Good morning. Hello. How are you? #546
Mostly a Graeber/Wengrow review with some Covid paranoia and some smack talk about Santa.
Good morning, hello, how are you? I am good, thanks. Kind of you to ask. Sorry I cut things off abruptly on this email yesterday I got a call from a friend. At 7:45 in the morning. I almost didn’t bother to answer the phone, because who calls another human, socially, at 7:45 in the morning. But I looked, and I answered and, well, maybe 7:45 is a good time to call after all, because I never answer my phone.
Anyway. Are you well? Kids okay? Like your job all right? Did you get COVID last week? I think everyone got COVID last week, I did not, astonishingly, but, wow, yeah, lotta COVID going round. Look at this chart of North Carolina hospitalizations over the last six weeks:
Isn’t that awesome? Boy we sure are a mighty nation that whipped COVID. God we’re like Cassius Clay having an off day and getting his ass kicked by a ten year-old that he has absolutely no excuse of losing to, but he just did, because he was lazy and stupid that day.
Oh and 800,000 people in America have now died of it.
Fifty million cases, but of course that is wildly low now, thanks to home tests.
Oh right speaking of which, I gotta take my COVID test now. Hold please.
Okay, that is cookin. Everyone seems to get it in three, four days, and we’re on day eight here, but why not one more for good measure. MAN, that swab, my right nostril, ALWAYS burns, always itches. My right nostril is just broken by allergies, perpetually raw, perpetually burns. I got a septoplasty up in there in, like, 2006 or so, from supposedly the best nose doctor in Boston, real cadillac of a doctor. The general anesthesia was insane and awesome, but other than that, the thing never helped with my sinuses, breathing, or allergies for a single day, and now there is a permanent scar along the right inner nostril that, to this day, fifteen years later, i still mistake for boogers, every single day. And my nose just itches and burns constantly.
Sure, sure, “go see another doctor, they can do something about that.” I have been to three subsequent ENTs, no one seems to care.
American medicine. Fantastic.
Anyway, finished Davids Wengrow and Graeber’s new book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Here’s everything you need to know about this book:
There are people in the world who say “humanity has been doomed since it left the garden of eden (or the village, or the tribe) and began its journey toward modernity. The journey is irredeemably corrupting and the only true salvation is to go back to the cradle. These people often have a tendency to say that the day that we shit the bed as a species is when we stopped roaming around and started farming.
Conversely, there are people who say “Humans are, by their nature, savage and terrible, and it is only the tempering force of ‘civilization’ that keeps us all from killing each other and degenerating back into animals.
You are not alone if you think both of these viewpoints of humanity are reductive, simplistic, and tedious.
Most of written history history has been written by someone who believed one of those two viewpoints, and, thus, wrote histories that supported those viewpoints.
Those viewpoints are mostly bullshit and here is a history of the world laying out a shit ton of counter-factual examples. We’re not saying these examples point to any single, specific alternate history. We really wish we could make it into evidence of humanity’s natural ability to live in anarchist paradises, but we don’t quite go there because our main point is history can be interpreted in lots of ways.
Here is a ton of interesting evidence about history from all of the world, supported by archeological findings, that points to a different, more liberating path for humanity. It’s not absolute, but maybe let’s stop pretending history insists #1 or #2 is true. We contain multitudes. Our potential is vast. Stop insisting our options are limited.
You can also read it in that way that middle aged people read presidential biographies instead of smoking pot or playing video games. The histories of these various civilizations throughout the world are super interesting. Cahokia and the Mississipi culture. The unknown people who made Poverty Point (which I had no idea about). The early Ukranian cities. Kandiaronk. Çatalhöyük. Indus and the Mayans. Good shit.
What you do not need to do, especially if you are a professional reader of books, is read the book adversarally, insisting that if you look at the footnotes, the authors of the supporting papers do not necessarily believe Wengrow and Graeber’s interpretations. Because this is not only mean but also redundant because all you needed to do was read the first chapter, where Wengrow and Graeber say (I am paraphrasing here) “yo some of the authors of the papers we use as support would probably not agree with our interpretations of their findings. That is fine. We do not misrepresent their physical findings, but we may draw different conclusions.” I do not thing, fair reviewer, that this is the gotcha you think it is.
You also don’t need to pretend the book is overly reliant on the story of Kandiaronk, because it would work just as well if they cut it, and it just makes me think you didn’t read past the first chapter or two.
What Graeber and Wengrow do very well is make it so manifestly, obviously true that both the savage-to-civilized and leaving-eden narratives are reductive and false, and that the history of prehistoric man is varied, thrilling, and filled with myriad counterfactual examples to these made up narratives.
There’s also a lot of sort of meta arguing about Rousseau and Hume and the people responsible for these two ill-conceived narratives of humanity, but that part is boring and skippable and honestly should have been edited out. They have this whole second point about how “not only that, these non-western cultures have exhibited a profound influence on western thinking throughout all of humanity and the concept of a noble savage is BS and” yeah, we all kind of figured that and it’s not as powerful of a point. I think it could have made a great second, separate book, if Graeber hadn’t tragically passed away. It would have been interesting in its own right, some ammo when you’re stuck talking to your philosophy major friend.
But it’s not as powerful as Humanity’s destiny is not pre-determined by history and there is a better way possible for us.
Whew! Now I get to finish out the year reading sci fi and I am very excited.
About three days ago my stats on this newsletter, on Substack, doubled. I didn’t get, like, a ton of new subscribers, it’s just that suddenly everyone started opening it and reading it. This was nice, I was flattered, but it seemed… odd?
Then yesterday, I was in a meeting, and Matt reported that Timehop’s email open rate had doubled because of the instilling of a new privacy feature in iOS fifteen that wires tracking pixels, even when the user hasn’t actually read the email.
Ahh. That’s what’s happening.
And. Wow. A lot of people read their email on their phones, and a lot of people have updated to iOS fifteen. You guys are a savvy bunch!
Are you excited about Christmas? I kinda…. am? Jane is, she is very excited about holiday cards. She checks the mail for them expectantly every day on our walk. She counts them every morning. It makes me love holiday cards as well, so thank you all who have sent holiday cards.
Having an interesting discussion in my Slack group about Santa and kids. Emma and I are not doing Santa. We both didn’t want to, and we both worried the other one was gonna make us, and when we both realized the one of us wasn’t gonna make the other one, we both thought “screw it.” Obviously there are no ramifications so far, I mean, she never sees other kids. We’ll see how it goes when she goes to school. Emma wasn’t raised with Santa and she said it was mostly fine, she just said “We don’t believe it that” and people mostly let that go. So, we will see!
Here’s a fact about the music industry I learned from a music industry newsletter yesterday, talking about BTS fans trying to get their new song to the top of the charts (they succeeded): “Spotify’s charts reportedly only count 10 plays within a 24 hour period for an artist.” Did you know this? Does that seem reasonable? I have definitely listened to, actively listened to, the same song more than ten times in a single day on Spotify. I suspect Taylor Swift got shafted by this rule the day “All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)” came out.
Okay let’s do a mix. Just a mix, no theme. New Brande Carlile album is fucking awesome. New Moses Sumney track is great. Old Olivia Newton John track is my childhood in a song. Huh I guess this one is mostly oldies huh? That’s okay sometimes we need oldies. I mean, that Jesus Jones song is four years old, but I suspect four years does not count as an “oldie” Jesus Jones song. Ditto James. That Rihanna track is one of her best and no one knows it because it was from a Star Trek soundtrack I wonder if she’s pissed she didn’t put it on an album. “Townie” is Mitski’s best track, thus far, though early rumblings of the new album might give it a run for its money.
Oh hey! My COVID test was negative. WOO HOOO. I am so excited I got through that trip scott free. Time to hunker down for another six months. Disturbingly, that doesn’t even seem disturbing at this moment.
Talk to you guys tomorrow!
ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THAT PICTURE OF YOUR WEE GOTH?!
but re: covid, it really is everywhere right now. so glad i’m boosted. (although at this point, i feel like i’m only delaying the inevitable.)