7. The Origins of Male Dominance and Hierarchy; what David Graeber and Jordan Peterson get wrong

Why are male dominance, patriarchy and political hierarchy so prevalent across human societies and across time?
According to anthropologists David Graeber & David Wengrow it’s because people were “self-consciously experimenting with different social possibilities,” and we somehow got stuck this way.
Meanwhile according to Jordan Peterson, it’s just human nature.
Thankfully for humanity, both of these views are very wrong.
PLEASE SHARE AND LET PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS SERIES!!
I purposefully don’t monetize my channel in order to spare you the annoying ads, and it takes me weeks to make these, so please help if you can!
PATREON PER EPISODE DONATIONS: / whatispolitics
KO-FI ONE TIME OR MONTHLY DONATIONS: ko-fi.com/whatispolitics
PAYPAL ONE TIME OR MONTHLY DONATIONS: www.paypal.com...
FULL TRANSCRIPT: worldwidescrot...
FULL BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH LINKS : / 45019285
AUDIO PODCAST: www.podfollow.... or search for “worbs” on your podcast app
AUDIO PODCAST RSS FEED: feeds.feedburne...
ALL MUSIC BY *69 starsixnine.bandcamp.com
spotify.link/x...
tweeter: @worbsintowords
KZbin: / whatispolitics69

[@mimicuterabbit2549]

Im a 17 yo girl who is currently interested in social issues and it’s the first video I see from your channel. It is super constructive and helps me better to understand the world around me ! I will share it with my friends and family, and it will be a pleasure to see your other videos !

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you! i’m glad you found it to be useful - sadly you can get a PhD in anthropolgy or Gender Studies today and not learn any of this stuff!

[@renujha3104]

Exactly💯

[@voiceofvishwa5475]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 haha

[@gregoryallen0001]

andrea dworkin 👁 👁

[@mimicuterabbit2549]

@@gregoryallen0001 I read some of her works ! She has an interesting analysis

[@NatLawrenceMusic]

detailed, material analysis of historical power systems, that critiques and synthesizes expert opinions, and then backs up it's conclusions with peer-reviewed academic research?? What is this? I came to bread tube for videos about how actually Disney is problematic, and to read everyone in the comments section call each other liberals or tankies. Thank you for making this!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

haha thanks! ill make an anti disney episode if you want ... and i will discuss the russian revolution at some point so i’m sure everyone will be pissed off. I try not to do all the usualy online asshole stuff - though i think maybe i was too mean to graeber in this episode. i do love him, but sometimes he drives me nuts.

[@veritasetcaritas]

So well said.

[@fab03102]

I watched this video after reading this comment of yours. After watching it, I can assert that this comment is massively inaccurate and in many ways the opposite of reality. See my own comment to this video.

[@choosecarefully408]

In a way, you just nailed all of it. But I find that the hardest thing is to get anyone, no matter what their POV to discuss the _why_ of anything. "I came to bread tube... to read everyone in the comments section call each other liberals or tankies." Right. Cool joke about how others think. Except... are *you **_really_* any different? Or is that humor meta? Try to get anyone in Western society to _NOT_ try & defend any aspect of 'Government' by saying things would be worse if we had any of the other systems & if you _could_ distance yourself from your _own_ Preconceived Notions (PNs), *could you see* how this is nothing but a 100% mindless reaction? I don't know. Asked directly this way in a format where no one can see your own defensive facial expressions, everyone will of course say yes, initially. But I can prove you all instant hypocrites with just kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z3SoYZmDmb2dj68 which causes you all _instantly_ to fly to the defense of your corrupt politicians. It *NEVER* fails. That's the power of PNs; I've never yet met anyone else who isn't 100% controlled by their warm, comforting familiar prejudices. Let's see if I get any bites.

[@tytre44]

Swear this dude might of created the most clear concise and complete description of what power is and how it operates in society and most importanay why very eye ipening

[@Synochra]

the sheer density of knowledge you're presenting in a continuous, perfectly arranged stream is simply mind boggling to me

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

haha thanks man - it’s been gurgling in my brain for like 20 years or so, and i finally have an outlet for it… nice to be appreciated for it! it’s crazy work but rewarding

[@Synochra]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 your channel is a godsend. I am politically active in the German left party and we are going through a massive internal crisis right now on all levels from local to national/federal. I'm sure much of the conflicts and the manner in which they take place would be familiar to you. Anyways I think content like yours can be really helpful to our work right on the grass roots level as we try to rebuild and reorient! enough with the ass kissing now haha sorry 😋

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@Synochra oh damn, yes i heard die linke got whupped last election - is there also a meltdown happening due to the identity politics type of issues that are causing all the NGOs in the US (and the candian green party as well!) to collapse? electoral politics are very hard because there’s an element of compromise that’s necessary more than in other types of activism, and you can’t try big experiments as much as you can with small organizations - but i feel like at some point any organization that wants to accomplish something on a large scale, is going to have to start saying goodbye to most of the students and stop worrying about what they think, and all the debates and controversies that are so important to them, and start reaching out to all the regular people out there - today we can see soooo much left wing sentiment, that’s getting more and more absorbed by idiotic right wing parties that will only exacerbate all the issues that peopel are upset about. and it’s only possible because people don’t understand the greater context, and also very much can sense by instinct that the student class is not really on their side and that they can’t be trusted. Like if they say or think the wrong thing they’ll be ostracized, fired etc. you can’t build solidarity like that.

[@lane8728]

This video is a better history education than I was given in my entire schooling life. Thank you for the incredible resource, will be checking out the rest of your videos soon

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

hard to come up with a better compliment than that, thank you so much, hope you get as much out of the other videos!

[@raphaelward1711]

i didn't see any history in here at all, it is pure ideology, no dates, no historical facts, no thread of history - perhaps some meta historical discussion in an attempt to back an ideological position - what history did you learn?

[@rhys1991]

@@raphaelward1711 You are clearly not approaching these videos in good faith. All the sources are listed below his videos. Furthermore, exact dates aren't so relevant when discussing the development of hierarchies in human societies... alsoooo anyone who comments "it's just pure ideology" is obviously not actually looking to discuss the content or topics discussed. Have a good night or day and next time actually engage with the content or videos, kind regards from Australia.

[@cookiesnbubbles]

I'm a big fan of David Graeber's work, but I can acknowledge that in the "why" of changing social structures, he was missing this lens. I found this quite informative and really added to my perspective of Debt: the First 5,000 Years and also The History of Capitalism in Seven Cheap Things

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thanks - yes, I love most of his stuff too, but whenever he talks about egalitarian societies or tries to reject materialist explanations for thing i usually want to cringe (sometimes he does score a couple of points against 2d materialist explanations for things). My most recent episode and the ones i’m working on now are a critique of his new book, and the one I’m putting out in a few days goes through his work over the years on egalitarianism and i do a mini history of hunter gatherer studies so you can see that every time you reading him saying “egalitarian society” that the examples he gives are never actual egalitarian societies and that he had some weird ill conceived crusade against the entire concept of egaltiarianism

[@seanterrell6155]

Such deep questions that I run into with conservative friends who seem to believe in a determinist reality of hierarchy and patriarchy, I have been wondering about these questions for a long time but have yet to find concise essays about them. Great stuff

[@wachuku1]

Sir, this is nothing short of a tour de force. Even as someone familiar with much of the subject matter, I cannot begin to express how deeply enlightening listening to this podcast has been for me, and how useful your dissection has been, especially with your providing copious references.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you, i’ll take it!

[@lyrablack8621]

Holy shit. Subscribed. Edit²: I JUST REALIZED YOU HAVE THE FULL TRANSCRIPT IN THE DESCRIPTION!! RESPECT!!!

[@LouisaMoss]

Thank you. I have less creases in my brow now because you effectively verbalised all the things I've been struggling with in my head and could never find the words for. Liked, subscribed and shared

[@frans7995]

Well of course, its everything youd every want to hear to justify things to yourself

[@TheStephaneAdam]

@@frans7995 Triggered Peterson fan here.

[@JayFortran]

While my brow creases less, my brain matter creases further

[@tytre44]

This was the greatest KZbin video I’ve seen. Iv been trying to find someone to explain what power is and why/how it exist in society over time. Best explanation ever exactly what I was looking for. New subscriber well earned

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thanks! see how simple it is? no need for all that confused foucault garbage!

[@arnoldkapinova3685]

Oh man I love Graeber and Wengrow, I'm still supporting their arguments, but this is a great critique. I still think though, that their assesment doesn't totally exclude material conditions as important factors for the creation of hierarchies or their absence; they are just trying to emphasize a much lesser-known view. And as experienced anthropologist & archaeologist (whose fieldwork took them in so many places and timelines) it's maybe easier for them to see the entanglement of imagination, cosmology, material conditions, possibilities, creative refusal (Check Graeber's essay "Culture as creative refusal) etc. Overall, we shouldn't forget that the categories we use to study societies which percepted reality in fundamentally different ways to ours cannot give the ultimate answers to the questions we are asking. Love this channel already!! Subscribed!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

Hi, thanks, much appreciated! I agree that Graeber and Wengrow aren’t totally against materialist arguments, both because it’s impossible to be completely against material arguments, but also because they wrote another article together (Many Seasons Ago) where they acknowledge many materialist arguments while also trying to argue against them for a specific case. Also Graeber in another article that I forget the title of that he was putting forth a specifically materialist argument for something. But in this case for hierarchy and equality, they’re really trying to emphasize that people can choose what they want, and they’re really trying to dismiss material determinism as much as possible. There’s a terrible passage in there where they try to specifically dismiss material explanations for seasonal variations in social structure, without explicitly rejecting material explanations (because they probably know that they can’t) which ends up making their statement total gibberish - but it’s easy to miss because Graeber is such a great writer. In general, despite his brilliance and knowledge I can’t take anything Graeber says about hierarchy and equality seriously because he consistently and purposefully ignores all the literature on immediate return hunter gatherer societies. Like if you read the intro to On Kings, he makes it sound like even the most egalitarian societies have hierarchical religions, but it’s totally not true, it’s only true if you ignore the most egalitarian societies that exist, which he always does for some weird reason. Anthropologist Chris Knight in a recent episode of the Alpha to Omega podcast talks about this aspect of Graeber’s work and he has another video about it as well and it’s a good addition to my arguments in this video. The fact that Graeber’s work never discusses these societies is totally insane given that he’s an anarchist. These cultures are the best evidence that anarchism is possible for human beings, and not only possible but that we’re very well adapted for it over other forms. After my next episode coming out any day now (audio podcast version, the video will take another couple of weeks) I’m doing a big QnA where I’ll go over in depth what happens in practical terms if you try to make social change based on Graeber’s approach as outlined in his articles with David Wengrow, and why I made such a big deal about it.

[@arnoldkapinova3685]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Right, didn't quite know much of this stuff... would be looking forward to the video then. I always justified somehow Graeber for skipping examples or parts in some cases because what he wants to emphasize are often quite authentic and unprecedented ideas. I'm an archaeologist and usually very suspicious when anyone is trying to make large scale explanations about Palaeolithic society out of what is left of Palaeolithic architecture (this has been my least favorite part of their mobumental essay in Eurozine), but somehow still felt convinced by their arguments (maybe because they are so close to my own worldview hehe). But yeah, totally in for any critic on the matter dude, go ahead!

[@FlauFly]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 What are these most egalitarian societies?

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@FlauFly like you want a list of them? There are basically 5 groups of societies. There’s the central african rainforest pygmy groups (Mbuti, Mbendjele, Aka, Efe, Bayaka), there the kalahari desert bush societies (Ju/Hoansi and others I can’t remember), there’s the Hadza, there the south indian mountain forest societies (Nayaka, and i think Pandaram and Paliyan) the Malaysian rainforest societies (Batek and I think Penan). I think the Montagnais-Naskapi in the 17th century also count. All of these societies practice the same form of hunting and gathering, called “immediate return” foraging which is most likely what most of our ancestors were doing in the Palaeolithic.

[@FlauFly]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Thanks, and yes, I wanted list of them. So, immediate question that come to mind which maybe you could help with in your future episodes: are we in the left, anarchists and the like, can have any hope for egalitarian society at scale, because for sure we can't have immediate return gatherers society at scale.

[@maybepriyansh9193]

After all these years of using the internet do I finally feel truly satiated and excited to have it. Waiting for your 11.2 video!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

the internet is wack! 11.2 is gonna be mind blowing if i do say so myself

[@MegaGraceiscool]

Wow that was amazing. I've never even considered this thought process but it makes so much sense. Thank you so much for laying things out so plainly

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you! i’m proud of this, i feel like i put together some things in ways that haven’t been clearly articulated before.

[@peterreyes9919]

Thank you for this. You’ve made me think of patriarchy in ways that I never had before. I’m really enjoying this series, and I appreciate what you’re doing.

[@pbohearn]

Truly an eye-opener. We are indoctrinated into certain assumptions about the world and reality and from those the theories and stories develop and we never question the original assumptions their veracity, the evidence etc. I love that battle of the sexes game that you described with tug-of-war and I think it should be a reality show on TV LOL. There’s somethings so great about the humor and psycho drama that diffuses so much toxicity by engaging in a comical struggle and caricatures and stereotypes in a humorous way. But you didn’t address the hierarchies that are seen in the animal kingdom who are hunter gatherers not farmers. It’s predictable & it doesn’t change.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

very true about humour! we evolved it for a reason, and that might be a big part of it. for animals hierarchies, they don’t change that much because their conditions don’t change all that much - most animals are adapted to limited niches, and also even for animals that can survive in a broader variety of environments, without projectile weapons you’ll tend to end up with the same stronger types and better coalition builders dominating - but it’s not true that there’s no change. look up Sapolsky pacific culture among baboons - in a troupe of baboobs where all the alpha males died from food poisoning after hogging all the poisoned food, the lower ranking males made sure than no new alphas could emerge and created a much less violent less hierarchical culture, and they made sure that immigrating baboons respected the new norms. www.zoology.ubc.ca/~bio336/Bio336/Readings/Sapolsky2004.pdf

[@tychoclavius4818]

The best channel on KZbin. I'll recommend you whenever I can

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

love to hear that, thank you so much! makes it worth it to do these!

[@tychoclavius4818]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 You mentioned your professor. What's your background? Sociology? Anthropology?

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@tychoclavius4818 I have a master’s in anthropology and a law degree. Salzman is an expert on nomadic pastoral societies and a real right winger, but he was also one of my favourite profs because he was a materialist so we could argue a lot but it would be productive because we were speaking the same language - like two scientists arguing about something vs a scientist and a new age person, which is what it felt like sometimes talking to the pomo profs.

[@tychoclavius4818]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 sorry, what are pomo profs? I do get what you mean though, really interesting how despite viewing the world through the same lens, doesn't mean you reach the same conclusions or end up with the same ideology. But from that point you can at least have grounded, productive discussions.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@tychoclavius4818 i mean postmodernist, poststructuralist profs. materialist perspectives are viewed as outdated in many anthro departments, and because of some really weird theoretical fads even asking why people do something is considered a no no. it’s pretty insane.

[@genk9798]

This comment is an offering for the algorithm. I'm here from St Andrewism btw. This is the first of your videos that I have seen and I enjoyed it enough to subscribe. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of your content!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you for the algorithmic support and thanks to saint andrew, i’ve never had so many subscribers and great comments and views in such a short amount of time!

[@jessicastewart42]

Same

[@boneladders]

my brain thrives on breaking down complex topics down to their basic constituents, and watching your vids has been a field day. it's so satisfying to watch as normalized conditions that people take for granted get unraveled and shown for how ultimately arbitrary they are. crazy shit started happening to bipedal ape behaviors cuz ice sheets melted. life is a gigantic circus and as we become more self-aware and capable of using knowledge to defy our reactionary instincts, we can choose to perform in the circus with more empathy

[@mifunesaurus]

Got this video recommended by Saint Andrewism and man was it captivating. I remember reading Harari's book Sapiens, and while he did a good job explaining why common explanations of male dominance don't make sense, his explanation was basically left at, "we don't really know." As an aside, what conditions make it such that a society favors avunculocality? And what are the consequences of that arrangement? It seems like a really peculiar way to tell where new couples must go live.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

in episode 8 i explain the reasons for matrilocality, and in the bilbiography for this episode (7) there’s an article called “who lives where and why” and they explain avunculocality - basically it’s a way to maximize defense when two nearby matrilocal societies start attacking eachother. I think the article is paywalled or something so here’s the relevant passage: “ Consider now what might happen were neighboring matrilocal communities to begin fighting among themselves. The danger ofsudden raids would increase, as would the desirability of keepingbrothers together. And since men exercise authority in their sisters’homes and villages even after marriage, they might have to defend asister’s group in a conflict involving members of their own localgroup! We might well expect people in that situation to change to apost-marital residence option that localizes males rather thanfemales.5 There are only two ways that could be accomplished. A matrilo-cal people without important matrilineal descent groups could sim-ply shift to patrilocality. To do that might be highly destabilizing ifthey had functional matrilineal descent groups, however. In thatcase it would be better to find a way to localize males without dis-turbing the matrilineal descent groups. Only avunculocality meetsthe need, by localizing men related through the female line.”

[@mifunesaurus]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Thank you for the detailed explanation! I had tried to access the article, but it only allowed me to read the first page. Also, I started watching your other videos and it's been a while since I found such a thoroughly well-researched and data-backed series. Real props.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@mifunesaurus thank you! i know you can download that chapter somehow without signing in because i did it, but i cant remember how!

[@lijwrites]

How did it take me this long to find this? Seriously, this video is a great education and an awesome resource for the book I'm writing about a fictional world which has historically been matriarchal rather than patriarchal. You've given me the tools I needed to write a compelling society where women are the de facto decision makers and run the world. Matrilocation, the advantages/disadvantages of agricultural and foraging societies, and how egalitarianism and hierarchy are effected by both, is going to make my world (and future books' worlds) a lot more interesting.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

very cool - see episode 8 where i explain why matrilocality exists and talk a bit about the haudenosaunee who are matrilocal - and then look at the bibliography of this episode and ep 8 for more on that

[@lijwrites]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Thanks, I'm on it

[@danazacharias2111]

bread tube seems to be turning into bread academy and I kinda like it

[@sad-qy7jz]

Exactly. Brings a tear to my eye. Responding to the brief period of bad optics and sour idpol buzzfeed takes of 2010-2014 with the true “facts over feels” and “logic and reasoning”. I mean it isn’t hard when our ideology actually is vested in understanding science philosophy snd the nature of reality while using it to create an ethical, cohesive, and egalitarian vision for people and livings things while meanwhile the right is running on faulty logic that only applies to systems that enforce exploitation, control, and axiomatic values incompatible with bettering society

[@sad-qy7jz]

@@aldoushuxley5953 I’m not saying “I’m smart and everyone else is an idiot”. Lol but Ironically, you’re kind of doing what I’m talking about:) I’m saying conservatism is the less ethical/value based ideology (we literally differentiate them as “equality” versus “hierarchy”), that much of conservatism is centered on defending Free market Capitalism as a logistical, practical, not inherently exploitative plight which is simply not true- like, I am confident that I could debunk the shit out of anyone who tells me otherwise. I am not somebody with a formal political background outside of the slight overlap in my field, and feel like I understand capitalism and neoliberalism better than all these saps. I think conservatism as a concept is kind of messy and incompatible with the evolving nature of humanity- the only practical points that one could technically argue that have a solid premise would severely compromise my ethics and values or is just completely unnecessary and does more harm than good. So do I think anarchies-leftist ideology is superior to conservatism. I’m not superior to anyone. And fuck Ben Shapiro. Showing a dead, mutilated premature baby that somebody who wanted to be pregnant and have their child had no choice but to medically abort due to emergency complications, and he flashes it up on the screen acting as if it’s a realistic depiction of a legal, first-term fetus post- abortion (can confirm looks nothing like human child) but none the less showing absolutely no morality or ethical boundaries. I am generally a very respectful and patient person, but I don’t owe him any kindness. I don’t think very right winger is an idiot at all. I think the ideology is stupid at best and morally barbaric and stupid at worst, but everyone doesn’t have the same values as I do. Thanks for sharing though. Not like I asked for it, but it be the season of giving

[@sad-qy7jz]

@@aldoushuxley5953 to be perfectly honest, when my position requires a longer winded response and I’m challenging ideas from a more pro-cap, right wing person I usually just get “ugh you expect me to read all that”, “uhhh you’re just making up words and bringing irrelevant fields into this”, or “yeah lost at the first paragraph”. So forgive me if at this point I’m more or less venting and working on my arguments, and don’t expect the person to which I’m responding to actually be trying to process and engage with me. Perhaps that’s because I tend to be in spaces that don’t have many centrist or more reasonable and mature positions, so it’s usually people I have more common ground with or an unrealistically idiotic and close-minded sample of those who oppose my general positions. I do appreciate you at least having a reasonable response and engaging instead of arguing in bad faith and not bothering to consider my points, and you understand the depth of the context. Morality is subjective. And I do firmly believe at the end of the day, it comes down to personal values. And if you’re going off the “what’s good and what’s bad” definition or morality , sure some people might view equality, liberty, self expression, kindness, etc as bad (I’m not pretending like the pillars of leftist thinking are like kindness, love everyone and sunshine and conservatives are evil ayn rands but point is, I’m not arguing that anything from liberty to thinking about the feelings of others are everybody’s core values). However, let’s look at your point that more or less points to simply valuing private property, having the option to have bounties wealth if you wish, personal responsibility, and not being entitled to looking out for others. You didn’t use every phrase there, but you or more or less were saying those views and other pro-capitalist liberal and conservative views might be moral in that sense , right? This is why i detest capitalism, and believe such extreme capitalism like that of the US compared to even Germany creates a certain paradox. Whether it’s everyone’s intention or not, the playing field is not fair. Personal responsibility and hard work are extremely relative and subjective. If you’re born into an impoverished neighborhood, in a dysfunctional household with parents who also underwent trauma and didn’t receive much education, are not exposed to much outside of the culture of this community, experience barriers like violence, food insecurity, normalization of substance abuse, etc, go to a garbage school system that probably only has a handful of college prep classes and is incapable of comparing to better quality schools/offering the resources to give kids living in poverty a fair shot... or a charter school that isn’t much better, and has certain powers as a private institution that would universally be considered ineffective, unfair, and anti education even by the bare minimal standards for public education (I have worked at a charter school, and low income public schools, and attended both in a diff state when I was little so believe me they exist. Some might be better than others but empirical data suggests my experience is not unique). But I digress- with these conditions alone, that this person is born into and probably will not grasp the scope of how they will affect their future during early childhood’s most formative years- seriously what chance does that person resllt have at succeeding? The level of “personal responsibility”, “hard work” etc required for many people in this position to even attend/afford college, move to a safer and more affluent area and simply get a regular person job would be immense compared to somebody born into wealth, status and power. Even taking somebody who was born into a more middle class, and stable household, but nonetheless not much.. maybe their parents make a collective 70k-90k but that’s not much when you factor in how much it costs to give multiple children a healthy, secure, enriching and quality life. So some sacrifice will have to take place that non working class families would never even consider. And what if they experience trauma, an unexpected death of a parent, their parents become drug addicts ... handling this and staying afloat now require financial resources that are mo longer available or even realistic. (Again my two cents as a licensed social worker who primarily works with clients who have underwent trauma, substance abuse, or ongoing crisis. I accept all insurance which is NOT COMMON. Often Medicare/Medicaid and generic plans offered through most lower tier jobs are an absolute haste to deal with, talking hours of pointless paperwork, phone calls, additional screenings and notes to prove my client actually needs my services- and generally it takes me months to get paid, and it’s very inconsistent. So I do this because it’s worth it for me to make myself available for those who otherwise may not have access, but it heavily affects my financial stability, and given the climate most private practice therapists who probably are drowning in student loans still if they’re my age, couldn’t save much money during their education bc the typical routes being PhD in psych or MSW + 3000 supervised and documented hours before license can be obtained in a low paying community mental health facility). This is just a sliver of how things are, I would be writing a book if I addressed all the conditions that kinda destroy the “choices” and opportunity to see hard work pay off most working class people have. And even if you don’t have any such experience, I’m glad you don’t struggle, but I also don’t think a society that lets down the majority of irs citizens down that are required to do the hard work is a very good one, even if I were to just be incredibly lucky. Also, let’s say I do want to just work my ass off and become a billionaire... a. You can’t do this without exploiting people and hoarding wealth. There is no way. There’s a reason the small, mom & pop, locally sourced, fair trade cafes that pay their employees very well relative to the work they do and price their items fairly based on what the community loves and the unique talents of the family ain’t bob Evans or McDonald’s. And even starting a small business venture like that is NOT EASY. The risk necessary to not be exploitative or unfair is absurd. You might have your dream of owning your own cafe, solidarity and cohesion among your staff who profit fairly, being a pillar to the community and sharing your talent.. but with the very little return, and intense labor and time spent to simply maintain the place the perks of that dream go away, and you’re not making much more than you would with many other jobs and gigs that would have been less rewarding. So because of this but because capitalism exists and we have a market... a big one too through which we depend heavily on places like China and the global south.. the only way to offer social safety net or welfare programs is through taxation. In my opinion, if you’re either rich as duck and likely profit as a result of other people’s work/your birthright social connections and don’t want to part with a meer fraction because you prefer keeping poor people poor and minimum wage lower OR you DO NOT really have to give up much through taxes because you’re in a lower tax bracket, or or in a mid tier tax bracket but still make very good money and nonetheless wouldn’t really face any tangible inconvenience but refuse to because “I made it not government”. Then I’m sorry, I find that immoral. You either believe you’re entitled to live in excessive and unnecessary luxury because the system went that way and refuse to allow for anyone else to have a slightly more fair shot, or you know the few dollars you’re going to lose out of your lower middle class salary won’t even be noticeable, and you could save the lives of children, families, vets, victims and ppl in general but don’t want to cuz “it’s yours”, I find that extremely selfish and that’s not how I operate. I think innovation snd bettering society and focusing on our individual happiness, interests, and unique personhood would be optimized if people didn’t have to worry about eating and buying a house or whether their kid could get an education or you could afford their pediatric bills. And I don’t like the government either, and still resent that I have to trust them to even do what they say they will with tax dollars intended for welfare. Our current system really is designed to just keep people poor and lose their benefits the second they are able to get a better job, but still transitioning into stability and still need the food stamps, housing, ACA etc to be successful at working that new job and qualify for a better one in which they can get a nicer home and support themselves.. hence why people just stop trying or get jobs on the side secretly, sell food stamps etc .. but it’s not acceptable for me to let them suffer more. But I don’t think a right wing economy is ethical or able to function in a way that rewards 90 percent of pol

[@sad-qy7jz]

@@aldoushuxley5953 I’m sorry I haven’t gotten the chance to read it provide my full attention as well as a thoughtful response. I skimmed it this morning and once I have time I will for sure get back to you! Also sorry about all the typos in my first post. Once I read I’ll give you the respect of proof reading my response too haha

[@sad-qy7jz]

@auldus Huxley okay I have read all but the last two of your replies, so I’ll add more shortly, but let me put this out there: I don’t believe in god. I was raised by what can be defined as secular Buddhism. I have studied the Bible and it’s historical context/translation complications/culture etc.. and although fascinating and telling about anthropology and the history of spirituality- and I do find parts of the gospel and the lore of Jesus Christ to be quite beautiful, my morality is rooted in wholism, and I Hinduism and Zen Buddhism hold a lot of practical meaning to me. I was raised vegan, on the principle that actions have consequences, I am special, validate, of worth but not entitled. Interestingly your indication a lit meat and culture I quite agree with. For instance, people seem to think I would shudder at the sight of a steak or I’m going to try to show them cowspiracy... people socialized into cultures where they don’t think twice about the animals they eat or how they were killed cannot be blamed. It amazes me how people are disgusted and horrified by the festivals in China where dogs are ritually tortured and consumed. Which of course having grown up with many dog companions and comrades i try to avoid it, but I can’t help but think “you know a pig is just as social, evidenced to be as intelligent, domestic , etc as a dog... squids and birds are immensely intelligent, cows are sacred India, and I’ve felt pain for the animals we torture in western culture my whole life... why does this animal matter more ?” So consistency is a big deal to me. How long have you lived in America? I’m glad you are having a great experience in university and you’re taken care of. But I do think it’s fair to acknowledge that the reality you are part of as an immigrant who got to “shoot their shot” and is here to attend school within that scope differs from me who has lived here through 9/11, the rise of the internet, the heroin epidemic, war on terror etc.. I have very radical views on drugs. I’m not sure if you have taken any specific classes thru college but my drugs in the America’s course along with my own experience as a heroin addict (briefly), and now on the other side working with “addicts” and volunteering at needle drives. I believe all drugs should be decriminalized. If this was the case there would be no black market for drugs. If some sketchy guy tried to rob me or coerce me over drugs I could just call the police. The appeal and lucrative nature of illicit drugs only applies because they’re illicit. Have you read up on the hydra effect? We have immense historical evidence that making drugs illegal is pointless because demand isn’t going away and it’s a lucrative business and chance at making money for those who were fed the American dream hey are doomed to poverty, or stagnation. Their illegality gives them value. Their illegality creates a culture of militia and underground activity. Their illegality is what made it even logical for Escobar to become a massive drug kingpin. Not just that, but why on earth would you throw somebody in jail for what they choose to put in their body on their own time? I think nearly all drugs can be safe in moderation.. in fact I believe the condition of modernity and neoliberal capitalism added to the danger... the drive for things to be constantly getting faster, stronger, more efficient, more of a dopamine rush, better than the last guy.. smoking opium is nothing like shooting heroin coming from somebody who used to shoot up heroin lol. Chewing coacoa leaves is nothing like snorting or shooting chemical cocaine.. research chems that last hours are not psilocybin mushrooms, and Xanax is not Kratom.. I could go on.. but my morals are rooted in utilitarianism, some wholism (We are part of nature, part of humanity, when the whole hurts the parts and the sum of the parts hurt). I believe it is impossible to become self actualized, focus on one’s true potential, and enjoy independence and self-indulgence if a pro-social society does not exist. I need to check out your reference for that list again, but the US is ofc not the only horrible place with bad capitalism... Russia, my parents’ and grandparents’ home country where I often visit is full on oligarchy. South Korea is horribly capitalist. Nordic regions that rank higher also have MUCH smaller economies, MUCH MORE socialism, and the “capitalism” or rather features of capitalism occur based on the fact that those conditions exist and other regulations and ethical cultural aspects allow for such. I don’t care for markets, but even if we started moving towards communism tomorrow, we can’t just poof them away. I think if we sacrifice being able to HAVE BILLIONAIRES, merging big corporations w\ politics, allowing for monopolies, predatory and exploitative outsourcing, a large economy, etc.. then sure, I wouldn’t mind this in principle. But my main issue, is that the system that is Capitalism, and America’s neoliberal flavor have been created historically to maintain the hierarchies and exploitative/imperialist/entitled ways of feudalism which I can for sure source. I will further address your other posts shortly. I do not think we have desires all that different, and I think the differences in culture and national identity affect how we see things which we should acknowledge... I do want to fully read the rest and make sure I understand you entirely. But so far I think you do understand things from a more material perspective (if you haven’t taken any philosophy classes or bothered much with the matter I recommend you investigate the material versus ideal approach, it’s been very helpful in navigating my political journey) (Edit forgot to tag, also big paragraphs again sorry but I would rather express myself when people are listening

[@bumipunkti]

This was so interesting and detailed! I was putting off watching this video for a while now because I love David Graeber, but I'm glad I did. I'm looking forward to the videos you hinted at here!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thanks! hopefully you can still love david graeber, but with a bit more of a critical eye when he starts talking about equality... within the next month i’m putting out a line by line reading of the two articles that i criticized in this video so i can go over exactly what it is thats right and wrong in these articles and what’s known and unknown (and whats foolish), and a bit about the state of anthropology in general

[@bumipunkti]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Sure, I still find him brilliant, but I'm very glad I was made aware of his view on material analysis. That sounds really great! Actually, since I found out about David Graeber, I became interested in anthropology and regret not having known more about it before I chose my course of studies, so some insight into the state of anthropology sounds very interesting!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@bumipunkti graeber isn’t totally against materialist analysis btw - but he often argues against material explanations for things. my biggest criticism of him is that he doesn’t really believe in equality, and he’s always ignored the existence of very egalitarian hunter gatherers whenever he talks about equality, and focuses on more hierarchical hunter gatherers to try to argue that equality isn’t real, and the finally when he spoke about them late in his life, he really straw-manned the literature on them. i understand his motivations for doing this but i think it’s extremely counterproductive and just bad.

[@estebban345]

This series have been very enlightening so far. Thanks for all your effort

[@jordanabrams6315]

I loveeeeed this video. It helped me finish my thoughts and connect the dots for this essay about how the subjugation of women and nature are connected via patriarchal hierarchy and capitalism. You will be sited! And I plan on looking at this sources you provided! Thank you!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you, glad you found it useful! it’s crazy because that basic concept about patrilocal residence is 150+ year old anthropology (and africans and chinese and other people have known about this for hundreds of years) yet you can get your PhD in anthropology or gender studies today and never learn it!

[@evenmorenonsense]

Lot of info but it goes right to the root of what it is to wake up in the morning and be a person. Incredible. And I always suspected that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle we seem to have been built for has to be more enjoyable than whatever this situation is.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

i really encourage you to read some of the hunter gatherer ethnographies and articles linked to in the bibliography, life is not perfect, and there is conflict and drama, etc. but so many of the idiotic problems that are endemic to other societies just don’t exist in these societies. just NB that only immediate return forager societies are like this, other hunter gatherers have many of the same problems we’re familliar with.

[@jackneison]

Saint Andrew posted this fascinating video, and now I'm subbed. Excellent work!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you! i’ll have to thank Saint Andrew as well, a lot of people are checking these out today!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

hey by the way, can you post the link to his post here? I can’t seem to find it!

[@jackneison]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 if i can find it. He just shared it through the weird KZbin post thing. But I'll look for it.

[@jackneison]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Ok. Just found and did. Just go to Saint Andrewism's channel, then go to community, and it will be one of the first posts.

[@jackneison]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 shit. I just realized you were asking me to post his post here, not the other way around. KZbin doesn't seem to want to let me get a url for the post...

[@zacet]

This is one of my favourite videos so far, I have been writing critic of Jordan Peterson for a while that his paradigm is so invested in patriarchal thought-ware he isn't actually saying anything very radical just enhancing the status quo. I was wondering if you have looked at Gerta Lener's work on the origin of patriarchy? Also, there's definitely a connection between raids and patriolocality, however I wonder if that is a symptom of a change of economy rather than just a bunch of extra violent humans. What I mean is the change between a gift economy to one of exchange. I base this Idea, on work from Daniel Nave who lived with the nayaka in India, as their economy changed, their relationship to plants, animals and even women seemed to change. Before they cultivated or collected plants for selling they were very careful not to over harvest and not to cause unnecessary damage to the plants or animals as they were all a kind of individual person. However, once engaged in the exchange economy their relationship with cultivated plants was suddenly transformed, becoming disrespectful... Was wondering what you're thought on this? Also, I really appreciate you taking the time to answer comments on your channel, and for what it's worth IV told Russell brand to check out your channel, since I think this kind of critical thinking about culture and politics is right up his alley...

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

im not familliar with gerta lener, can you give me a summary of her thesis and which book or article to read? and what’s the name of the daniel nave article or book? and yes i agree 100% it’s not randomly violent people, people don’t risk their lives raiding for fun, it’s because of economic necessity or advantage. economy explains culture and social structure usually. the nayaka is a good example and you see that with other hunter gathers who end up pushed into farming or market production or wage labour, like the kalahari bushmen in the 1970s when the military and related local stores were hiring them. if you read colin turnbull’s stuff on the mbuti you see how the foragers vs farmers have completely different worldviews living in the same rainforest, and it’s the result of their different economies. raiding and conflict usually comes from resource scarcity, and even hunter gatherers will do it and also switch to patrilocality in those circumstances. Ha, I would love russell brand to see my show! thanks for that - I suspect he gets too many comments to check them out though, where did you tell him to check out my stuff?

[@zacet]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Gerda Lerner was a historian, I think one of the first to look into woman's history (since most is His-story). She wrote " The Creation of Patriarchy" in 1987, It basically tries to find how patriarchy was created from a historical perspective. She looks at historical documents and some of her conclusions are that the appropriation of women’s sexual reproductive capacity by men occurred prior to private property and class society, And its commodification lies at the foundation of private property. Also, that the state has always been a patriarchal structure created to maintain the patriarchy, as Womens sexual subordination was institutionalised in the earliest law codes. And that it's enforced by cooperation from woman, which they of course are socialized to do... that women have won many rights but are not yet emancipated. these are some of what she wrote about. and she mentions The androcentric fallacy, which I think fits Jordan Peterson's perspective... regarding the raiding, I'v been reading a book called Humankind (Rutger bregman) recently, very interesting regarding human violence or why we are not so violent.. it's kind of an anti thesis to Sapiens (Harrari) and challenges some ideas in Collapse by Diamond, you might like to check it out. And I get Russell's newsletter and he asks people to contact him about stuff they want him to look at, so I asked him to look at solutions for the poor way we, as humanity, are currently organizing ourselves, so I suggested to look at some ideas of egalitarianism, gift economies, sociocracy etc. including recommendations of some of the anthropological perspective... have no idea if he will engage with it, but he must have a team of people going through it to decide what they are interested in exploring next... but he is very obviously not a fan of the current partisan, neo-capitalist, corporate ruled solution..

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@zacet oh wow, russel brand must have a big team - even me with a small amount of viewers I can find it tough to respond to everything, i can’t imagine how he could get through it with millions of followers! The Gerda Lerner stuff sounds interesting but also like it’s missing the main cause of patriarchy! it’s also what graeber and wengrow miss - any oppressive hierarchy is always going to be rooted in some people having a bargaining advantage relative to other people. so when you see an exploited or oppressed group you want to ask what is it that causes them to have a disadvantage of bargaining power vs the group which oppresses them. if you’re not asking that questions you end up on all sorts of tangents and mistaking effect for cause etc…

[@zacet]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 i think she does look at that, she says that the reason is, after you raid another group, it's easier to enslave women by getting them pregnant so they can't run away as they are vulnerable and then they will stay for their children... If you try to enslave a man after raiding etc. You need to take out his eyes or mutilate him in a way so he can't run away... so doesn't make the best slave, Until the invention of metal shackles. So once woman are slaves and their children are also slaves, you can now trade them with other men (like what Levi Strauss was talking about exchange of woman). She backed this up by historical documents from ancient times and the Bible etc. I think her tesis is similar to yours just from a historical perspective, and she wanted to create a history for woman, as she felt that was one of the ways woman were oppressed, by not knowing how important they are. Since all the history books are mostly about men at war etc. And depicted as creators of culture, and there wasn't history about women doing all the rest and playing vital roles in culture creation (like rasing children, making food etc.)

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@zacet interesting - that does make sense - except a woman can still run away until like 1-2 months preganant depending how far they are from home, and it can take a few months to get pregannt… so they still need to physically hold you captive for that long. anyhow it sounds like there would be a ton of interesting historical stuff in there even if the conclusions might be off, worth looking at, thanks!

[@barancekim3060]

This is one of the best KZbin channel I have ever encountered. Please continue, you are doing an amazing job.

[@geoffdparsons]

really like the video, clarified a lot of questions i’ve had for a while, but the one thing that is still unclear is how we get from agriculture is a lot of work and sucks to agriculture produces way more food and allows for agricultural societies to dominate

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

i think i talk about this in episode 6 - but agriculture is less fun, and usually less nutritious, but it proffers a military advantage because you end up having much higher population density. it takes about 1-10 square km to support one hunter gatherer, but you can support up to 1000 rice farmers on 1 sq km of land. hunting and gathering also disincentivizes population growth because more people means resources get gobbled up faster, so foragers deliberate practice birth control to keep their population growth slow, for example they breastfeed until age 4 or so and breastfeeding prevents pregnancy, and have like 1 kid every 4 years or more. farming incentivizes population growth because more people means more farm workers, so they breastfeed for a year or less and pop out a kid every year. this creates a way bigger fighting force and also creates a need for more land to farm so hunter gatherers will usually lose out over time to farmers.

[@geoffdparsons]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 oh you actually said it in this video, idk why it didn’t click. it’s less efficient per time per person but more efficient per acre

[@Krzysztof_Kasprowiak]

This was one of the most informative podcasts I ever heard. Thank you.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you! glad you found it to be useful

[@C_U_R_I_E_L]

I was expecting this video to be annoyingly cliche with ignorant claims such as the "28 day Man's Calendar" but I learned so much and found so much value in what you had to teach. Thank you for sharing, this was non polarized, empathetic, real, and most importantly, human.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

haha thanks - i never heard of the “28 day man’s calendar” and i’m afraid to look it up…

[@adriedrose1265]

I cant believe that this video is free😭, tank you very much !

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

the more valuable the information is, the more important that it should be free!

[@pppoopoo4514]

I was just in a debate where the "divine right of kings" argument came in. Wish I had known about this to link to them. Amazing video, thank you

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

what do you mean? someone was arguing that kings are appointed by god? what were you arguing about? with whom?

[@pppoopoo4514]

Not that kings are appointed by God, their argument was basically that we decided to have leadership roles because it's always better to have them than to not.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@pppoopoo4514 aaah i see, sorry for being dense! btw to be more precise because i didn’t mention it in the video - there are societies and circumstances where people do choose leadership or vest people with certain authority if it gives them benefits or if they have problems that can be solved that way - but that’s always low level status where the leader gets a little glory and status. people only accept actual domination when it’s imposed on them and they have no better place to escape to.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@pppoopoo4514 and to finish that thought for clarity - having a capitalist owner who makes all the profit and has all the authority, and you only have what you can get by bargaining power is domination, not choosing leadership! and the boss hiring managers to control you is also domination. conversely, electing a manager in a coop is choosing leadership to solve practical issues.

[@pppoopoo4514]

I think they were saying that the material conditions lead to agriculture and the hierarchy agriculture creates, and that was just a next step of evolution as opposed to something we adopt as it suits need and abandon just as quickly. As in, he was saying that human history was nomadic -> agricultural -> industrial in a straight line. This video says otherwise, and that's the truth.

[@strianchel]

Wow just wow - immediate sub. Loved this explanation - unlike anything I’ve heard before

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

can you believe how simple an explanation it is - it used to be a staple in anthropology, yet but now it’s almost forgotten.

[@jzk2020]

Doesn't it all really just boil down to who's got power and what type of power they have. If you have the power to kill - someone will do what you want them to. If you've got the power to feed/cloth/imprison someone - they'll do what you want. If you've got the power ostracize or otherwise make life socially unpleasant for someone - well, then they'll do what you want.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

that’s basically right - that’s the whole point of the video, to look at situations where people do have the power to dominate others and why, and then compare it to situations where people don’t have the power to dominate any why not

[@frans7995]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 im pretty sure that not what the video is doing since it describes as egalatarian a woman hitting a man but if a man hits a woman its an abuse of power. That isnt an analysis of power dynamics, and if it is, its skewed in some genders obvious favor

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@frans7995 it doesn’t say that a woman hitting a man is egalitarian while a man hitting a woman is abuse, it just says that in a society with patrilocal residence, a man can probably get a way with hitting a woman, but a woman can’t get away with hitting a man

[@speedythings7396]

@@frans7995 A woman can't get away with hitting a man? Which world does this takes place? As I said leftist utopian idealists are the most braindead folks

[@lasmmaeify]

How do you have the patience to explain all of this to ppl on KZbin of all platforms, gj 💯

[@blindteo5808]

Amazing content, bro! I am a legally blind leftist musician and if funds were rolling in like before the pandemic, I would totally support you monetarily, but until then I will tell every Lefty I know about your channel.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thanks so much! i hope you have better economic times soon, and i appreciate your moral support just as much

[@speedythings7396]

Leftism is cancer

[@SvalbardSleeperDistrict]

I like how well this fits with material explanations of imperialism by e.g. Yanis Varoufakis in the first chapter of his book Talking to my Daughter About the Economy, where he shows how differences between how long different crops survived (or did not) in different climates essentially produced material conditions for groups of people from certain regions (the North) to colonise others. I would love to see a video on the topic of why "libertarian" capitalism will only revert to feudalism - it was mentioned here that that video would come at some stage.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

yes, exactly! also see jared diamond’s guns germs and steel. you’ll also notice that materialist assumptions are built into almost *any* theory that’s build on action, predicting behaviour (market behaviour for example) etc etc. it’s only post modernist gobbledygook theories which aren’t aimed at doing anything or achieving anything that really buckle down and resist any materialist explanations for things. materialism can be abused and go way too far or used foolishly (lots of marxists from the 1970s and earlier were awful at this in social sciences) but it’s just fundamental to understanding human social relations. i will do the libertarianism to feudalism when i do a “what is property” or “what is capitalism” episode (or both)

[@cristinadeperfetti7566]

We live blind in our society without even understand it’s functioning. Thanks to help us see clearer

[@TheKimels]

This is fascinating ! Thank you ! Love your channel 💜

[@comradeblanshard1944]

Love what your doing here. I actually found this video by looking for talks by the Davids. I'm on my second listening through, but I'm still struggling to grasp the distinctions of your views in opposition to Graeber. Any chance you'd release that email you were drafting up? Maybe through patron? If you did, I'd sign up in a heart beat.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

I just found it now, and it’s just an introductory paragraphs and a couple of notes - he must have died like right after I started or something. I can send it to you directly if you want, but it’s super boring! i will be going into it in more depth about the same issue in a bonus QnA episode that’s coming out after episode 8 (which is out now on audio podcast, but out on video in a week or two) so please do sign up for the patreon if you want. which area in particular is it not clear about the distinctions?

[@comradeblanshard1944]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 yo, thanks for replying! I was pretty bummed when he died because I had just discovered him through is book Debt. I grew up with a parent who did an undergrad in anrtho, and in a house sandwiched between an anrtho prof on one side and two archeologists on the left, but the subjects always seemed so dry to me until I heard David (and David) babble on about it so lively. Anyways, I've been so influenced by Graber that I'm going to give your video a final listen and my smooth brain another chance, and then I'll get back to you 😝

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@comradeblanshard1944 one thing i’ll say off the bat is that even if i hate the conclusions they came to in these articles, graeber and wengrow deserve credit for asking and trying to answer really important questions, and coming up with really creative answers.

[@comradeblanshard1944]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 okay, I think I've wrapped my head around Materialistic analysis, as well as your main point that most of the time people are only doing what they can do. I still imagine that while people don't "experiment" their way into hiarchies, they may very well experiment their way out. Either way, I feel perfectly optimistic that with a little bit of innovation (*sharpens rock*), we can deal with inequality👍

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@comradeblanshard1944 haha! i agree with you that there’s a way out (in the right conditions). my new episode 8 that’s out right now on the audio podcast (another week or two for the video) is all about how change happens. i think that that the conditions we live in today have a lot of room for change. The fundamental reason i’m being really harsh on Graeber and Wengrows articles on hierarchy and equality is that if you focus primarily on consciousness and choice, instead of thinking about material conditions, you’re going to make changes that don’t last very long. One example is the chinese communist party for decades tried all these wacky schemes and education campaigns to get rid of male dominance in rural areas, but they always failed because they ignored the the root of male dominance was patrilocal post-marriage residence rules! It’s in the article linked in the bibliography by Ember, who lives where and why it’s important. I feel like the flop of Occupy Wall Street which Graeber was a leading voice in, was in part due to this kind of thinking.

[@georgy_bolts]

Товарищ, what you create is very significant for me, and opens so much more ideas in my head, then I ever would have, if I just forced myself onto anarchists' books, now I get much more and am grateful to you! (...now back to page 241 of Bakunin...)

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you that’s what I like to hear! enjoy!

[@desi_anarch]

So many rabbit holes to get lost into. Thanks for this. ❤️

[@kristamorales5912]

I just found this channel and I am freaking out. I already know I will be enjoying your content forever.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

love to hear it!

[@Chesterton7]

Brilliant and thought-provoking.

[@ectoplasmian]

This is very enlightening and dense, thank you so much and keep making these

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you, i am!

[@SickDerrick]

Those videos are so cool. Thanks for the effort!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thanks for watching and for the encouragement, i appreciate it! if you have a chance, let people know cause it’s really hard to get an audience for this!

[@SickDerrick]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 I have just sent this video to three friends of mine. This kind of content is way more interesting and complex than most of the other content on Lefttube.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@SickDerrick thanks - that’s the best motivation to keep doing it! and that’s why it takes me 2 months to crank them out

[@LawsonKiddsOnlyStan]

this was surely the most comprehensive understanding of the patriarchy ever. wow

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

right? they should be teaching this in high school, but nowadays you can get a PhD in anthropology and gender studies and not learn this basic stuff.

[@Rain-xv9fb]

Great video I notice when discussing nature and relations between men and woman it’s often from the prospective of a patriarchal male

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

yes our religion and mythology are all rooted deeply in that tradition, and our science gets coloured by that as a result

[@lancewalker2595]

Not if there’s a women present… if there’s a woman present in the conversation, you can count on hearing exclusively her perspective.

[@speedythings7396]

Patriarchy gave birth to modern civilisation through enforced monogamy and creating a 3rd party law enforcer often known as god.

[@C_U_R_I_E_L]

In fact, my kids are going to have to watch this and discuss it. Subscribed.

[@Goofy8907]

Dude, this is such an amazing video Thank you so much, please keep it up ❤❤❤

[@worldaccordingtotij4058]

Something to add to this: cross species examples. If a behavior is present in multiple species under similar conditions, then it might be reasonable to suspect that behavior will be present in humans under the same conditions. 1.) Spotted hyenas are one of the few matriarchal mammals. The females are larger, stronger and more typically masculine than the males. They essentially have more male hormones than the males do and even have a pseudo penis that they give birth through. Females live in familial groups while males are forced out after a certain age. There was an experiment done where hyena pups were taken away from their parents and raised together in a zoo. What they wanted to test was whether or not matriarchal social structure was learned or innate. Normally, females start to bully males from an early age. In the experiment, a female dominant social structure was observed, but it took longer to form than in the wild. Basically what this means is that female dominance is a learned behavior, but the power imbalance between males and females in that species makes it essentially inevitable. 2.) The classic example of bonobos vs. chimps. Chimps are highly patriarchal while bonobos are largely egalitarian. Chimps live in male familial groups while females are forced out after a certain age. Chimps have even been documented killing all the males in adjacent groups to gain access to their mates, suggested to be a form of war/genocide. Bonobos and chimps are basically the same species, so why the difference in social structure? It comes down to food access. Females in chimp society are forced to forage far away from the rest of the group, meaning they are more spread out and less able to form relationships to help them defend themselves from aggression. Bonobos on the other hand have more access to food and as a result, females are able to form relationships and make allies to fend off male aggression. Which seems to line up rather well with the arguments painted in this video. I mainly got this information from Robert Sapolsky's Stanford lectures on behavioral biology.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

yes those are good examples. except bonobos are actually female dominated, the women form coalitions and are able to dominate the men. and the difference between humans and other animals is that projectile weapons and poisons even out the difference in power resulting from strength

[@NathanRuhl]

Sounds accurate. Society is turning into a bunch of hyenas

[@BL-sd2qw]

There are far more matriarchal mammals than those, though. And with vastly different structures and systems at play.

[@mewtwo4042]

@@BL-sd2qw Yeah, and bonobos are born out of patriarchy.

[@adjansen8820]

Just discovered your channel and I love it! You do a great analysis here. One question that came to me while watching: Why do some agricultural/pastoralist societies develop a more complex gender hierarchy, while others do not? I'm thinking specifically of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India, as well as many pre-Columbian societies like the Maya and Inca, all of which seem to have developed third-gender social categories independently. I'm curious if you have a materialist/anthropological theory for why some patriarchal cultures would choose to suppress gender variation, as many European and East Asian cultures seem to have done (apologies if I'm overgeneralizing), while others would accommodate or encourage it. I'm also curious if there is any pattern for how gender variance is perceived in forager groups. It seems like, even with an egalitarian distribution of power between women and men, you might still have enforcement of gender roles within each group to create a sense of collective identity (i.e. we men are good at hunting), but I'm not sure how any of that plays out in real life.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

patriarchy is ideologically based in the idea that men deserve to be in control because they’re better and more suited to control in various ways. to keep that illusion going you need to maintain clear distinctions between men and women in behaviour as well as physical attributs. this is where strict gender role enforcement comes in. men have to be a certain way, women another way - too much deviation from gender stereotypes is a threat to the ideology that justifies patriarchal control. this is why patriarchy and things like homophobia and transphobia are related. i don’t think you get homophobia or transphobia without patriarchy. forced or obligatory trans categories for gender nonconforming people (like in iran) can be a way of dealing with people who don’t fit into the binary very well while maintaining the binary. about third genders i don’t really know much about it - i don’t know those examples you listed. i’d need to read about the particular culture to get a sense of it. the cultures i know best are gender egalitarian hunter gatherer societies where you don’t have third genders. when it comes to forager societies it’d be the same thing, but if you’re talking about gender egalitarian societies, there are gender roles, but no enforcement of gender roles for people who don’t fit in or conform, so people can just do whatever they want. most people conform to gender roles, but those who don’t fit in to them don’t suffer any consequences for it. here’s a good video on this: vimeo.com/560822701

[@adjansen8820]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 That makes sense - and thanks for the video! I believe there is evidence of four- and five-gender social configurations as well, but I can't remember if those were in agricultural societies or not. It seems like nonbinary societal roles might be tied to labor, as I believe they are often closely aligned with a religious or ceremonial station, which is kind of interesting, because presumably they would gain some cultural leverage in that arrangement...I'm sure the roles were strictly enforced, but at the same time, seems like it could be a potentially dangerous coalition for the patriarchal rulers, although maybe too small to be truly threatening. It's interesting that the tactics used to reinforce patriarchy end up being so culturally distinct, even if they are serving a similar power dynamic. Anyway I can't personally think of what material conditions might unite three-gender societies since they have emerged all over: most Polynesian societies have a third gender, Egypt had the sekhet, the Inca the quariwarmi, Vedic society the tritiya-prakrti, etc. Maybe there is no underlying material reason, just varying ways of understanding gender variation that all happened to work?

[@theoperator9178]

Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for doing what you do

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

you’re welcome, much appreciated!

[@RichardRoy2]

First time I'd heard of a description of left vs right in a comprehensible manner. That alone is worth a great deal. Thank you.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thanks - i have a few episodes specifically on that, #5 and 3 - and 4 and 6 are also pretty relevant to left and right

[@RichardRoy2]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Thank you. I'll be going through your material gradually. It's quite impressive. The first one was about the failure of the Russian Revolution. I'll be going over that one a few more times as my mind keeps wondering off on tangents as a new bit of material grabs my attention. I really enjoyed your bringing it into modern expression of the rich kids guilt, and disappointment at the world not conforming to their demands. And the problem of the hijacking of ideas. Marx seemed to have kept exploring while his early works took on a life of its own. Love this.

[@RichardRoy2]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 I must say that, when I try to grasp things, I try to do it through a lens of necessity. It makes much more sense than the idea of haphazard want. This works with the idea of environment dictating the elements of evolution. I hadn't thought about the simple idea of seasons being an environmental pressure, so that really brings something new I hadn't thought of to the table. Brilliant. Starts to give me some insight into the development of hierarchies, and the building of institutions. Nice key. I have certain problems with institutions in that they take on the life of a living thing without the social animal aspect to them. But, that's another story, though it may go to explain the cyclical nature of civilizations. I hope you'll eventually compile your transcripts into books for future generations. In case the internet doesn't survive. I'll be making further contributions to your work as I can in appreciation.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@RichardRoy2 in case the internet doesn’t survive, oh boy! I never thought of that - in general i figured that more people are likely to watch the videos than read a book, and probably more of a chance that it’s regular people vs university rich kids, but never thought of post internet!

[@RichardRoy2]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Sorry. I couldn't help but think of all the archeological digs of dead civilizations. So much knowledge gets passed forward in various ways. I do love video as an education tool. I think I've gained more since this medium came along. But I wouldn't want to discount those who do read books. I love books, but I'm a very slow reader. I'm retired now, but I've never stopped loving to learn new things. I'm no genius, but I think this work you've got here is a treasure trove. I appreciate your perspective of trying to reach out to a broader audience. I think that's probably the most important thing. That way you don't have the top down effect you describe in Russia. I think it's possible for the internet to survive. No one can tell the future. Maybe we'll see another uprising of the organized labour force and a broadening of political understanding. The stratification of wealth these days has brought a crushing of education, it appears, and I worry it could push its way into these platforms to silence opposition. But I could be looking too broadly. I often wonder if a runaway algorithm could take us out in the same way institutions end up directing our lives. They're such powerful tools for consolidating power. Funny that we're social animals, but our institutions are psychopaths. I get the impression the social animal initiates the rise, and the psychopath cuts it down. I could be completely wrong about that, but these large organizational structures we build fascinate me in their pathology. I'm blathering. Sorry. I still have a lot to chew over. Thanks again.

[@veritasetcaritas]

I am loving your historical analysis on these topics. However, I am wondering how you would respond to the charge of environmental determinism? The way you phrase this sometimes makes it seem that these hierarchies are practically inevitable in the context of what you call "certain practical realities" caused by geography, environment, and season.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

so sometimes yes, reality makes certain things inevitable. like if a piano falls on your head, you’ll die. or if it’s -30 degrees outside, you might technically have n infinite number of choice of what clothes to wear, but 99% chance you’re going to wear the warmest stuff you have. every day you have what seems like an infinite amount of choice, but you tend to do the same predictable things over and over, go to work, go to school or whatever you do, because there are all sorts of constraints on your choices. materialism is the art of trying to understand these constraints so that we can understand the choices people make. if men have a giant advantage over women because of the practical conditions of subsistence keeps women isolate, you’re going to have male dominance - the choices of men will win against the choices of women. human societies are complicated, so we can never predict 100% what people will do or what the possibilities are for change, and it’s always worth trying to think about how we can change things, but in order to do that intelligently we need to think about the conditions and constraints to have the most effective strategies for change. if you see the next episode i talk about how there are some times and places where change is more possible than others but it often takes some special event for people to realize it. and i think now is one of those times.

[@IronJhon788]

SIr, you really should talk about the perception of biological value between men and women, clearly expressed through the quote "Women are human beings, men are human doings". It personally makes me sad to think that my only value is purely material. I absolutely love your videos, and I know you can provide a great perspective on the topic for all of us!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

i mean evolutionarily there’s something to that in terms of “sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive” sort of logic, but i don’t have anything special to say about it, maybe in the context of war or polygyny or something.

[@vauchomarx6733]

"What they're experimenting with is which kinds of economic activities and defense strategies and residence patterns work best in different contexts and in different seasons" - Yes, and this goes along with different degrees of hierarchy vs equality. That's just the reasonable, charitable interpretation of what Graeber is actually saying, and your constant allusions to high af people just developing hierarchies for shits and giggles sound like a massive strawman. I've never noticed this kind of ad absurdum idealism in any of Graeber's works. Otherwise, your video was very informative, great work!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

have you read “the dawn of everything” yet? my initial characterization in this video is correct. also if you read the articles that i was criticizing in this video (how to change the course of human history / farewell to the childhood of man) you can see that this is where they were going. their whole thesis is that people used to shift from hierarchy to equality seasonally out of conscious choice (for no apparent reason) as if it were just ‘theatre’ (their word) and that it’s some giant mystery how we got stuck with powerful oppressive hierarchies today, and their book offers no answers about why that is. i kid you not. it’s a brilliant and idiotic book at the same time.

[@bladdnun3016]

Liked, subscribed and recommended to friends. Incredible work!

[@arjunravichandran7578]

I like Graeber a lot, but this is one of the couple of issues where i think he misses the mark, even though he had good intentions. I first heard a critique of specifically this aspect of Graeber's work by Chris Knight (an anthropologist if i remember correctly) on the Alpha to Omega podcast. Which is incidentally where i first got introduced to Fight like an animal. AtoO also has a wonderful ongoing reading series on Erik Olin Wright's Understanding Class which people listening to this might be interested in.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

Yes alpha to omega is one of my favourite shows! I was on there myself I think an episode or two after Chris Knight. Chris will be on my show soon as well with Camilla Powers, both anthropologists from the radical anthropology group to talk about the Graeber and Wengrow book and articles. Tom from Alpha to Omega hooked us up and they’re really into my critique of this Graeber book and I’ve been a fan of theirs for a long time. And yeah, I love Graeber too, but he had two giant flaws in his work that I’ve noticed, his denial of 50 years of hunter gatherer studies and his semi-rejection of materialist analysis - and he had one giant activism flaw in my opinion which was the “no demands” position for occupy. I feel a bit bad because my critique is going to be really brutal of Dawn of Everything in the episode I’m putting out in the next couple of days, but there’s just no way around it, it needs to be called out so that people don’t accept his positions which I see as very damaging to our politics on top of being based on incorrect facts and interpretations of facts. I think the part of the book about egalitarian cities is really fascinating and excellent though from the previews ive seen online. And yes 100% understanding class series is great, and I also recommend the Fundamental Principles book Tom has been covering. Just a great show!

[@arjunravichandran7578]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 A team up? Sign me up. Awesome to see Tom being our commie Nick Fury😂 One of the most interesting things i read from Graeber was his essay Of Flying cars and the falling rate of profit. Graeber certainly had very novel and interesting ideas and wasn't all talk. And for that he will always have my respect. I generally like all the pods in the Emancipation network, especially General Intellect Unit. Highly recommended to everybody.

[@MichaelMarko]

This is great stuff. Thanks. I just discovered David Graeber. I'd don't know what to think about your criticism. But this is extremely interesting. Thanx

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you! i do recommend reading graeber, despite my harsh criticism. he’s always asking really interesting and important questions, and he’s a great writer, even when he’s cranking out half-baked nonsense! if he fails sometimes, it’s because he’s trying, which is more than you can say of a lot of thinkers... you can find the links to the articles of his that i’m talking about in the notes for this video. and if you get a chance let people know about this series, it’s very hard to get an audience for this type of thing!

[@thesayerofing]

#coastsalish life. The salmon runs were the arbiter of success and plenty in the region, northern raiders would pillage the more abundant tribes in the southern sea and a bad run would spell starvation in the coming winter months for the generous population good runs could sustain, forcing uninvited trespass on neighboring lands.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

yes! the salish and other cultures are so fascinating as is the relationship between the salmon economy and their cultures. further sound along the coast in california you had many cultures who chose not to have a salmon based economy even though they had great salmon resources, because they didn’t want to have constant warfare, and instead they based their entire economy on acorns which are much less fun to prepare and eat

[@alexbinck8572]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Can you elaborate or recommend any reading on the political structures of the California tribes, and how that was tied to their economic systems? Their economy seems somewhat distinct from the types of societies you've discussed elsewhere, so I'm very curious how those conditions influenced their culture and values. They weren't completely sedentary nor nomadic. They didn't practice traditional agriculture, but families had their own gathering areas that they maintained using horticultural techniques on wild plants. They also stored large amounts of food in some cases. Obviously this is oversimplifying--there was a huge number of distinct cultures in this region, which suggests to me there may have been a less violent, expansionist culture than other regions of North America. But I am curious what we can learn from this unique economic system and the cultures that formed around it.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@alexbinck8572 hi - i’m going to be covering chapter 5 of dawn of everything and at that point i’ll be putting together a bibliography but right now it’s been years since i’ve read about the PNWC cultures and don’t remember where i read what so i can’;t recommend anything particular at the moment. as i understand it, the social structure is related to the fact that salmon territories are fixed and controlled by different tribes. clans and families so that some groups have better territories than others resulting in wealth inequality and ranking is related to that, and then the potlatch redistribution system i imagine must be a way of diffusing conflict over inequality … but need to re-read and read newer lit etc

[@StephenCarvlin]

This is awesome. Is your perspective in line with Marvin Harris? I found a book of his, Cultural Materialism, in a free library. Haven't checked it out yet

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

marvin harris is definitely worth reading, but you also need to take him with a grain of salt. he went so extreme in the direction of material determinism and fudged some numbers to suit his theories and it discredited the concept to some extent. but like david graeber he was a great writer, who wrote for a mass audience and there’s tons of fascinating stuff in his writings. the more contemporary take on cultural materialism is now usually called ‘human behavioural ecology’ so you’ll find more recent stuff if you look for that.

[@StephenCarvlin]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 awesome. Thanks and keep up the rad videos

[@kanojo1969]

I loved the video, it really brings together a ton of different ideas to explain things. However, I felt bad every time you rolled out the bong-rip sound to accompany the word 'experiment'. David Graeber deserves a lot more respect than that, and doubly so now that he can't even respond to defend himself. The first time was OK, just a little harmless ribbing. But doing it over and over turns it into something mean-spirited. It really detracts from your presentation.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

hi thanks for the compliment and the criticism - you know what, i think i agree with you. i do think that it comes off as a bit too mean to graeber. these articles upset me so i reacted harshly to them, and it’s a bit too childish, and the fact that he died does make it worse. i really do love his work, and even his stuff that drives me crazy like these articles that I’m criticizing are extremely interesting to read, and ask all the right questions, even when I don’t agree with the answers. Also, I know from friends that he was a great person. I really wish I would have been able to correspond with him about this stuff, because I’m sure it would have been an interesting and productive discussion. By the time I started feeling that this comes off as a bit nasty, I had already put 2 months into putting it together (that’s how long it takes me to do these) and I didn’t have to stomach to rewrite it and record it and re-edit etc so I decided it would be easier to apologize after the fact if people pointed that out, so there you go.

[@oliverhunter4427]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 I sympathise with your position, and you shouldn't feel bad about a friendly joke about someone whose ideas you otherwise admire.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@oliverhunter4427 honestly i just go back and forth. the book itself (i absolutely hate the articles that I critiqued in this video, with no equivocation) is an attempt to do something really important, and it brings the most important questions of our day into the public discourse (why are we stuck in hierarchy?) and it also guides us to look at anthropology for the answers, which is crucial because we won’t find them otherwise. But then it completely does a belly flop and fails at answering their owns questions, even where the answers are obvious and right in front of their faces. When you read the book, ask yourself: did i learn anything about why some societies are hierarchical and others are equal? why men are dominant in some societies and not others? why we see the same patterns of social structure in similar conditions all around the world? why are the exceptions that the authors focus on, exceptional? Do we learn anything about how actually existing egalitarian societies maintain equality and freedom that we can apply to our own societies? The answer is no, you don’t learn anything about any of these questions from this book. All you learn is that social structure is a choice, which is not true, it’s just incoherent, it doesn’t mean anything. Also, ask yourself why do most anthropologists believe we started as egalitarian hunter gathers despite knowing about all the information they talk about in the book? THere are reasons, but you won’t find them in the book. You will find them in my review series that I’m doing! Uncoincidentally, the majestic success and then pathetic flop of the book is a lot like occupy wall street. Great motives, destroyed by awful theory.

[@rebeccahall4209]

I have just come across your channel and first it was a distraction from work deadlines but now I’m all in! Thank you for your refreshing clarity! But my comment is re: The Dawn of Everything. You argue it contributes to pudding brain because it emphasizes social structure as mere experimentation cut off from the reality of material conditions. I enter this not as a political theorist but as a historian and I think it’s main intervention is against “evolutionary history.” The book’s subtitle could be Against Teleology. To me this is its radical potential because it intervenes in the idea that complexity REQUIRES hierarchy. What are your thoughts? Are we disagreeing because we enter this from different fields?

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

yes, i think it’s a lot to do with being from different fields (and i come from anthropology not poli sci). my issue with the book is that if you want to actually understand hierarchy and reduce or eliminate it, you have to understand what causes it, and you absolutely can’t do that without understanding material factors and bargaining power. the authors bend over backwards and even lie and invent things about the sources they cite, in order to avoid talking about bargaining power and material factors, to the point where they have rendered themselves incapable of answering the thesis questions of the book. there are really good answers to their questions and they pretend they don’t exist. they excise them from the sources they cite. it’s ridiculous. you read this book and get lots of hope and optimism, but you also get zero information that can actually help you understand or dismantle hierarchy. and on top of that they insult and strawman a whole field of study which is incredibly obnoxious as it is counterproductive. btw, the video you’re commenting on was made a year before the book came out based on articles they’d published - i have a chapter by chapter critique of the book that gets into detail of my arguments, but I agree with you and the authors that complexity doesn’t require dominance hierarchy and that this is an important point to get across etc

[@rebeccahall4209]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 yes I saw you have a recent series about the actual book, but I want to finish your earlier series about equality and hierarchy first. I also want to finish their book. I have one more chapter. I’m so disappointed that Greaber would mess up like this. I’ve been a fan of his work and his radical activism.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@rebeccahall4209 yeah, it’s pretty disappointing - like their motives were good - they want to tell us that we can change things, but they were afraid that if they focused at material conditions that would mean that we have no power to change anything, which is a common mistake, but a really bad one if you want to actually do something about the issue

[@rebeccahall4209]

Also historical racialized gender and feminist theory is my area of specialty. I love anthropology, but when I was in college (way back in the 1980s) I got frustrated with only focusing on causes of patriarchy without looking at how things change over time. But your field has so many crucial insights. E.G Gail Rubin. In your video on patriarchy that I just finished you talk about the tendency towards patrilocality as being caused by the need for men to protect resources through force of arms. But there are plenty of historical examples of cultures with highly developed martial traditions, and while men don’t get pregnant they are also unable to fight for a variety of reasons throughout life (injury, age, etc) if the argument for universal patriarchy is patrilocality CAUSED by defense of resources, how do we understand societies where women are warriors?

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@rebeccahall4209 i don’t think patrilocality is the *only* path to patriarchy, it’s just one that’s well documented and very easy to explain and illustrate. for societies where women are warriors i’d guess that it’s because you needed more fighting done than could be done with just half the adult population. and you can have have lots of warfare but not be patrilocal - patrilocality usually happens when you have to deal with frequent defensive attacks. societies where men engage in regular offensive long distance warfare tend to be matrilocal because women are the one who take care of local politics and property given that men are away for so long

[@josip6862]

Firstly, just based on this video that I watched I subscribed. I'm interested in your next video about Spanish civil war. I like this video because of your criticism of Graeber's position on HG societies. Although he was great, I think he made some wrong conclusions. Now criticism: if I understood you correctly, you say here that patriarchy started in early agricultural communities. I'm not sure this is correct or not but there is no universal agreement among anthropologists. Just take the female anthropologists views on this. For example Eleanor Leackock might agree with you (check her article in current anthropology from 1978). But there is group of anthropologists who believe that women are universally oppressed in one way or another in every society that existed so far, including HG societies ( for reference see Sherry Ortner "women, culture and society" 1974). I would say that women were more equal and had more rights in HG societies than any other society that came after, but certain level of patriarchy existed even then. Like to hear your thoughts

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

Thanks for the compliment and criticism! I hope you don't mind a super long response - if so skip to the last few paragraphs... My main argument is that hierarchy or equality happen because people find themselves in circumstances that either give some people the ability to dominate others, or else where everyone has relatively equal bargaining power. The anthropological stuff is super interesting and I have opinions on it, which I'll get to at the end of this (if you want to skip!) - but in the context of this show, it's just to illustrate the point above. So if turns out that palaeolithic hunter gatherers were often hierarchical like Graeber thought, or if it turns out that "egalitarian" hunter gatherer societies actually have male dominance, that's interesting for sure, but it doesn't change my basic *political* arguments. And if that stuff turned out to be correct they I'd say the reason for that is that existing and historical conditions give men more bargaining power than women even in immediate return foraging socieites, and I'd try to figure out what those conditions are. So to get back to your questions: I'm not actually arguing that male dominance starts with agriculture. I did say that hierarchical societies start becoming much more common once agriculture starts because agriculture makes it difficult to maintain egalitarianism over the long term, and that includes gender equality, though in some agricultural context you can have very near gender equality which we'll see next time. When it comes to male dominance, I said that there are different reasons for it in different places, but that one of the bigges historical reasons for it, which is easy to explain and which illustrates my main thesis nicely, is patrilocal residence after marriage. And I gave a very extreme example of the Lese horticulturalists in the mid 20th century as described by Colin Turnbull in some of his writings. So, you can and do have male dominance without agriculture - you see it in hunter-gatherer societies in the right circumstances, and that probably happened in the palaeolithic era too, though we don't know how often. Now, when it comes to the issue of whether or not there is such thing as a known society with actual gender equality, there is some debate, like you mentioned. So to evaluate that you need to look at the most egalitarian societies that we know of which are those hunter gatherer societies which specifically practice nomadic, immediate return foraging. There are I think 5 groups of societies like this from recent times. Various central african rainforest foragers (Mbuti, Aka, Efe, Mbendjele), various kalahari foragers (JuHoansi etc) various southern indian mountain forest foragers (Nayaka, Paliyan etc), Malaysian rainforest foragers (Batek, etc) and the Hadza in tanzania. Every other hunter gatherer society we have studies of besides the Montagnais-Naskapi in the 1600s is or was a delayed return society and we don't expect them to be egalitarian, so we ignore those from the getgo. The Sherry Ortner article talks about the Native American Crow people which are matrilineal but not even hunter gatherers, and she doesn't even mention a single immediate return group so her arguments don't really apply. All these immetiate return foraging societies have gender roles, so some people already say that this is proof of hierarchy. But gender roles are not fixed - men do womens work and women do mens work when convenient and there's no shame or coercion involved and there's no shaming or punishment for being a feminine man or masculine woman. In some of these societies like the Hadza or Kalahari foragers, it's only men who do the big game hunting. So some argue that this is proof of male dominance. Others point out that no one ever tells a woman she can't hunt, and there's no recorded example of a woman saying she wishes she could hunt but can't or complaining about male authority. I think in the JuHoansi there younger women tend to marry older men, and marriages are arranged, so that might be evidence of some male dominance, but it's the moms who do these arrangements, and if the woman doesn't like it, she just physically leaves her husband and goes back home, and that's a divorce. The central african rainforest foragers and Malaysian rainforest foragers have women doing big game hunting with men, and these are maybe the most egalitarian societies we know about. I think Marlowe or Hewlett who studied domestic violence found that in one of these societies he saw almost no incidents of men hitting women but lots of episodes of women hitting men. In the Mbuti, Turnbull said the men told him that you need to hit your wife sometimes, but that women also hit men a lot, maybe more than the other way around. There are much more recent articles about central african foragers by Jerome Lewis, Morna Finnegan, Michelle Kisliuk and some others that you can find in my bibliograhy for this episode that get into male female relations. Basically in my opinion I think that yes you have equality in these societies or close to it, but maybe a little less in the JuHoansi but that you can find historical or practical reasons for more and less equality in any society. I'd say look at the bibliography, and read for yourself and maybe read some of the debates that actually talk about immediate return societies and then you have to judge for yourself whether or not you think these societies are equal or somewhat patriarchal. Either way, I'd say the main reason is bargaining power due to circumstances.

[@josip6862]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 thanks for reply and clarification. Keep doing good work

[@corbynbrown2723]

Bro you blew my mind, I'm going to run through all of your videos.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

tell people about it if you can!

[@hassankhan-jg1dx]

R.I.P David Graeber tho.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

for sure, he was a great person and anthropologist

[@petrapewpew]

"...how academia turns brilliant, beautiful minds into smooth, fluorescent jello" *chef's kiss*

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

i want to make a whole video about just this at some point…

[@thenathanimal2909]

Because the most primal law of society is might makes right, and men(on average) are stronger and more prone to employ violence than women and therefore can dominate them? Also, men(on average) are more aggressive and thus seek to assert themselves as authority figures. This is observable across the vast majority of mammalians, and even non-mammalian species.; It is the male species that fights for dominance, with female led species being the exception and not the rule. I think the more interesting question is what caused humanity to drift away from patriarchy. Was it our "higher" intellect? Or was it a coupling of technology and market forces that found it more useful for men and women to have equal access to political power, in the same way early human tribes began to find it more useful to trade with those without the tribe and thus find commonality with "the other" despite not being within the tribe.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

did you actually watch the video before commenting? many hunter gatherer societies have gender equality, even more than we do. and these societies are most likely to resemble those of most of our ancestors. changes in male dominance or gender equality have to do with various conditions that change the relative bargaining power of men vs women, such as the ones I described in the video. for today, increasing gender equality has a lot to do with birth control, communications technologies, the welfare state (see the book sex is better under socialism by kristin ghodsee) and the shift away from physical labour, and the market need for more and more people to exploit.

[@sojaboehnchen9758]

I think one point you didn't mention is also that woman don't inherit since they will move away anyway, which made them even more powerless in agricultural societies.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

yes that’s definitely true

[@paulster185]

Not true. This kind of false simplified pop-history is a problem.

[@marekful2]

Just some unsolicited advice: the caricature of hierarchy experimentation in terms of pharaoh and slaves can't be seriously entertained as voluntary experimentation. Do you seriously want us to think that's what Graeber and Wengrow mean by experimentation?

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

well what do you think they mean by that? my point is that they didn’t think it through very well, because that's where their reasoning leads. they’re ultimately trying to argue that societies experiment their way in and out of hierarchy, such that therefore we can reverse our hierarchies if we want to. by not even brooching the subject of *why* people “experiment” with hierarchy, or why hierarchy ends up prevailing over equality, or why specific hierarchies prevail in these “experiments” they’re painting what ends up being to me a very silly picture of why and how hierarchy exists. so yes, i'm caricaturizing their argument by taking it to it's logical endpoint.

[@maxheadrom3088]

That photo of Jordan Peterson made me laugh so much!

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

me too!

i like your videos very much, but the pyramids where not build by slaves. this is of course no major issue with the general argument of this video, just kind of a minor bug report.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

yes you’re right, though i didn’t know it at the time

[@MrZevers]

Please, KZbin algorithm, please, get this marvelous content to gazillions of people dozing over their phones out there.

[@DarkMoonDroid]

Constructive feedback: I would be able to hear what you're saying if you weren't calling obviously intelligent people stupid and other sorts of insulting polemic. Humanity is still learning. And. Humanity is still in denial. Both are true. But light is more helpful than heat. Would like to learn more without the hate.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

fair enough!

[@BEYOUTOTHEFUL]

WOW THIS IS GREAT I WILL WATCH THE OTHERS THANK YOU ANGELLA IN MONTANA

[@jasonsludge2769]

counter arguement, you havent done ayahuasca. you dont know

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

touché!

[@sheriffliberty9302]

I gotta say, drinking beer and talking about Dudes Work is fun

[@indrinita]

This is basically political ASMR to me

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

haha, im hoping that’s a compliment! someone did an ASMR reading of the communist manifesto or some other marx works, you might want to check that out!

[@indrinita]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 definitely a compliment 😉 I literally fell asleep listening to this last night so I have to start listening to it again at the point where I fell asleep. But it's great! I will have to check out the communist manifesto ASMR edition 😃

[@indrinita]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 also want to add: this is excellent. A lot of what you talked about in this video pretty much sums up big parts of my bachelor's and master's degrees. Fall from the garden of Eden metaphor and all. Well researched as usual.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@indrinita yeah a lot of it is basic stuff, but it’s really weird how all this amazing knowledge is just restricted to anthro majors and it barely exists in popular culture or in political circles where you’d think it would be front and center

[@indrinita]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 we also discussed many of these points in the context of my landscape ecology and nature conservation degree, which had a small component of early human evolution. You are right that this is such basic info but people still have this 1950s narrative of "caveman hierarchies" being "natural", and therefore "the way we're meant to live".

[@e.bfreeman3889]

I think I see Graeber's side though. I grew up in a small agri village. The leaders of the village were picked due to their skills and resources in what the village needed (best hunter, fisher, bead sewer, cook, skin scraper, hut builder for eg) and what they could trade for more goods. They picked the workers who they could control best and chose their tasks for the day as jobs needed to be done. They would be the first to get food and resource shares of course. Other than that base, which would be relatively egalitarian.... it's quite a leap to go from skill leaders to chief to king and slaves. So yeah there were some experiments done. Same as when they tried new foods.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

good example - yes there’s always experimentation, but the thing is which experiments succeed and which fail and why? and how much power of coercion or inequality results? you can only understand that if you look at the conditions. so in your childhood village i bet you can analyze what the conditions were that lead to that particular system being the one that people ended up deciding on, vs others.

[@e.bfreeman3889]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Agreed. The village was based on religious fundamental structures as well as skills. So if nothing else. how many pastors and bishops your family had would tell people your place in society. It was very patriarchal too.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@e.bfreeman3889 oh that reminds me when i was in new jersey once wandering through some suburb and I passed this group of people sitting on a porch and they were saying something like “OK, so in our army of God that we’re forming, we need a hierarchy - so I will be the general, and Tommy and Lori you should be the captains” and they were all mapping out where each person belongs in this hierarchy that for some reason it was important to create

[@e.bfreeman3889]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Like kids playing mommy and daddy: 1. . One says 'you be mom, I'll be dad' 2. 'ok but what do they do?; 1. " I don't know!'

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@e.bfreeman3889 hahahaah! love this analogy, will use this in the future!

[@BruceWaynesaysLandBack]

Feed the algae rhythm

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

mmm algae!

[@user-gn8gz1vn3b]

1 year Political Anthropology college course = This Video.

[@piezoelectron]

This is perhaps the worst strawman of Graeber and Wengrow's arguments I've encountered, to the point that anyone who considers this video serious critique should seriously reflect upon their own committment to basic comprehension skills, let alone serious intellectual debate. For example, you directly cite the case of the Pacific Northwest in one breath, and then proceed to say that there's NO evidence for large-scale societies before 12000 years ago. It's astounding. Meanwhile, your 'challenge' to dynamic social structures falls apart with some basic, elementary reflection. You say that people would simply abandon chiefs the moment they could, i.e. when the seasons change. Ok, then, why do they come back to those same chiefs when the seasons go back to unfavorable? Then, you call Graeber a prime example of what the 'postmodern dark age' does to otherwise brilliant minds. Anyone with even a basic, college-level knowledge of anthropology knows that Graeber was one of the *fiercest critics* of the postmodern turn in anthropology. Like, read ANY of his books. Worst of all, you claim that Graeber & Wengrow want to dispense with analyses of material reality. Such sheer misrepresentation leaves one speechless. Have you read Graeber's Debt, which is pretty much entirely based on a hybrid ethnographic/materialist study of debt, morality and money? Have you read his work on value theory, which is draws directly from anthropological interpretations of Marx's materialist analyses? Ultimately, you've taken a piece that pointed out the absurdity of the terms that we've let frame the present debates around equality and politics, and pretended to refute it....by appealing to those exact same terms. More specifically, you seem to have drawn a false equivalence between what Graeber and Wengrow are doing -- in their own words, a 'ground clearing' of sorts to get rid of pseudoscientific metanarratives about our past -- with the postmodern tendency of rejecting *all* metanarratives. It would probably be a disservice to your audience's intelligence to point out why this is a false equivalence, but I'll do so anyway: firstly, postmodern theory has little if anything to say about the past, except that the world we now live in is so dramatically different from the past that the old rules no longer apply. Secondly Graeber and Wengrow themselves *never* say they're skeptical of grand metanarratives. In fact, they even start to point out some better metanarratives at the end of their Eurozine piece. These basic errors are enough to dismiss the rest of your 'critique' wholesale. You're peddling intellectual rubbish by trying to associate yourself with serious scholarship and pretending to 'destroy' it by using the sleaziest intellectual tricks. In doing so, you simply lend more credence to the new sciences that are now emerging, of which Graeber and Wengrow's work is just one notable example. Videos like these will eventually find themselves in some future museum, showing just how limited humanity's analytical inventory was, even at its most technologically advanced.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

oy vey with you cranky cranky graeber fanbois. I have gotten many good critiques and corrections and counterarguments on many of my videos on all sorts of subjects, but so far no one coherent argument from any of the frothing graeber babies. And there are so many interesting arguments to have about this video and my critique of the Graeber articles I criticized here. I actually like Graeber, but his most aggressive fans seem to be uniformly total assholes for some reason. And the irony! You’re accusing me of strawman arguments and of not understanding what I’m reading, and then you’re angrily citing all sorts of things that I didn’t say as examples, and then you’re jumping to all sorts of conclusions that show that you didn’t understand half of what you were watching, probably because you were too busy having a tantrum and soiling your diapers to pay attention. When did I say there’s not evidence for large scale societies before 12000 years ago? And what does that have to do with Pacific Northwest coast people? I said there’s no *agriculture* before 12000 years ago, which is just a fact. I have no idea what point you’re trying to make here with so much bluster and confidence. I never said people just abandon chiefs the moment the seasons change. I never “challenged” “dynamic social structures. What does that even mean? Graeber cites people who had different levels of hierarchy and equality in different seasons. He tries to argue that this was "choice" and "experimentation". In contrast, I pointed out that the practical realities of the economic activities that those people undertook in those different seasons gave different people different amounts of bargaining power, so that chiefs (or men in the case of the Inuit) had less authority in some seasons than in others. I didn’t make this up, you can straight up read this in the articles Graeber himself cites, like the one about the Nambikwara. I don’t call Graeber a prime example of postmodernism, I say he came up in the postmodern age and that this affected his thinking in negative, even if as you correctly point out he was very critical of postmodernism. This is the *one* criticism you made which lands, because I can see how I wasn’t very clear here, so fine I partially accept your criticism on this point. And no, I didn’t say that Graeber is against material analysis in general or that he completely rejects Marx - I said that in the two articles that I’m criticizing in this video, Graeber is very much making idealist, anti-materialist arguments. And if you read those articles (How to Change the Course of History, and Farewell to the Childhood of Man), then how can you argue with me on that? The *whole point* of those articles is to argue that people’s social structures aren’t bound by material conditions and that we choose our social structures. Yes has done consciously material analyses in other of his works (his stuff on manners I think he straight up says he's doing a material analysis), and other times he argues against materialist interpretations, like in the articles I’m talking about and another recent one about salmon fishing in California called “Many Seasons Ago”. Maybe watch the video again, and maybe get your mommy to change your diapers first so that you’re not so cranky when you watch it so that you can actually hear what I’m saying and the points I’m trying to get across before accusing me of all this stupid stuff, and then maybe you can put forth some arguments against the points I was making. And since you’re such a big fan of my work, if you wait a few weeks, I’ll be reading a mixture of Farewell to the Childhood of Man and How to Change the Course of History *line by line* to point out why these are such terrible articles.

[@piezoelectron]

Great, I'll look forward to the line-by-line reading. In the meantime, I'm more than happy to let my points above speak for themselves. It'd be fairly straightforward to point out exact timestamps in the video to support each of my points above, for example, 1. That you do in fact specifically mention that most Palaeolithic societies lived in small bands, 2. That you also claim that Graeber is an example of what the postmodern dark age does to otherwise reasonable thinkers (note how I never said that you call Graeber himself a postmodern thinker. But you construed it as such in your response) 3. That Graeber and Wengrow do support their claims about dynamic social structures (which, by the way, is just another term for cultures who seasonally oscillate between different social forms) with evidence, 4. That this proposition comes not from some idealistic anarchist fantasy but from the extensive primary and secondary research of many archeologists and anthropologists, 5. And -- most importantly -- that to point out that material conditions never solely determine social structures can, in fact, be still argued on materialist terms, which Graeber and Wengrow do, but not exclusively so, which they don't. In fact, even now-outdated works such as Leach's study of Highland Burma (published some 80 years ago), are quick to point out why strictly materialist arguments such as those pursued by functionalists, cultural ecologists, the more sectarian Marxists etc, are never a good idea Again, I'll let viewers make their mind up about each of these points, without calling out specific timestamps in the video where you incorrectly argue against these points. Anyway, given the general tone of the video and your response, even if I did, I'd likely be accused of cherry-picking. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. So as I say, I'll look forward to the line-by-line reading, if only to refute the heart of your arguments in more detail. As an aside, I think it's important point out how your own response started with immediate personal insults e.g. suggesting I'm a "cranky fanboi", I "got my diapers dirty"etc, whereas, even at its most aggressive, my own response focused on your arguments. This is usually a reliable way of telling an argument that holds merits from one that doesn't.

[@voltairinekropotkin5581]

@@piezoelectron Judging by both the video itself and the responses to criticism, What is Politics seems incapable of critiquing anything without resorting to childish insults.

[@piezoelectron]

Anyway, in the spirit of fiery solidarity, I'll wish you all the best with the upcoming video and hope that you give it your very best. Let's leave it at that for now.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@piezoelectron OK, now you’re at least engaging with what I’m saying and presenting some arguments. Yes I said *most* palaeolithic societies lived in small bands, which is true. I didn’t say all of them. There are some exceptions and Graeber talks about them as if they were a lot more common than they were. I understood what you meant by “dynamic structures” but I didn’t understand what you meant by “challenge dynamic structures”. They exist, but I disagree with Graeber’s explanation for why they exist. He said it was “conscious experimentation” and I’m saying it’s the result of bargaining power and practical conditions. Both of those things are true to some extent, but I think that Graeber’s emphasis on experimentation makes us stupid rather than enlightening us on how humans work. I don’t think material conditions solely determine everything about us, and the more short term you’re looking at the more you need to look at things like choice and culture, but the more long term you’re looking at, the more determinant material conditions (though they’re also extremely important in the short term). Graeber and Wengrow make three big claims in the articles I’m criticizing. They say that the scholarship on hunter gatherer societies presents foraging people as innocent children with no agency, which is complete bullshit and obviously not true to anyone who’s read that scholarship. They say that humans were constantly fluctuating between hierarchy and equality in the palaeolithic. That’s an extreme exaggeration of the archaeology, which suggests that humans *sometimes* in exceptional circumstances had hierarchical societies. And they sort of admit that in their article in passing, but the general portrait they paint is extremely distorted. Then their main claim is that people go from hierarchy to equality by choice and experimentation, and I think that’s ridiculous in that it erases the reality of bargaining power differences which is what you really need to look at if you want to understand why the world is the way it is, or why societies have the sorts of horrible oppressive hierarchies we have. I really like David Graeber on most things - he’s one of the best anthropologists of recent times, and one of the few anthropologists of recent years who actually thought anthropology exists to improve humanity and who wasn’t afraid to theorize about how we can learn from other peoples. But almost all of his work on human equality is completely bullshit which I find mind boggling given his politics. His work on equality is totally counterproductive to any of his political goals. The introduction to On Kings about how even the most egalitarian societies have hierarchical religions is straight up not true and infuriating. If you know anything about immediate return hunter gatherer societies, you’d see just how full of shit he was whenever he talked about this. For some reason he just did not want to believe that egalitarian societies exist and he shut his eyes to all the literature about it, and never said a word about it until his texts from 2012, 2015 and 2018 when he just made up a bunch of straight up lying bullshit about it. He thought he was explaining why we don’t have to live in hierarchy, but what he was actually doing in these articles is making us blind to actual human equality and what makes it work, and he makes us stupid to the sorts of material changes we need to make if we want to have egalitarianism that actually lasts and doesn’t get wiped away like it did in the USSR or the french revolution or every other failed revolution.

[@CCDR07]

Thanks again for the clear and informative videos and analysis. Please keep it up! Your videos provide a vital pathway through which people who think that they vehemently disagree with each other can find common ground across left and right(fake left) divides, which hopefully will enable us to better engage the dysfunctional hierarchical structures present in mainstream society and the mechanisms through which power is exerted to our socio-ecological chagrin (e.g., corporate imperialists). I've a few comments, but not seeking a reply per se... It strikes me that you are holding up strawman versions of Graeber and Wengrow's ideas and arguments to make a point that you want to make, i.e. materialist analysis of environmental and social conditions has a lot of explanatory power in regards to social organization, such as how and where the establishment and maintainence of various hierarchical structures (e.g., wealth and gender) are selected for. However, I don't think it's fair or necessarily useful to characterize Graeber/Wengrow as rejecting this premise, as a materialist lens definitely informs a great deal of Graeber's work overall. My point is that I think the last point you make in this video is essentially the one you are criticizing Graeber/Wengrow for making. That developing a shared self-awareness of how material conditions "naturally" select for certain kinds of hierarchy enables us to consciously manipulate social organization to combat dysfunctional hierarchies arising. I think that is entirely the point of a lot of what Graeber and Wengrow have tried to say in the past. That various Indigenous Peoples/societies around the world through history did precisely that. Various groups had the opportunity to observe (or theorize) the social-ecological problems inherent with "too-much" hierarchy, and thus went out of their way to contrive social/cultural norms and traditions to combat the formation of, or influence of hierarchies in relation to their material existence... . For example, I think much of the work on commons resource management by Elinor Ostrom et al. highlight different Indigenous group's awareness of the interactions between environmental and social conditions to enable them to develop long-term sustainable socio-ecological systems. Anyway, I'm assuming there's a great wealth of information about past societies in their book, which seems a shame to steer people away from because of a specific aspect/interpretation of their argument. Having said that, I haven't read The Dawn of everything yet (just a lot of Graeber's past work), so I've yet to learn how far they develop the thesis that you say they do in this video. I'm getting it for christmas! So maybe after the holidays I'll just have to come back here and take my comment back...

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

this video was made a year before their new book, and was a reaction to their earlier articles like “how to change the course of human history” which were previews of the book. i think you’re giving graeber and wengrow too much credit, and projecting more sense in their thesis than is actually there! while it’s true that graeber has had some materialist ideas (everyone does, it’s impossible not to), he’s always pushed back against materialist arguments in general, and these articles and the new book, are an explicit rejection of material ideas in favour of a thesis that humans can just magically “choose” our social structures, which is a nonsensical idea that doesn’t really mean anything - and the book is actually worse than the articles in this respect! i don’t think i’m making a strawman of their thesis - it sounds like i am because i’m reducing their thesis to it’s logical end point. i’m pointing out that their thesis might sound reasonable, but if you think about, it’s just nonsense underneath. i’m doing a detailed critique of the book so maybe you’ll see what i mean. the video i’m about to release in a few days about chapter 1 gives my general critique and then the other chapters have more specific critiques.

[@CCDR07]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Thanks for comprehensive answer! Looking forward to reading Graeber-Wengrow and reading/hearing more of your material and critiques of it. Cheers!

[@harshmudgil4140]

'Egalitarian Society' is the most absurd term I have ever heard. The idea of egalitarianism is contrary to the idea of competence. If competence as a value is of any importance in a society, then the society has to have a hierachy at a certain level. The idea of competence falls apart, without a hierarchical structure. The idea of society falls apart without the idea of competence and that is why, 'egalitarian society' is an absurd notion. Egalitarian it was once? At what level? The idea that, there was a time in the history, when all hierarchical structure where once flat is simply absurd. You have to define at what level, the world was egalitarian and at what time.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

this is because you have no idea what an egalitarian society means. politics refers to decision making so when we talk about equality vs hierarchy in politics we’re talking about equality vs hierarchy of power. Ergo, an egalitarian society is one where people have equal decision making power, not equal talent, equal ability, equal anything else. And inequality of ability or various other characteristics does not translate into inequality of power. if you look at immediate return hunter gatherer societies, which are the type of societies that most humans probably lived in for most of human existence, you see exactly that. people with different abilities and characteristics, but where no one has any authority over anyone else, where autonomy is respected and where material wealth is also unable to be hoarded. due to the material and practical conditions of immediate return hunting and gathering, there is no way for anyone to dominate anyone else. bargaining power is equalized. so not only is it possible, but it’s most likely the original human condition.

[@harshmudgil4140]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 And with these arguments I am, in no way denying the existence of evidence which does suggest egalitarian societies before the advent of agriculture. At a philosophical level, my attempt is to demonstrate, that an egalitarian society in it's true sense isnt possible. Even an egalitarian society, would have to lean on certain hierarchies to support itself. Thanks for defining 'decision making' as the aspect of society accross which we must observe equality to conclude a society as an 'Egalitarian Society'. I would argue, that in true sense no society is egalitarian in those terms. Would in such a society, children enjoy contributing to the decision making processes? If not, then, right there you have a line accross which you are constructing a hierachy. Would people with severe disabilities also enjoy contributing to the decision making processes? If not, then, right there you have a line accross which you are constructing a hierachy. Moreover, the egalitarian dystopia is based upon the notion that human motivations are simplistic in nature. We know it for a fact, that is not the case. Human beings are capable of acting under motivations which are too complicated and sometimes so much so, that they themselves do not know the full extent of their motivations. As long as human motivations remain so convoluted, term 'egalitarian society' will remain a dystopia. 'The convoluted nature of human motivations' is the origin of capacity or competence in the equation. Those who are incompetent, will always be incapacitated by those who are competent. This is the reality, based on the fact that human motivations are complicated. Finally, I will argue that the origin of hierarchy is not socio-economic. It operates at 2 levels. 1. At competence level. To account for convoluted human motivations. 2. At psycological level. Exploring the psycological level is much more interesting. In Freudian psychology, we do see how human beings look for the image of their mother or father inside their romantic partners while making a selection. I think hierarchies too work on that level. We give-in to hierarchies, which are sometimes exploitive, because we are trying to recreate the equation that we shared with our parents.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@harshmudgil4140 ok, so i introduced you to a new subject that you clearly know absolutely nothing about (immedate return hunter gatherers) , and instead of going to read about it (there’s google but also a bibliography in this episode, and also bibliographies in episodes 6 and 10.1 where i also talk about this) - you decide to waste your and my time blathering on like an idiot with a bunch of ignorant farts you pulled out of your ass. If you’re too lazy or arrogant to do even basic reading in it, i’m not interested in wasting my time responding to your masturbation. the idea that you’re going to smugly draw a line at children and think you’ve disproved egalitarianism is fucking obnoxious and childish, but the irony is that in immediate return societies it would seem that older children actually do have an almost equal say to adults, so poopie on you, fucking arrogant jackass.

[@harshmudgil4140]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Actually I did read what you had written and yes, what I had written as a response were bunch of thoughts which popped up in my mind. I am in the middle of forming my opinions on culture and how it came to being. While searching for stuff upon this topic, I encountered your video. As far as personal insults are concerned, I am not going to respond to it. That is beneath me. Hope you have a great day ahead 🙂

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@harshmudgil4140 I didn’t say that you hadn’t read what I wrote, I said that I introduced you to a new idea - egalitarian immediate return socieites - and instead of looking it up and reading about it, or asking about it, and *then* coming out with something to say about about equality after actually fucking learning or knowing the basics of it, you decided to keep shitting out your stupid arrogant thoughts on equality, based on complete ignorance. you’ll see in the comments that I engage respectfully with people who disagree with me or challenge me if they engage respectfully, and I treat dicks like dicks. you are being a dick. convoluted motivations has nothing to do with anything. competence has aboslutely nothing to do with it. dead end waste of time. it’s about equality of bargaining power. the competent and incompetent both have access to projectile weapons and family members. ergo, there’s no way for anyone to dominate anyone, ergo there is political equality. that freud nonsense is also a total dead end. dominance hierarchy can only happen if one person or group of people control resources that others depend on. that’s not possible in immediate return foraging for practical reasons. a dominance hierarchy is by definition involuntary. if someone is submitting to domination voluntarily, it’s not dominance hierarchy, it’s playtime. you also have democratic hierarchy, which is formed by choice in order to benefit the people on the bottom, and which dissolves the second it’s no longer useful to the people on the bottom. that exists for practical reasons as well. dystopia is all in your mind based on stupid caricatures. learn something about these societies before saying stupidity. start with jerome lewis’ egalitarian social organization among hunter gatherers. It’s obnoxious.

[@VernonNickersonSCHOOLCOACH]

Frankly, the tribe that literally and figuratively play a gender-based game sans “winners” and “losers” and ends with both sides collapsing in laughter and (in my POV and or from my perspective) means everyone wins is preferable to “winner takes all”. No gendered violence, no exploitation/shaming/demonizing/shaming, etc-- yep I could live , I dare say THRIVE in such a society.

[@TheZandBeast]

This is actually very good. Feel like everyone should watch this. One thing that bothers me is the example of the group that live lives that are one with nature and apparently have a very gender equal society. If it really is all so great then why is this the first I'm hearing of it... It sounds as if it should be something a whole bunch of people ought to be jumping on, seems like it supports a whole range of left wing ideas so leftists should love talking about it??

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thanks! well stuff about immediate return hunter gatherers like the Mbuti, Hadza, Batek, Mbendjele, Nayaka, JuHoansi etc is somewhat popular in anarchist circles, but it’s totally neglected everywhere else. one reason is just because anthropology isn’t well known and political junkies are too busy wacking it to marx and political theorists to look at anything else, but I also think that the idea of a society with no hierarchy is threatening to people in power and also to people who want an authoritarian revolution. So that’s probably another reason why it hasn’t caught on. the Mbuti vs Lese stuff is from a 1961 book the Forest People which was popular at the time, but you can read more recent stuff by Jerome Lewis on the Mbendjele. If you look at the bibliography for this episode and the previous episode (#6) there are links to a zillion articles you can read, and books as well. Also watch episode 6 for more details.

[@TheZandBeast]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Interesting, thanks!

[@indrinita]

There's also a vested interest in keeping people believing myths about "hunter gatherers" (in anthropology circles they're actually known as forager societies) being some kind of '50s archetype of gender hierarchy, so it's not surprising that people are ignorant of the actual evidence of how extant and Paleolithic foragers lived.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@indrinita yeah, it’s amazing to me that jordan peterson still gets away with talking about hierarchy and male dominance and he’s talking about lobsters and ignoring actual humans!

[@Alan_Duval]

Loved the Mellencamp stab :D Fantastic, measured analysis. Helps put some data points over some of the lines I'd drawn between the dots that I already had :D Following your comment on getting coverage from other, larger channels, you should definitely see if you can get into ThoughtSlime's EyeBall Zone.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

ha, either that was accidental, or i forgot about it! which mellencamp stab?

[@Alan_Duval]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 When I say "stab" I just mean brief musical sample. You used Check It Out. This is the second in this series that I've seen, I'm going to rewind and watch this whole series now :D

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

all the music in there is by me! no mellencamp anywhere, unless by unconscious influence…

[@Alan_Duval]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Found it! It's at 35:45. Compare to the outro: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bqLbdXWfnrudorM That said, you've slapped someone else's face onto the lobster in place of JBP, so the sample probably relates to whoever that is. Anyway, I'm amused by the section on West African tribes: Lese faire capitalists compared to the 'it's all Mbuti-full' egalitarians :D One thing that I've noticed in this presentation that ties in with my own thinking about modern human society: Our closest relatives, evolutionarily, are forest-bound hunter-gatherer primates. Our ancestors came off second-best, so we were forced onto the savannah and ended up dominating the other primates. Anatomically modern humans were some form of hunter-gatherer until some tribes were forced into agriculture due to competition (presumably), and then the agriculturalists dominated the hunter-gatherers. (And you could argue that this dominance was bought with sub-par nutrition in the form of wheat, particularly.) And I'm sure you can point out situations throughout the historical record where a given civilization's ascendence sowed the seeds of its own demise in the eventual ascendency of one or more of the vanquished people. On a side note, I'd be super-interested to hear your thoughts on the possibility that it was cooperation, fostered through joint religious observance, that enabled agriculture, or at least large-scale agriculture, seeing as how the temple at Gobekli Tepe seems to have predated large-scale agriculture at the same time as facilitating the meetings of large, temporarily cooperative groups.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@Alan_Duval ah - that’s the “check it out” theme from the show “check it out with dr. steve brule” and that’s john c reilly on the lobster who plays steve brule i think joint religious observance is a way of binding communities, but agriculture happened because the holocene era happened - in the palaeilithic the temperature was fluctuating too quickly for agriculture to be a viable way to live, and also there was maybe not enough carbon in the atmosphere

[@frans7995]

Argument is based on the leftist ideology that men being in power over women is bad, which would be something you would have to argue, but havent, since its under the false leftist premise that women are a minority (akin to a discriminated ethnicity or race.) But women arent an ethnicity or race and have never been discriminated as such. And you would have to prove that a hierchy is wrong. But maybe you dont like to think of these thinga and thats why you so much dislike Peterson and his interpretation of lobster hierchy, since you think hierarchies are inherintly evil, and not a part of nature--which is Petersons point, which really is a point designed for modern feminists, since anyone would understand something akin to this by just observing the food chain. Men arent stronger than women because they are 15% bigger, thats very simplistic and wrong, since a small man is stronger than a big woman. Its an obvious downplay on what it means to be a man, since its implied in this video and in leftist ideology that to be a man makes you a privileged class and in leftist idelogy to be priviledged is akin to sin. Furthermore, its been implied that modern society subjugates women (implying its legal to hit women, that there are no consequences, and that in egalatarian societies men stood up for women who were so much as slapped--as if thats not the exact same reaction any modern person would have today.) It was not explained why men are at the top and woman at the bottom in modern day america. I suposse we just have to take your word on it. Love you and thanks for the content! Its really good.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

You’re putting a lot of words in my mouth that I did not say. The point of this video is to explain *why* some societies have more hierarchy than others. Whether hierarchy is good or bad is up to you. I mention in episode 3 that hierarchy allows for efficient group coordination, that it reduces conflict, and also that it allows people on the top of a hierarchy to exploit people on the bottom. Peterson isn’t wrong about lobster hierarchy existing or how it works, but he is wrong that lobster hierarchy somehow means that humans are hierarchical by nature. If you look at the type of society that humans lived in for most of our existence they’re very egalitarian. Humans can be hierarchical or egalitarian depending on conditions. The point of this video is to understand those conditions. I didn’t talk about modern day america at all, I talked about small scale societies where it’s easy to see how the dynamics of power play out. I never said it’s OK or legal to hit women in our society, that’s ridiculous. I said that in certain patriarchal societies there is little or no consequence for it, and I explained why.

[@frans7995]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 I see, thanks for the reply 😀

[@Teodosin]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Well summed up, very interesting stuff. I'm not well versed in any of this, but do you think there could be a correlation between hierarchical tendencies and number of members in a group? I imagine it's easier to maintain a flat structure when everyone knows each other in a tribe or when there's significant overlap in who knows who. Think of Dunbar's number, essentially. If large societies inevitably become hierarchical, would it be partly true that humans do it naturally? That it's a situation we didn't evolve to handle as individuals, but can cope with by making the best use of our social instincts? Interested to hear your thoughts.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@Teodosin i do think there is some correlation between hierarchy and population density, but i don’t think it’s a necessary or causal correlation. so yes, it’s easier to dominate people more abusively when you don’t know them - though plenty of domination does happen between people who know eachother: patriarchy, household slavery, abusive parents etc! i think it’s david wengrow or else it’s graeber and wengrow (i mostly hate their new book, but there are some good parts in there) challenged the dunbar number or else claimed it was disproven (i don’t know if this is true and am very skeptical of anything those two say) and wengrow’s argument is that in hunter gatherer bands, you’re not just interacting with a total of 250 people or whatever, you’re actually interacting with thousands of people over time, because the composition of your band is always changing. Hunter gatherer bands are fluid and change members constantly. So the larger community can be tens of thousands of people and over the years you’ll get to know thousands of them not just 250 or so. I don’t know if the dunbar number is actually debunked, but this is true about hunter gatherer bands. Anyhow, I think that the real correlation between numbers and hierarchy is this: the ingredients for hierarchy are dependence and difficulty to escape. If I am dependent on someone who controls resources in order to eat, and I can’t just go off somewhere else and collect my own resources, because i’ll get killed by a hostile group, then the person who controls the resources can tell me what to do. that’s how employment works! the easier it is for you to leave or start your own business, the less you’ll be subject to domination. the harder it is the more dominated and exploited you are. So when population density gets high, there are less places to escape to, and it’s easier for smaller numbers of people to dominate resources that others need to survive. I’ll be talking about this in the future, it’s something that really underexplored in anthropology and political theory, the “ingredients” or hierarchy and equality.

[@Teodosin]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 As far as I'm aware Dunbar's number refers to the amount of people you can maintain relationships with at any given time, not the total amount of people you can get to know. I don't think it's disputable that there's a limit to that. It's probably a soft limit with a falloff, but it still exists. So what I'm referring to is the formation of hierarchies to manage complexity in large societies and to maintain coherence. I've come to think that domination is a side effect caused by people abusing their place in the hierarchy, not that it's the foundational motive for forming it. You didn't seem to address this, so I'll stop here and won't ramble on.

[@tatumgray5502]

I have never felt more refreshed watching a video in my life , great to educate people about this

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thank you, i really love to hear things like this!

[@kumariavantikasinha4180]

Egalitarian 🤡 Hierarchy ✅️

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

⬆gorilla brained moron

[@classical1314]

Absolutely mind blowing.

[@JohnCooper-RealEstate]

Biased af.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

durrr - you mean this is a political channel i have a point of view that I’m trying to get across? wow, what an important and enlightening critique and comment! you really exposed all the problems with my video with your insightful criticism….

[@JohnCooper-RealEstate]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 the lack of effort to consider the obvious contrary response weakens your attempt at persuasion.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@JohnCooper-RealEstate and what’s the obvious contrary response? response to what?

[@museumofwoman6633]

Thank you for the work. We have not seen all your videos, so we may be behind the curve… but will ask anyway: are you familiar with the work of Heide Goettner Abendroth and her book, Societies of Peace, on matriarchies? Thanks again for the wonderful videos. Will share.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

thanks! i’m aware of Abendroth and have been recommended to read her work but haven’t gotten to it yet!

[@thegoddesstempleoforangeco8292]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Thank you for replying. We notice that a huge chunk of human history is consistently left out of most conversations about our history: 250,000 years of humans venerating a female deity as they saw it-- this is from the archaeological record, starting with the Acheulian Goddess, statue, acknowledged to be at least 250,000 years old, found in the Golan Heights in the mid-80's, and then followed by hundreds of thousands of Goddess statues found all over Europe from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic. Then there's Catal Huyuk, with no evidence of defensive weapons or structures. These facts seem never to be mentioned by archaeologists or historians. The work of Marija Gimbutas is important also, and, while vilified and mocked in the 80's, is now grudgingly receiving accolades and affirmation from archaeologists. Thanks again for the work. We are a museum of the hidden history of woman and her contributions to civilization.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@thegoddesstempleoforangeco8292 yes, there is plenty of evidence suggesting that most humans were gender egalitarian for most of human history until relatively recently including all the stuff you mention - i talk about it more in subsequent episodes, and yes it’s very often ignored. catal huyuk seems to be getting some more attention lately. i imagine you know the work of camilla power, and the radical anthropology group? they write a lot about this stuff, and they’re the ones who told me about Abendroth. i’m going to be interviewing power and christ knight on the show very soon

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@thegoddesstempleoforangeco8292 also very cool about the museum! important to have people working to dig this stuff up and try to put it in common discourse and consciousness

[@vetondedushaj699]

Lol. Everyone else is wrong, but I'm right. Lol. Ok buddy

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

“everyone” i.e. two scholars you stupid fucktard.

[@zacharymunza8711]

I’m not smart enough to quite grasp everything here, but I agree with everything you say. I’ve always been a libertarian socialist but this just confirms it. Return to tribe

[@teacul]

at 10:00, Counterpoint: the counterculture movement was literally people tripping on LSD and imagine very alternative ways of organizing themselves

[@teacul]

but also, don't you think there exists a happy medium between the two theories ("experimentation" vs materialism). Like we're heavily constrained by material realities, but within those constraints we experiment a lot There's also the point that humans change their material realities as well. California's ecosystem exists the way it does today because of the extensive fire management practices of native Californian peoples. The Amazon has been called a "manufactured landscape" because of the scale and extent to which it was shaped, created, and maintained by indigenous Turtle Islanders. Technologies like the potato allowed people to live in crazy ass places like the Andes (and later saved millions of lives in Europe by preventing the famines that used to be so common). There's a huge interplay between material realities and human imagination that I think you're missing a bit here. And even then. Within any given material realities there's obviously many many ways people can learn to live there. Let's also not forget that foraging peoples enjoyed better health, similar lifespans (and likely longer healthspans), less chronic disease, less stress, less heart disease, zero acne, almost no diabetes or obesity, etc. And this is true from the Andes to indigenous Japanese to Inuit peoples. This shows that there are ways to "successfully" (here success being measured by health) live a life in a really wide and diverse array of conditions.

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

haha! yes indeed (about the LSD experiments), but did they actually build anything different or that lasted? No, because they didn’t actually change the circumstances we live under in any fundamental way. I’ll get back to you on the rest in a second...

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@teacul you said “ but also, don't you think there exists a happy medium between the two theories ("experimentation" vs materialism). Like we're heavily constrained by material realities, but within those constraints we experiment a lot” So yes, I agree with this 100% and by the end of the video I point out where there is and isn't room for experimentation. The thing that I'm criticizing in Graeber & Wengrow is that they're saying that people experiment with hierarchy and equality. And I'm saying no way, nobody willingly experiments with having less rights than someone else on any kind of long term basis. And even if they did, they won't tolerate it for very long. The only way it sticks is if some people have advantages that they can use to keep others subservient. People experiment with ways of making a living, with places to live, with defense strategies, what to eat, where to eat, how to travel, how to pray, and with all sorts of things, and those things end up having unintended and unforeseen consequences which, if they give some people advantages over others, ends up becoming political hierarchy over time. Does that work as a synthesis? I feel like if Graeber hadn't died and if had had the chance to correspond with him, we would have reached some kind of agreement more or less. He often would write some half-baked stuff, and sometimes come back and refine it later after criticism. His Bullshit jobs book was like that. The article he wrote had some really stupid stoner takes in it, but the book was way better.

[@teacul]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 on the LSD/counterculture thing... actually I think they did a lot. Look at the ic.org directory or the gift economy movement (which is about living in ways that don't require money, heavily dependent on communes and stuff like wwoofing). Many of the long lasting communes and intentional communities today stem from ideological movements in the 60s Also you can't say hippies didn't have a lasting impact on the development of silicon valley, ideas around open-sourcing, etc. Just look at the P2P foundation as an example (they have some interesting readings about "peak hierarchy" as well that I found useful). i'll respond to your longer comment in a bit lol

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

@@teacul those are good points - but I don’t think those experiments brought fundamental changes to our society as whole in terms of altering the balance of power or creating more egalitarianism or more hierarchy. Also the reason I spoke only about smaller scale societies vs our society or big civilizations is that there’s so much going on that it’s really hard to parse what changes are coming from culture and deliberate actions and experimentation, and what’s coming from material practical conditions etc. like you can argue that a lot of that experimentation happened because the US became a much wealthier society around that time, and that was the peak of wealth and of income redistribution so the material conditions lent themselves to experimentation. So the hippie movement happened at one of these points i talk about in the video, where material reality is changing, and that’s when people start to recognize that they don’t need to be subject to the old rules anymore so they start pushing back and experimenting. some of it sticks and some of it doesn’t and that gets sorted out over a few generations. i’d say some of our social hierarchies started to buckle in that era, patriarchy, anti gay ideology, racism to some extent in popular culture. economic hierarchy stayed the same and got worse. also in small scale communities you would have deliberate experiments like graeber is envisioning, but after a few generations they would evaporate because they’re not compatible with material reality. we’re only a couple of generations away from the 60s. or like if you look at the israeli kibbutz movement, it started off very socialist, and after a few generations, it’s still there, it still has some socialist elements but it’s become much more coop capitalist because of the broader economic context it finds itself in has pushed it in that direction. in the next episode i’ll be talking about how especially in big civilizations like ours with mass communication, there is actually a lot of untapped bargaining power and room for deliberate action and that existing hierarchies are often a hold-over from earlier historical material conditions which no longer apply and which give us more room to manoever than in some of the small scale societies I was talking about - though this happens in those societies too. Like you said, Graeber’s notion of exprimentation isnt sooooo incompatible with what i’m talking about, but his articles on this drive me absolutely bonkers because he’s deliberately ignoring well know obvious explanations for the phenomena he’s dicussion and substitution have baked mechanisms that don’t really make sense all for a political aim that isn’t well served by that.

[@lovaloo763]

I've been watching these in order and taking notes bb

[@00Platypus00]

I'd be curious to know your opinion on Against the Grain by James Scott... How do you see this book?

[@WHATISPOLITICS69]

i actually haven’t read it yet! definitely need to do it, probably will do so before i do my next episode on egalitarian foragers but not sure

[@00Platypus00]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 Looking forward to it!