mode of thinking that you struggle to see these other forms of organisation despite the fact that they surround you. Markets dominate the world, they are not a hierarchy. Social networks form a web, they are not a hierarchy. If you try to organise any data, you will find it cannot be fit into a hierarchy, it is either relational or a graph. Relationships dominate the world, hierarchy is an illusion
  - tiahura 3y ago
    So dogs, camels, and chimps all have hierarchys, but humans don’t? Strong claim.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      >dogs If you're referring to the whole "alpha" thing, remember that was shown to be invalid and only occurred in captivity. Wild dogs are pretty communal.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      A school of fish is not a hierarchy. Other things exist besides hierarchies
    - komali2 3y ago
      Famously, humans are the only creatures on earth that do lots of stuff. Like talking, writing, drawing pictures, or riding rockets into orbit. I don't see what's so unbelievable about our massively unique cognitive ability vs instinct ratio leading us to also have different forms of social organization, or that this could lead to our social organization being detached from instinct almost entirely. I feel like this whenever people try to do that Lobster argument. "right, but we aren't lobsters."
      - Sprocklem 3y ago
jandrese 3y ago
My understanding is that many early societies were quite egalitarian but they also tended to be relatively small. One area where decentralized power is not so good is warfare. Thus these societies tended to be conquered by their more warlike neighbors. This pattern repeats multiple times until the world is full of feudal monarchies, even though that system of government is relatively poor at building and maintaining infrastructure. Scientific and technological progress has been held back for thousands of years because this one system of government was better at killing their neighbors and in the end that was what really mattered.
pphysch 3y ago
Dawn of Everything is a textbook example of cherry-picking data to support a preconceived ideology. It's not good science. Graeber was a smart guy, but also had a pretty clear, and strong ideological position regarding power structures. Hierarchy is natural because of natural limitations like "Dunbar's Number". The human brain can effectively track only so many relationships, and at some scale it is advantageous to consolidate them into abstractions like "authority" or "organization".

by mannyv 3y ago

hef19898 3y ago

I know you did noz mean it that way, so just to point out that rock dumb people are to be found on levels of a hierachy. Not that people think hierachies are somehow resulting in the smartest and best leaders, no matter how much evidence we have to the contrary in our everyday, personal lives. Nor does it mean the opposite, so far I think the rock dumb folks are equally distributed on all level,. Maybe with a slight bias for a*holes the higher up you get.

thworp 3y ago

This is a claim so extraordinary you should at least have linked some obscure paper from a *-Studies department. Every human has their own hierarchies. Hierarchies of need, of goals and of peers (this is basically each individual's social hierarchy). But when these people form large groups they are somehow able to blank the slate and not make it hierarchical? All mammals that form groups instinctively form hierarchies and constantly validate their own and other's position in it (any dog owner will know first-hand). Arguably the first multi-celled organism formed a hierarchy and pretty much every animal with a few Neurons has Serotonin receptors, which can be described as a pathway to continuously re-order its hierarchy of needs. The only way in which anything social isn't hierarchical is if you look at a tiny tiny cross-section. Otherwise any "egalitarian" and "flat" organization just swapped one way to determine a hierarchy for another. As a case in point, the Liberal model of the 19th century was a project to replace an aristocratic hierarchy (based on attributes that were no longer a good fit) with a competence hierarchy. This was often called egalitarian, but practically it was just a more adapted way of forming a hierarchy. We are so adapted to hierarchies that 6-month olds understand physical dominance and 3-year olds easily form more complex hierarchies based on social support, resources etc. edit: Ironically calling other people "rock-dumb" is a way to signal ones own place in the hierarchy.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> This is a claim so extraordinary It's your claim thats is extraordinary. Humans are beholden to a single form of organisation? I feel that you are so stuck in this mode of thinking that you struggle to see these other forms of organisation despite the fact that they surround you. Markets dominate the world, they are not a hierarchy. Social networks form a web, they are not a hierarchy. If you try to organise any data, you will find it cannot be fit into a hierarchy, it is either relational or a graph. Relationships dominate the world, hierarchy is an illusion
- tiahura 3y ago
  So dogs, camels, and chimps all have hierarchys, but humans don’t? Strong claim.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    >dogs If you're referring to the whole "alpha" thing, remember that was shown to be invalid and only occurred in captivity. Wild dogs are pretty communal.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    A school of fish is not a hierarchy. Other things exist besides hierarchies
  - komali2 3y ago
    Famously, humans are the only creatures on earth that do lots of stuff. Like talking, writing, drawing pictures, or riding rockets into orbit. I don't see what's so unbelievable about our massively unique cognitive ability vs instinct ratio leading us to also have different forms of social organization, or that this could lead to our social organization being detached from instinct almost entirely. I feel like this whenever people try to do that Lobster argument. "right, but we aren't lobsters."
    - Sprocklem 3y ago

jandrese 3y ago

My understanding is that many early societies were quite egalitarian but they also tended to be relatively small. One area where decentralized power is not so good is warfare. Thus these societies tended to be conquered by their more warlike neighbors. This pattern repeats multiple times until the world is full of feudal monarchies, even though that system of government is relatively poor at building and maintaining infrastructure. Scientific and technological progress has been held back for thousands of years because this one system of government was better at killing their neighbors and in the end that was what really mattered.

pphysch 3y ago

Dawn of Everything is a textbook example of cherry-picking data to support a preconceived ideology. It's not good science. Graeber was a smart guy, but also had a pretty clear, and strong ideological position regarding power structures. Hierarchy is natural because of natural limitations like "Dunbar's Number". The human brain can effectively track only so many relationships, and at some scale it is advantageous to consolidate them into abstractions like "authority" or "organization".