A while back, I shared an arc of discovery involving key books that had significant influence on my perspectives. This post serves as an update, mainly covering six books I read (and/or listened to) over the summer. Loosely speaking, the theme revolved around gaining a better anthropological sense of who we really are as a species.
I’ll first offer a few preliminaries. As is obvious from previous posts, I benefitted greatly from Daniel Quinn’s writings, reflected in my recent summaries of Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael. I also found value in Quinn’s Providence (the story behind Ishmael), Tales of Adam, and Beyond Civilization. I should clarify that being appreciative of key insights is not the same as being an unwavering adherent or disciple.
Next, I’ll repeat admiration for The Master and His Emissary, by Iain McGilchrist, which still exerts a substantial influence on how I perceive cognition in its various forms (and especially its limitations). I may dedicate a post to this book at some future time.
Finally, I should acknowledge The Dawn of Everything for its formative role in much the same way that my parents were formative influences: their example taught me how not to be, in many respects. My net-negative review of DoE tells this story well enough.
Now onto the Summer Six…
I’ll present these in the order I encountered them, since some paved the way to others in a memorable story of its own.
We Will Be Jaguars
Nemonte Nenquimo wrote (with Mitch Anderson) a story of her youth among the Waorani people of Amazonian Ecuador (the title is We Will Not Be Saved in the UK). It would be hard for me to imagine a more evocative account of the diametrical forces experienced by people trying to hold onto their cherished and sustaining traditions in the face of modernity’s trap-door temptations and associated irreversible destruction.
In this book, we get a window into hunter-gatherer-horticultural lifestyles, but tainted by a continuous escalation of meddling from the modern world via missionaries and extractive companies. Especially in the early part of her life, Nemonte describes a lifestyle essentially free of money, but rich in experience and relationship. She wrestles mightily with desires for “Western” goods and appearances, while being perfectly happy to remain barefoot if it meant her father would not help the oil companies and settlers level forests so that he could acquire shoes for her. She had a front-row seat to the consequences, in a way that few of us do.
As one example plucked from a fabulous wealth of insightful vistas into Waorani experience, Nemonte describes a confusing disconnect in dealing with the cowori (outsiders). You see, Waorani people know their life and technologies through and through. Even if not a personal master-crafter of every tool, food product, piece of clothing, or dye, every curious child and teenager is well-exposed to at least witnessing the entire process—from gathering materials to processing to implementation to use to disposal: cradle to grave familiarity. Thus, when they encounter cowori flying airplanes, talking on radios, wearing soft materials brightly colored and patterned, it is natural to assume that these god-like creatures are nearly omnipotent masters of the universe: able to do almost anything. But when asked what makes that dress a vibrant yellow, no one can say. But does the dye come from roots or bark or leaves? No clue, or even interest. She puts it like this:
How did the white people make planes and radios and chainsaws if they didn’t even know how to wash clothes or catch shrimp with their own hands?
If asked how to build a radio or an airplane, or even how such devices work, it would quickly become clear that the cowori are surprisingly ignorant—possessing only toddler-level understanding of their dependencies. Compounding this is the cowori incompetence at very simple matters like knowing how to eat, poop, pee, exit a canoe, or walk down a trail at night. How, indeed, can such powerful people be so individually clueless? Something just doesn’t add up. [Hint: externalized “brains” not central to Waorani life]
I first listened to this book in audio form, valuing immensely occasional insertions of the Waorani language (Wao Tededo) that my uncomprehending eyes would have skipped over if reading in print. The catchy words echoed in my ears for days and weeks to follow: Wengongi (God), cowori (outsider), Uuuuuuu (agreement)—like a form of addiction. I since obtained a hardcopy, so that I can read more slowly and savor the reflections and critical insights.
Why We Need to Be Wild
A comment on Do the Math pointed me to this book by Jessica Carew Kraft. I snagged a library copy in audio form, which introduced me to a subculture to which I had not been meaningfully exposed. The author—initially stuck in a bay-area tech company—describes her craving for a more authentic way of life. She began attending primitive skills gatherings and workshops, building proficiency in fire starting, animal processing, hide tanning, basket crafting, and many related arts. She also embarked on a path of anthropological study, sharing key takeaways in the book.
I was struck by the unexpected normalcy of the “rewilding” community she described: “everyday” people called to learn and preserve ancient skills for the joy of the experience and the connectivity to tradition. I thought when reading the book that maybe someday I ought to check out such a gathering—but in that sort of non-commital way that could easily never happen. A few short weeks later, I found myself at a primitive skills gathering almost by accident (story below), and indeed found the people to be fantastic.
The rewilding (or primitive skills or ancestral skills) community that I met is full of really great folks. They didn’t set off my alarm bells as fatalistic bunker-building fanatics. They were calm, intelligent, funny, lighthearted, appreciative, grateful, skilled, sober, rational people who wore “normal” clothes, weren’t smoking pot or saucing it up, didn’t display a machismo survivalist vibe, and delighted in learning and teaching. No political conversations arose: like me, these folks are in a sense beyond the petty politics of the day—not strongly identifying with either “side” (well off the Marx-Hitler spectrum). The sense of community is also powerful: many come for the skills, but stay/return for the people. I was also surprised by the median (and modal) age of the gathering: late twenties, I would say. Many young people are seeking a different way. Families with kids were also abundant.
A number of Indigenous folks were at the gathering to pass along traditions. While they might prefer to educate their own youth, too few have interest. These folks deem it worthwhile to teach anyone who’s serious, independent of genetic heritage. When colonialism comes to an end and modernity exhausts its means, it’ll be time for some subset of folks to re-indigenize—wherever they happen to be when the music stops (limited seating available). Most of the folks—at least those in the older half—invested in acquiring these skills don’t seem to expect reliance on the practices for their own life maintenance. Yet, they find satisfaction in being part of rekindling and passing the torch. The people I talked to were typically of this mindset: it’s about future generations, not us, ourselves: a selfless far-sighted attitude, accepting modernity as a terminal illness and asking: then what? These folks would no doubt embrace Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s call to Hospice Modernity.
Anyway, the Kraft book is a perfect introduction to this movement and community, grounded in anthropological awareness. The introduction sets the stage and often sounds just like something I might write.
Human Rewilding in the 21st Century
Right when I was in the middle of the Kraft book, I got an e-mail from James Van Lanen, introducing himself as having a background in anthropology and working on a book to address Graeber & Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything. He had found my review on Do the Math, appreciated its assessment, and wanted to use some of my material in his book. Also, he asked, would I like a copy of his Rewilding book?
As I waited for said book to arrive, Jaime (his informal name) started sending me seminal papers about different styles of hunter-gatherers, which I would comment on in e-mail form, leading to a voluminous and substantive exchange. Meanwhile, I continued listening to the Kraft book and what to my wondering ears did appear but a character named Jaime and his hunted reindeer. That’s right! Jaime was suddenly in my life from two directions! Wild! Then rewild!
Soon enough, I had received his book and was starting to read it and offer comments/discussion via e-mail. We decided we really should talk, but he was moving around a lot and phone was the best choice. He said he would be crawling through Seattle traffic in late June on his way to the Earthkin gathering in Canada, and could call then. Great. It took a few days for the idea to drop (see, I’m not that smart): instead of a phone call, what if I got in his car in Seattle (reachable by bus and ferry from my town) and went to the gathering with him? We’d have loads of time to talk/discuss, and I’d also learn some great skills, see for myself what this rewilding movement was all about, and have a spontaneous adventure. This was proposed/settled on a Monday evening and I was on my way Wednesday morning—ready to live outside and feed myself for ten days, carrying all the gear and food on foot.
I learned a ton from Jaime in our long-form conversations. Before the gathering, I got some early lessons in flint knapping and friction fire. We even went to an important remote archeological site once occupied by complex hunter-gatherers (hierarchical; unequal food access), reading the seminal paper on findings from the site on the drive. Having just been exposed to flint knapping, I was stunned by the obvious flake debris all around (“lithic scatter”) from long-vanished occupants. The basalt chips were still sharp-edged and pitch-black on one side as if flaked minutes before (no surface corrosion over the few-thousand years). Jaime found (and returned) an obvious well-used hide scraper made of chert. I accumulated a tremendous amount of learning in those several days.
But about the book… It’s largely structured as reaction to a faction of postmodern, politically-progressivist anthropologists who are dismissive of the rewilding movement as a sort of racist hobby by privileged white people. These anthropologists—much in the mold of Graeber—in fact would rather abolish distinctions like hunter-gatherer, counterfactually intoning that humans were always part of a state system. Saying otherwise “demotes” hunter-gatherers as savages, and risks erecting barriers that prevent present-day foragers from entering the folds of modernity as a fundamental right and privilege for every human: the unquestionably-correct way to live. Acknowledging a much different lifestyle could interfere with complete colonization—a most righteous assimilation—denying “unprivileged” people of the perks that accompany a sixth mass extinction.
I could hardly believe the stance of these anthropologists, and delighted in Jaime’s relentless take-down of their postmodernist fallacies and fantasies. The book has an academic feel, chock-full of citations and footnotes (exposing me to a great set of literature I still need to pursue—especially Gowdy’s work). I love a bit of postmodernism bashing, and resonated with Jaime’s points over and over. You can listen to Jaime’s conversation about the book with Derrick Jensen here.
The main point is that rewilding is an authentic reaction to a real and emerging material condition, sensed by many, and is a fascinating development in modern anthropology in its own right. Having experienced such a gathering first-hand now, I can’t disagree. Something real is happening out there, and I like what I see. So do many Indigenous “keepers of the flame.” Maybe complete colonization isn’t the desire of all—or even most—humans, and is in fact a rather paternalistic, condescending assumption.
Here’s a metaphor inspired by my exposure to friction-fire techniques (bow drill and hand drill). Modernity is like the spindle: kinetic; frenetic. It creates enormous friction and heat, throwing off a lot of dust: the dispossessed; disillusioned. Some of that dust falls through the cracks, essentially invisible to the machine above. Some of that dust collects into a hot coal. That’s the rewilding community. The coal is delicate and precious, to be treated like a baby. If cradled in suitable tender, it can ignite. Whether I myself become part of the coal is yet to be seen. But I can at least cradle the coal and blow gently on it, helping to nurture its survival until the conditions are right for ignition.
Old Dog
Jaime also introduced me to Mark Seely, a psychology professor who wrote (among other things) a novel called Old Dog. I recommend reading John Zerzan’s review here, who compares Old Dog to Ishmael. What follows is short, as it is difficult to improve on Zerzan’s review.
Old Dog is a mutt who has seen it all. Like Ishmael, he has an unusual knack for language comprehension (but alas, no telepathic ability). His life consisted of five main phases: family; street; education; feral pack; comfort. During this time, he develops keen insights on humans, dogs, and how domestication has fundamentally changed/reduced both. The writer who rescues Old Dog from oblivion shares many of his own compatible insights in the book.
I would characterize much of the writing as having a decidedly philosophical bent, which would ordinarily be a term of damnation from me. But it’s the “good” sort of philosophy that questions human aggrandizement and philosophical prowess, stresses a material reality, bats down counterfactual fantasy (leans into determinism), dissolves artificial boundaries fabricated by brains and language, and tries to reunite a whole that modernist brains have worked to shatter into separable shards. The book also offers lots of substantive reflections on evolution, the merits of pre-modern lifeways (anthropologically well-informed), and the emergence of modernity. For a work on this topic to stimulate rather than irritate me is rare enough to become an instant treasure. This is a book I intend to read again to better absorb some of the deep insights. The winter fireside beckons.
Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes
One of the books that was already on my radar, and then reinforced by Jaime (see how influential he’s been?) was the account of Daniel Everett—who went as an evangelical missionary to live with the Pirahã (pee-da-HAN) people of the Amazon. The Pirahã had been uniquely resistant to cultural infiltration in part because their unique language was a tough nut to crack, and because they had zero interest in adopting foreign customs and language. The literal translation of “foreign language” in Pirahã is “crooked-head.” Thus, before Daniel Everett showed up with a tremendous linguistic talent, no communication channel was fully open in either direction.
I’ll skip to the spoiler, which was pre-spoiled for me as well and a large part of the reason I wanted very badly to read the book (also revealed on the book jacket, so not a big sin, here). Everett ultimately concluded that Christianity and Western culture could not offer anything remotely as graceful and complete and satisfying as the life and culture already lived by the Pirahã: no conceivable improvements possible. That’s incredible, isn’t it? A Christian missionary was essentially converted by experiencing decades of life among a people unburdened by the trappings of modernity. He observed that for a people to accept Christianity, they must want to be saved. In order to desire salvation, they must first feel lost. He realized that the goal of many missionaries was to first smash (forbid) the “working” elements of a lifestyle so the people would become lost and therefore receptive to saving. It’s a nasty old playbook.
Everett also made clear that the conventional wisdom among missionary organizations in such situations all rested on language. The emphasis was therefore on careful linguistic study. The conviction was that once a suitable translation of the Gospels could be accomplished, conversion would be automatic. After all, the word of God is infallible, and once put into comprehensible form simply could not fail to convert anyone exposed to it. I know. One can hardly help pitying their naïve enthusiasm.
The Pirahã have an unusually low tolerance for indirect experience. A story about a man named Jesus who no living person has ever met had zero chance of holding their attention for even a few seconds. Everett’s linguistic work exposed a wealth of insight into Pirahã world views. They are remarkable in so many ways: ways that Westerners might find reflexively inferior, but who are we to judge, honestly? As crafted by their environment, they are extremely successful as a people and a culture. By contrast, modernity crafted a sixth mass extinction in no time—so there!
If you read the book, I hope you can (like the author and myself) put aside snobbery for a people so averse to abstraction that they don’t have words for colors or numbers—appreciating that there’s no one right way to live on a diverse planet, and that the true measure of success is ecological compatibility. As a bonus, the Pirahã are social and fun-loving, laughing with each other all the time. We can actually learn quite a lot from a people without numbers and suspicious of abstraction. Consider that this endorsement is from a blog whose origins are fiercely quantitative, and is in fact called Do the Math.
Civilized to Death
Capping off my summer was a rip-roaring delight of a book by Christopher Ryan. I first listened to it in audio form, which I highly recommend because it is read by the author with excellent emphasis and humor. I listened while doing outdoor chores, which means I only had 95% of my attention on the book, but loved it so much I kept replaying chapters. I probably listened to the first half of the book at least three times, it was so enjoyable. The resonance faded somewhat for the second half, though I still appreciated the content.
What I loved most about the book was the frontal assault on Hobbesian mythology about the past, together with a fantastic treatment of the “noble savage” accusation that inevitably is leveled any time any positive attribution is made toward foraging people (what does that tell you, in itself?). Ryan rakes Hobbes, Pinker, Dawkins, and other human-supremacist intellectuals over the coals, brilliantly exposing their embarrassing intellectual sloppiness. He even changed my perspective on Malthus.
The book is full of useful “correctives” on health, happiness, maturity, longevity, and cooperative aspects of foraging people. Very much in line with all the authors highlighted in this post—and with my own views—Ryan portrays post-agricultural modernity as a fatally flawed path for humans: a tragic bad turn that is fundamentally incompatible with our intrinsic nature. He characterizes us as living in captivity in a zoo of our own (very poor) design.
In the end, he advocates designing a zoo better matched to who we are as a species. I appreciate the sentiment, but lack faith that any brain-designed zoo will be at all up to the task of ecological living. As was the case through most of human history, we must—in my view—just live and experience the world as it is in its staggering complexity, rather than thinking our way into how to live. We pretty well suck at that, since what we can’t understand vastly exceeds what we can. No other creature on Earth has established a cerebral foundation for how to live, and our track record on that front is proving to be disastrous.
[Late addition 25.09.06: Alex Leff interviewed Christopher Ryan on Human Nature Odyssey, which I recommend.]
Consumer Advice
If, like me, you wish to minimize material toll on the planet, don’t forget the public library as a resource (can usually submit inter-library loan requests for items the local library lacks). Audiobooks are also often available via libraries (Libby or hoopla apps, for instance). Used books are not terribly hard to find online. If purchasing new, independent bookstores would appreciate the boost, or you can use bookshop.org to order as an alternative to Amazon—even designating an independent bookshop of your choice to receive some kickback as if you’d bought the book from their store.
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Thanks for your Consumer Advice at the end of the Anthropological Summer book recommendation list! I often hear about Amazon's so-called convenience, the very convenience that imperils the Amazon.
Thanks for making that connection! I looked for ways to wedge that irony in, but wasn't finding a way that wasn't clunky.
I am very grateful for the interest you and many others have to preserve human Cultures (anthropology) I too have interest in documenting my people's social aspects of life. I am South Sudanese Baka. Draft is complete, checking and approval by traditional elders, some intellectuals and also youth. Now remaining final checking and publication.
I am looking how I can get this book published. The title is: THE BAKA CULTURE AND VALUES
Thanks for sharing, Tom. I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Everett's book (as an audiobook, which helped with the extensive linguistic explainers) when I came across it and I look forward to delving into these others.
Also I know you prefer the blogging format, but I think you would do a great job of interviewing these authors if you could ever be motivated to create a podcast…!?
It is always "anthropology summer" for me. Glad you did a takedown of The Dawn of Everything. Your article is on my to-do list. I liked Kwame Anthony Appiah's review of DoE in the New York Review of Books (Digging for Utopia, 16 December 2021). Wengrow didn't. The attempt to justify state-level society with a postmodern slant ("We cannot be racist or primitivist!") just masks the real reason that anthropologists (like almost all professors) have to protect their cushy jobs. As Upton Sinclair famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Fun fact: We went to Tautavel in the Languedoc last Saturday to visit the museum on the Arrago 21 specimen that was found nearby and dates to 450,000 BP. Very good museum for a small town. Unfortunately, the grand poobahs of paleoanthropology in France have totally bought into the Homo heidelberensis orientation, so now there are a whole bunch of specimens in Europe and Africa and even Asia that are grouped into this "wastebasket taxon." It is sooooo political. By the way, I tend to be a lumper rather than a splitter myself, but the politically correct nonsense carries over into old, dead humans, not just living indigenous tribes.
Spelling error – the species name is Homo heidelbergensis. The type specimen is a single mandible found in a sand quarry in 1907 near Mauer, 10 kilometers from Heidelberg. While I was in grad school, I did some measurements on a cast of the mandible in the bone lab. My conclusion is that the Mauer mandible is well within the limits of Homo neanderthalensis, so should not be its own species. Of course I would have to measure the actual specimen to be sure, but the upshot is that the repercussions of mis-labeling an isolated single mandible has now grown into a greater problem because of the use of this "wastebasket taxon."
Thank you for introducing the Pirahã people, Tom. I was not aware of them. For your information, there is a documentary on YouTube with lots of filmed material about Pirahã. It tells the story of Daniel Everret's experience with the Pirahã people. I found it very interesting.
Have you read, by the way, Freud's little book Civilisation and Its Discontents? I think you would enjoy reading it, if you have not read it already.
Thanks, Tom. I've read half of these, and have put as many as possible on hold at the library.
However…as much pleasure as reading gives me, I can't help but look at the giant pile of words our culture has piled up, and wonder if it hasn't started to stink a bit. So much verbiage, such a quantity of ink spilled (or bits flipped) and are we any saner or more attuned to the needs of the living world?
I was raised steeped in written language, but I constantly worry that it may be one of those things that is a net negative for the human animal.
I definitely share the view that writing was a net-negative development (see posts called Spare Capacity, The Writing on the Wall, and The Worst Inventions). As a whole, we're almost certainly not saner for all that. Nonetheless, selective reading of some small sliver of the giant pile *can* result in improvement—at least at the individual level. The whole affair may still be net-negative, but we can try to filter out some positive crumbs.
Writing as net-negative is a brilliant insight. And of course, since civilization = state-level society + writing + public architecture (standard Anth 101 definition), then the erosion of civilization should produce fewer written words and fewer pieces of public architecture. And vice versa. As western civilization collapses, there will be fewer uses of written language, as well as the institutions (like laws) that depend on the written word.
This is a great list! I look forward to reading all of them.
On a related note, Christine Webb wrote a lovely essay titled, "Putting Humans First Is Not Natural", reflecting on her experience writing her book, "The Arrogant Ape":
https://nautil.us/putting-humans-first-is-not-natural-1235544/
One observation that I guess I hadn't really considered before:
'Even our taxonomic name—Primates, from Primata, meaning “of the first rank”—betrays the same assumption (treating the human brain as the blueprint for intelligence and consciousness).'
Wow—that's a fantastic article! I loved it from start to finish (a rare delight). I eagerly await reading the book, though I see it was just published 2 days ago, so I might need to be patient…
When I sent this to a friend (who is a fan of Hagens, has read Hospicing Modernity, etc), he was curious about your take on building skills like growing and harvesting wheat by hand, in addition to full rewilding.
My guesses:
– You would point out that, along the way TO modernity, such skills would be risky to introduce
– You simply find other topics more interesting (early/alt lifeways, defining life, "consciousness", "intelligence", free will / determinism, modernity's impermanence)
– Where I'm unsure: As modernity deteriorates (and climate destabilizes and biodiversity possibly declines further), do you think such skills would be valuable? Or maybe that's the wrong basis for evaluation – Is it (for you) less about your experience of collapse and more about humility and appreciation for the practices and worldviews that are most foreign to us, and how those bring meaning to it?
How'd I do?
Certainly a passing grade, but one of the joys of retirement is that I no longer have to assign grades.
I worry about any storable grain like wheat, as I am not aware of evidence that human cultures can resist the ills that accompany such capability (security, power concentration, ownership, accounting, money, etc.). The "fiercely egalitarian" cultures tended to be immediate-return folks. Complex hunter-gatherers tended to have stored food, leading to control, subjugation, hierarchy, slavery, and all that. I'm not excited about wheat as "the way," but manual operation is a huge transition-step in the right direction (forces a smaller scale). The road out of modernity will be long and involve almost every possible variant somewhere, most of which will likely fail due to ecological incompatibility. Something like wheat might take thousands of years to abandon, and maybe will persist beyond that in some locales (among holdout jerk cultures: the wheat making the jerks).
Those of us who have been actually doing something to build alternatives for the last 50+ years usually embrace wheat and other grains. It is a pipe dream to try and move straight back to a hunter/gatherer lifestyle – even if you wanted to tdo that. In addition, there are multiple crops that have higher kilocalories/acre than wheat, so you could investigate that aspect. (The potato is the classic example, but there are many others. I have been doing research on this for over twenty years.) As the US and the rest of the developed western world collapses, it will be necessary to solve problems as they come up and adapt to the ones you cannot solve. I have been growing wheat and other grains on a small scale for decades and it is relatively easy with a small tiller and a little skill. Threshing is the hard part, but using a flail is not onerous; it just takes time. The idea of moving back to medieval usages and mindsets is based on what works in the past, NOT on some ideology. As an example, are you really willing to adopt a peasant mindset? It is ubiquitous in France, where I now live, but rarer in the US where the "Yankee shopkeeper" mindset is more prevalent. The bottom line is that one can do just fine without grain, so growing and harvesting wheat on a small-scale is just one of the alternatives to collapse. If you are serious about preparing for collapse you "gotta get granular."
Hey, don't knock fatalistic pot smoking bunker building fanatics! If I saw such a person, I would certainly think that they had more sense than let's say someone working as an investment banker in the modern context.
Alright, not a bunker, but I did find Mike Oehler's underground house design somewhat pragmatic, when the Earth is 55 degrees year-round, what a profligate waste to not avail ourselves more frequently of this readily accessible thermal gradient. Think of all the ACs and heating that wouldn't be needed if earth-berm houses were a more frequently utilized design. It's not a strategy entirely without merit for those who wish to try and be adaptive and less energy intensive.
In fact, I would venture that humans lived largely underground for long stretches during the harsh periods of ice ages, in natural cave formations.
Fair points! I'd probably have a lot more enjoyable conversation with a modernity dropout than with an investment banker!
The mammoth bone pit houses in the Upper Paleolithic were quite comfortable. These are sometimes called the oldest form of architecture and date as far back as 23,000 BP in the Dnepr River area of Ukraine.
Thank you for your reading advice, Tom. I'll take note of it. I enjoyed The Ishmael Trilogy so much. So I decided to translate 'My Ishmael' into Spanish language; apparently, this last one wasn't translated, and I believe it's important to promote its content. You mentioned Christopher Ryan. One of my first podcasts for my program 'Sharing Hell' was a review of his book 'Sex at Dawn.' I contacted him, and he turned out to be a very pleasant and approachable person (he told me that he was teacher at the University of Barcelona). I’m sure he'd be thrilled to see your review. One last thing. Have you read anything by John Zerzan?
Kind regards
Hi Tom.Would you consider writing about the debate around pre-state vs. modern violence? Pinker claims that average violent death rates in hunter gatherer groups exceeded even the worst years of World War II, while others (like Chris Ryan) argue this misrepresents the evidence.
what i would love to understand is the nuance in comparing small-scale averages to modern extremes. Are we really measuring the same thing when we look at per-capita death rates in tiny groups versus global wars? And what does that comparison tell us about the nature of violence across human history?
I found Christopher Ryan's takedown of Pinker's distorted representation on the matter pretty compelling—seemingly motivated by disdain for pre-modern lifeways.
One data point: when Europeans first explored California, they "grabbed a native" to use as an interpreter for other Indigenous people, but soon found that the interpreter was useless beyond several days' walking distance because languages varied so much in a patchwork across the region. Language evolves on a roughly 500–1000 year timeframe, so that divergent lines become unintelligible to each other after about 1000 years. This suggests a tremendous degree of stability in a patchwork of peace. No doubt border displays and the occasional death occurred (see the Erratic Retaliator business in My Ishmael), but perhaps nothing like conquest and eradication (state violence).
Another data point: Nemonte Nenquimo reports in We Will be Jaguars that her first encounter with violent death as a roughly 10-year-old was when an older boy was shot by settlers for spearing their cattle. Death by violence was not a common feature of life. In Don't Sleep, There are Snakes, the only violent death in a generation was instigated by settler encroachment. Both these examples reinforce Ryan's point that Pinker's statistics were dominated by settler-induced violence, rather than intrinsic levels.
No matter what the answer, who are we to judge the result? What ecological sustainability can we tout? Whatever the level of human-on-human violence in the hundreds-of-thousands of years prior to states, it seemed to fit the bill. I doubt it was extreme by today's standards.
I get a little frustrated with Pinker's line of thinking (which isn't restricted to Pinker, by any means). It's the line that life won't be so great in a sustainable arrangement of communities, so let's stick with an unsustainable arrangement.
Human on human violence has probably been around for millions of years, though at the tribal level it tended to be small-scale and directed primarily at outsiders. Sometimes there were resource conflicts such as indigenous wars over camas (important foodstuff) in the American west.
In Olive Oatman's memoir, she discussed her enslavement and partial integration with the Mojave. There was one instance where she was very worried for her own life because after a localized famine (in which Olive's younger sister died) the Mojave decided to attack a nearby Cocopah tribe (perhaps spurred on by their visceral relationship with local carrying capacity). Olive was concerned because it was the tradition of the Mojave to sacrifice a captive if a brave fell in battle to 'sate his angry spirit'. Thus, if any brave was killed in the Mojave-Cocopah conflict, Olive expected to be sacrificed in a ritualistic and probably pretty unpleasant way. As it turned out, no Mojave brave was killed in their sneak-attack against the Cocopah, Olive counted her lucky stars. The Mojave brought back one beautiful young Cocopah woman as a captive, she tried to escape by jumping in the river, they did not like this, the woman was caught, crucified, and slow-killed with arrows.
Perhaps humans could always be a bit brutal to outsiders. That underlying dynamic doesn't appear to have changed, though Empire has scaled up and institutionalized violence, which is consistently sent down the hierarchies. Consider Damien being torn limb from limb in the Anciens Regime of France for 'scratching the king'. Or take the case of Lucius Pedanius Secundus: a Roman senator killed in 61AD, a slave suspected. It was Roman law that if a slave killed their master, all of the slaves owned by that master would be crucified. Pedanius owned at least four hundred slaves, many of them women and children. An objection was raised in the Senate, perhaps the innocent slaves should be spared, but in the end they decided that their traditions were more important, and all were crucified.
I don't know of any period of history absent the brutality and violence of Empire. Is civilization actually more civilized? And now, with nine nuclear weapon states in a tenuous stand-off, AI drones, bioweapons, other modern military tech, our capacity for destructive war has scaled up to a horrifying degree.
Within a tribe there is a familial context, individual familiarity, and an innate value of each individual to the tribe. Logically this creates disincentives for inner-tribal violence. And often tribes would get together for festivals and celebrations, to eat meat and drink banana beer, it wasn't all warfare.
I’ve read 4/6 and am excited for the other two – I got “Jaguars” already from the library. Also loved the serendipitous story of your adventures with Jaime Van Lanen!! If anyone’s getting weary eyes from reading, I really enjoyed hearing his whole story on Peter Bauer’s “Rewilding Podcast” (he also has great interviews with other anthropologists mentioned in “Why We Need to Be Wild”, such as Leonard Martin)
I’ve been wanting to revisit “Don’t Sleep…” and “Civilized to Death”,both of which I read during the pandemic. It’s worth mentioning that Dan Everett lost his family and marriage as a result of his unconversion.
I recall feeling the same way about C2D; fist-pumping enthusiasm for the first half, and less excited by the conclusions, of which all I remember now was suggesting we emulate Nordic countries. In addition to our inability to design, I struggle with the goal of “building a better zoo” because, with human happiness the primary focus, it seems to so easily fall prey to the consumerist life-hack mentality – people in my city embrace eating “paleo” and polyamory, but not notions of shared property – and then the sixth mass extinction continues uninterrupted. But maybe I’m expecting too much, and we have to start somewhere? Human Nature Odyssey just released a thought-provoking interview with Chris on these, and other, topics!
One final mention: “Outgrowing Modernity”, the follow-up to “Hospicing Modernity”, was recently released-haven’t read it yet but am curious if anyone has?
Thanks for reminding me about the HNO interview, which I had listened to and enjoyed. I should have included it from the beginning, but just put in a link as a late addition.
Be sure to check out Carolyn Merchant's "Death Of Nature", which offers a more sophisticated & nuanced socio-political analysis of the same period covered by the second part of Iain McGilchrist's "Master and His Emisary".
As much as I cherished TM&HE, the vast majority of this appreciation attached to the first half of the book. Otherwise, the treatment in the second half was far too "modern" for me, leaving out 99% of Homo sapiens' history. On balance, post-agricultural culture was already firmly in the grip of the left hemisphere (control, manipulation, certainty, mastery), even if it had periods of *less* profound imbalance.
I find it sad and equally unfortunate that ”progressive anthropologists” dismiss/cancel practising ”rewilders”, as much as ”recovering scientists” feel the need to bash ”post-modernists”. I wonder why is that, and figure it must be personal experiences or prejudices, from ”where we come”, that colours ”the others” black or white.
To me, and in my simple way of generalized understanding, post-modern thought was one early expression of relativizing the human siences. It allowed ’us’ (anyone interested) to look at our society/history/culture from another perspective than the prevailing evolutionist/progressive that dominated western sciences up until say the 50s/60s. So, figuratively, human sciences (from looking just straight ahead or back) started to look around, look/go out, and even look in.
Recently, in my experience, several (natural) scientists seem to have pulled their eyes away from the eye pieces of their microscopes and other scopes from which they were doing their observations, calculations and predictions in service for modern society. Again figuratively, they have zoomed out/looked up, and broadened the perspective, and begun to use their calculating abilities to show what is wishful thinking and what is actually possible in the world.
For me these two ways of looking, and changing the look, at the world have both formed and confirmed thoughts, instincts and suspicions that I have had about our society and nature since childhood. So after these two theoretical approaches/awakenings it is time for me to go out in the forest and try to learn some practical ”rewilding” skills. I do not really feel like cancelling or bashing any of these routes.
Presumably, I'm one of those scientists who pulled back and used scientific tools to expose limits and question modernity. My beef with postmodernism is that it sidles up to philosophical idealism, wherein truth is too slippery to grasp: all constructs. Math and physics become constructs of a colonial hegemony, rather than robust expressions of the actual universe as we find it and as it existed before human existence/hegemony. In other words, it goes too far, applying an initially useful challenge to authority (within, say, humanities) beyond its useful domain. Its fatal flaw tends to be a dismissal of material realities, which is why hunter-gatherers can become a problematic label rather than a materially consequential way of life that relates *much* differently to the Community of Life. It's not all same-same relativism, tom-AY-to, tom-ah-to. That framework has severe limits that are typically not appreciated by its practitioners, in my experience.
Tom, I just listened to your discussion on resistance radio, where there was a part on postmodernism, and I completely understand and agree with your critisism. At the same time math and physics – or natural science in general – allthough not constructs of colonial hegemony, has served as tools for e.g. colonialism, extractivism and 'entrepeneurism' for a long time, still does. And scientists that wants to remain in business mustn't rock the boat to hard or become blatant "activists", i.e. must not question to much the narrative of mother culture, specifically the idealistic parts of it.
All I am saying is that there are jerks everywhere and don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
by the way – thanks for the reading tips!
Have just finished the last one in the Ishmael trilogy, and another one I picked up at recently at your site was "the denial of death", which was quite interesting.
Thanks so much for the tips. I'm currently listening to Nemonte Nenquino's eye-opening 'We Will Not Be Saved' (as it is titled here in the UK). I came across a powerful statement from her in an old Guardian piece:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/12/western-worldyour-civilisation-killing-life-on-earth-indigenous-amazon-planet
Old Dog sounds like one to look out for.