WEBVTT - Civilization with Andrew 0:00:00.930 --> 0:00:02.910 Call zone media. 0:00:07.540 --> 0:00:11.080 Did you have a favorite ancient civilization that you were 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:12.119 learning about growing up? 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:18.080 Oh man, so many. I guess I enjoyed like Celtic 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:20.480 things because that's like part of the world I'm from. 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:23.310 I wasn't even that Celtic. I think she was Celtic, 0:00:23.329 --> 0:00:27.060 like a Celtic warrior queen. Bodicia. 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:29.980 Bodicea is how people used to say it. Boudica, I think, 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:31.320 is more accurate. 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.920 That speed. Like she was someone who had resisted the 0:00:35.090 --> 0:00:36.830 Roman invasions, right? 0:00:37.530 --> 0:00:40.970 Yeah, that's right. Where my dad lives is like where 0:00:41.010 --> 0:00:45.090 the Romans built their border wall called Hadrian's Wall. And 0:00:46.330 --> 0:00:47.949 it's just kind of cool to be like, you know, 0:00:47.970 --> 0:00:51.210 the Romans brought their colonialism to all of Europe and 0:00:51.229 --> 0:00:52.810 they got here and I can't fucking do it. 0:00:52.810 --> 0:00:53.410 Yeah. 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:55.640 It might've been, it might've been, they got to that 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:57.230 part of the world and they were like, it's raining 0:00:57.250 --> 0:01:00.670 so fucking much. I want to go back to Italy. But, uh, yeah, 0:01:00.690 --> 0:01:02.270 it was just, it was always interesting to me to 0:01:02.310 --> 0:01:05.330 think of like, you know, the, the amount of, uh, 0:01:05.390 --> 0:01:08.470 modern world that's still impacted by Roman colonization and then 0:01:08.950 --> 0:01:10.630 these people who were able to resist it. 0:01:11.459 --> 0:01:13.880 Yeah. I remember as a child, I was a really 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:18.340 big fan of Egypt, of course, I guess, classic. 0:01:18.780 --> 0:01:19.200 Of course. 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:23.730 Greece, you can't go wrong. Yeah. Babylon. Big fan. I 0:01:23.770 --> 0:01:28.690 like the beards. Yeah. You know, very cool. Yeah. As 0:01:28.709 --> 0:01:31.230 someone who, you know, I grew up like with a 0:01:31.290 --> 0:01:36.560 voracious appetite for those living long ago, how people live 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:41.560 in the past, like historical books, how people dressed, what 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:45.020 they eat, how they live day to day. And a 0:01:45.060 --> 0:01:48.310 lot of those ancient civilizations were presented to me as 0:01:49.190 --> 0:01:55.760 humanity's great achievements. You know, the magnificent architecture, the advances 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:59.980 in agriculture, the remarkable works of art, and so on. 0:02:00.860 --> 0:02:03.330 But as I got older and I started reading more 0:02:03.410 --> 0:02:07.090 history from below, rather than history through the lens of 0:02:07.730 --> 0:02:14.010 kings and empires, I learned more about life before civilization 0:02:14.610 --> 0:02:18.990 and outside of empire, and I really enjoyed became less 0:02:19.100 --> 0:02:23.510 interested in civilization as something to be held up as 0:02:24.190 --> 0:02:27.810 the pinnacle of what he wants to keep below. Although 0:02:27.830 --> 0:02:31.169 I am still very much interested in it as an idea, 0:02:31.730 --> 0:02:34.310 and how we think about and talk about it as 0:02:34.350 --> 0:02:37.310 an idea. And so this is It Could Happen Here. 0:02:37.340 --> 0:02:43.500 I am Andrew Sage, or Andrewism on YouTube, joined again by... James. 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:46.600 People have already heard me sounding off, but yeah, it's 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:47.340 nice to be here again. 0:02:47.700 --> 0:02:51.060 Yes, in case you didn't recognize the voice. Yeah. And 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:55.080 I want to talk about the meaning of civilization. If 0:02:55.139 --> 0:02:59.050 I were to ask you if you were civilized, how 0:02:59.070 --> 0:02:59.810 would you respond? 0:03:01.270 --> 0:03:05.610 I think I aspire not to be, but like, I 0:03:05.650 --> 0:03:09.670 have been raised in a society which very much proposed 0:03:09.730 --> 0:03:13.829 this binary between like the civilized and the uncivilized, right. 0:03:14.180 --> 0:03:16.040 I guess savage is a word you could use if 0:03:16.060 --> 0:03:18.170 you were looking at how that society portrayed it. 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:18.440 Right. 0:03:18.500 --> 0:03:22.239 And like, even though I think British education and stuff 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.320 wouldn't use that word anymore, it says a lot about 0:03:25.340 --> 0:03:29.000 like the state and its desire to shape narratives in 0:03:29.060 --> 0:03:31.779 its favor. Uh, so I think I would aspire to 0:03:31.900 --> 0:03:35.670 de-civilize myself, I guess. I'm not like anti-civ. in like 0:03:36.290 --> 0:03:38.070 big scheme of things but i think in the in 0:03:38.110 --> 0:03:41.870 the way that it's often used to describe indigenous peoples 0:03:41.930 --> 0:03:43.800 or peoples who are not under control of the state 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:45.080 i don't like that very much. 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:49.060 Yeah it's interesting to me because if you ask most 0:03:49.140 --> 0:03:51.760 people they'll probably just be like yes they would say 0:03:51.780 --> 0:03:56.670 yes without hesitation sure you know obviously we're not most 0:03:56.690 --> 0:04:01.610 people yeah yeah but You know, as you mentioned, like 0:04:01.830 --> 0:04:05.270 the alternative being, you know, the savage, that is something 0:04:05.350 --> 0:04:08.630 that has kind of fallen out of fashion. You know, 0:04:08.690 --> 0:04:13.450 that exact binary of civilized and savage is not in vogue, 0:04:13.470 --> 0:04:15.370 you know, it's not treated as something that you see. 0:04:15.910 --> 0:04:18.910 And yet we maintain one half of the binary as 0:04:19.010 --> 0:04:23.750 something to uphold. So we still say, you know, we 0:04:23.790 --> 0:04:27.200 are civilized, this is civilization, but you wouldn't as much 0:04:27.460 --> 0:04:33.160 see descriptions of the alternative, of the barbarian, the uncivilized, 0:04:33.180 --> 0:04:38.020 the savage, the primitive. I think you can ask people, like, 0:04:38.100 --> 0:04:41.610 what is civilization? What do you mean by being civilized? 0:04:41.930 --> 0:04:44.490 And it's a bit shaky. You know, it's one of 0:04:44.510 --> 0:04:48.310 those concepts that is so familiar, so used to being referenced, 0:04:48.490 --> 0:04:52.599 that not many people stop to interrogate it. You know, 0:04:52.620 --> 0:04:55.150 we throw the word around all the time and it 0:04:55.190 --> 0:04:59.789 can mean cities or technology or modernity or law or 0:04:59.990 --> 0:05:06.089 culture or the state or simply not being barbaric. Historically, 0:05:06.130 --> 0:05:09.870 it's also been a way of dividing humanity. The Greeks, 0:05:09.930 --> 0:05:13.580 I believe, were the ones who referred to basically anyone 0:05:13.620 --> 0:05:17.900 who didn't speak Greek as a barbarian. You know, China 0:05:18.020 --> 0:05:23.409 infamously treated... everything outside of China as barbarian. 0:05:23.430 --> 0:05:30.170 Yeah, isn't it like literally an onomatopoeia? Like, people are saying, like, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. 0:05:30.930 --> 0:05:33.010 I think I've heard that story as well, yeah. I'm 0:05:33.029 --> 0:05:34.090 not sure how true it is. 0:05:34.930 --> 0:05:39.550 Yeah, I'm not super familiar with, like, the sourcing on 0:05:39.589 --> 0:05:40.210 that one, I guess. 0:05:41.110 --> 0:05:44.510 Yeah, but, you know, the distinction of the civilized and 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:48.860 barbarian is something that has been weaponized across history to 0:05:48.900 --> 0:05:57.050 justify conquest and colonization and hierarchical taxonomies of the human race. 0:05:57.910 --> 0:06:01.830 White man's burden, quote unquote, was to bring civilization to 0:06:01.860 --> 0:06:05.760 the less advanced people. Yeah. Civilization being, of course, the 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:10.220 most advanced stage of human social and cultural development, which 0:06:10.260 --> 0:06:13.520 to me is itself a hubris because I think that 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.600 presumption that we made it, you know, we reach where 0:06:17.620 --> 0:06:19.540 we go and, you know, what we figured out here, 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.219 this is it. Yeah. You know, I think that is 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:26.909 a very damaging way of thinking. Definitely. And it's something 0:06:26.950 --> 0:06:31.810 that I think is embedded into a very popular perception 0:06:32.070 --> 0:06:37.360 of what civilization is. You know, usually, historically, civilization has 0:06:37.420 --> 0:06:44.080 also been tied to cities, writing, large populations, agriculture, social 0:06:44.100 --> 0:06:50.020 stratification of some kind, specialized labor, monumental architecture, and of course, 0:06:50.060 --> 0:06:53.400 the state. Yeah. Buried in many of these associations is 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:58.500 the assumption that hierarchy is advanced, that this way of 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:03.320 structuring human society is the destination we're always headed to. 0:07:03.779 --> 0:07:08.039 You know, we have this term in anthropology, stateless. The 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:12.520 presumption being that lacking a state is itself, you know, 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:16.210 something that perhaps needs to be rectified. I'm not saying 0:07:16.230 --> 0:07:19.250 that every anthropologist takes this perspective, but the words that 0:07:19.270 --> 0:07:22.710 we use carry certain connotations. And I think that for 0:07:22.750 --> 0:07:28.260 some people, particularly people raised in a civilization context, it's like, 0:07:28.380 --> 0:07:30.840 oh yeah, they haven't reached where we have reached yet. 0:07:31.420 --> 0:07:34.020 They haven't gotten there yet. They haven't evolved to a 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:36.580 point where they've developed a state yet. But that is 0:07:36.620 --> 0:07:38.960 the trajectory that they are on or are supposed to 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:44.000 be on. The more bureaucracy and rule and classes and 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.780 institutions your society has, the more advanced it is presumed 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:50.280 to be. And then, of course, you have people like 0:07:50.340 --> 0:07:55.130 Samuel Huntington, who used civilization in this very broad sense 0:07:55.150 --> 0:07:56.230 as cultural identity. 0:07:56.250 --> 0:08:02.470 Yeah, I have a pretty negative impression of Samuel Huntington 0:08:02.530 --> 0:08:04.290 as a human being and as a theorist, but. 0:08:04.770 --> 0:08:05.670 As do I, I mean. 0:08:06.490 --> 0:08:07.150 I think we all do. 0:08:07.870 --> 0:08:10.940 To give you the listener an indication, he treats Islam... 0:08:11.410 --> 0:08:16.870 as a civilization, Hinduism as a civilization, Orthodoxy as a civilization. 0:08:17.170 --> 0:08:20.510 And then everything south of the Sahara in Africa is 0:08:20.550 --> 0:08:23.650 just one civilization, Tim. Yeah. 0:08:24.590 --> 0:08:28.370 I love that, like, Islam is a civilization and also, like, 0:08:28.430 --> 0:08:32.130 south of the Sahara is a civilization as if never 0:08:32.170 --> 0:08:35.840 the two shall meet, right? Like, famously, there were no 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:38.209 Muslims in Africa. It's just like a. 0:08:39.100 --> 0:08:43.380 The maps that I've seen, he does have, like, Islam 0:08:43.700 --> 0:08:46.280 in Africa as well. If you ever look up the map, 0:08:46.300 --> 0:08:49.250 the map is awful. The map is just awful. 0:08:49.270 --> 0:08:53.710 Yeah, the map, like, gives me fucking... Yeah, like, admittedly, 0:08:53.730 --> 0:08:57.250 it's been a long time since I've engaged. Yeah, Muslim 0:08:57.330 --> 0:08:59.880 and African. I guess, yeah, he includes a horn of 0:08:59.980 --> 0:09:07.410 Africa in Muslim. Fucking unbelievable. Yeah, Confucian... Japan just exists as, like, a... 0:09:08.260 --> 0:09:11.460 Like every other culture is like massively homogenized and then 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:13.940 Japanese is like completely unique and it's a little bit 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:14.640 in this little bubble. 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:18.630 Yeah. Yeah. This is, that's such like, I'm sorry. Like 0:09:18.690 --> 0:09:23.390 that's so weeb coded to me. Yeah. 0:09:24.070 --> 0:09:28.120 It's incredibly white dude who hasn't fucking really engaged with 0:09:28.150 --> 0:09:29.420 the world coded, you know? 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:34.720 Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah. The entire continent of Africa. Sure. Fine. Whatever. 0:09:35.220 --> 0:09:39.200 That's that's Africa. japan though like this japan is distinct 0:09:39.260 --> 0:09:42.420 from korea from china from the philippines from all of 0:09:42.620 --> 0:09:45.140 asia japan has its own thing yeah. 0:09:45.660 --> 0:09:48.600 From these places it's had exchange with for centuries yeah 0:09:48.660 --> 0:09:53.610 and then like the entirety of north america greenland western 0:09:53.750 --> 0:09:58.250 europe and australasia is just western the indigenous peoples there 0:09:58.270 --> 0:10:00.630 don't exist right like like are the the differences in 0:10:00.670 --> 0:10:01.430 those cultures yeah. 0:10:01.290 --> 0:10:05.380 Well western is code for white so yeah it's not 0:10:05.410 --> 0:10:09.520 surprising yeah that's that's definitely what he's doing there his 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.199 famous argument was that future conflicts would be predicated on 0:10:13.980 --> 0:10:19.700 clashes between these civilizations hence clashes civilizations be in The 0:10:19.740 --> 0:10:20.520 title of his book. 0:10:21.140 --> 0:10:21.340 Yeah. 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:24.359 I don't find it very convincing. I don't think you 0:10:24.380 --> 0:10:25.640 do either. Yeah. 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:27.320 No, I'm not buying it, to be honest. 0:10:28.020 --> 0:10:31.949 Yeah. It treats these big cultural blobs as if they're 0:10:32.150 --> 0:10:36.969 unified entities and discrete entities when, you know, history has 0:10:37.010 --> 0:10:42.870 been a long story of exchange, borrowing, overlap, divergence, migration, 0:10:42.890 --> 0:10:58.460 and transformation. Yeah. Yeah. Finally, for another perspective, I want 0:10:58.490 --> 0:11:03.030 to share on the subject of civilization. We have David Wengru, 0:11:03.670 --> 0:11:06.230 who many of you may know as the co-author of 0:11:06.250 --> 0:11:10.110 The Dawn of Everything. And for him, he argued that 0:11:10.190 --> 0:11:12.930 if we're going to keep using the word civilization, we 0:11:12.950 --> 0:11:18.580 should think of it as a product of interaction between societies. 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:23.679 So through trade and conflict and migration and imitation collaboration, 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:29.619 Civilization is like an emergent phenomenon of that interconnectedness. I 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:35.910 think that is a somewhat idiosyncratic, but still compelling and 0:11:36.870 --> 0:11:41.890 somewhat familiar approach to the idea. Typically, people do think 0:11:42.070 --> 0:11:45.870 of civilizations as discrete entities, though. Yeah. At least in 0:11:46.170 --> 0:11:50.860 Lehman's perspective. But the field of anthropology and historical research 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:55.309 I know is rife with comparative studies. And, you know, 0:11:55.809 --> 0:12:01.179 investigations of those very exchanges between societies. So as he 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.240 is speaking from an anthropological perspective, I see why he 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.560 would want to put forward that reframing. And the thing 0:12:07.580 --> 0:12:10.560 about definitions of words and connotations and stuff is none 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.699 of it is really objectively correct. They're all just pointing 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:17.740 to different things. And the way that we use language 0:12:17.780 --> 0:12:20.830 is always going to be subject to debate. I think 0:12:20.850 --> 0:12:23.630 the fact that we can't even agree on what civilization 0:12:23.690 --> 0:12:27.870 exactly is should probably make us a bit more cautious 0:12:28.270 --> 0:12:32.070 in how we make sweeping claims about it. And really, 0:12:32.090 --> 0:12:34.150 I feel I've heard about many of the words that 0:12:34.170 --> 0:12:37.720 we throw around so casually. But one consistency I've seen 0:12:37.740 --> 0:12:41.900 across most definitions of civilization is this packaging with, of course, 0:12:41.940 --> 0:12:46.420 the city, but also with ideas of advancement and development, 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:49.760 which of course begs the question, advanced according to whom? 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:55.079 measured by what standard? How do you actually quantify how 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:58.820 much more advanced one society is compared to another? If 0:12:58.860 --> 0:13:04.500 the benchmark is skyscrapers and bureaucracies and standing armies or 0:13:04.540 --> 0:13:08.990 industrial output, then yeah, sure, modern states score very highly 0:13:09.050 --> 0:13:12.030 in terms of advancement. But then we can ask, why 0:13:12.110 --> 0:13:14.590 should those be the specific metrics we use? Why not 0:13:14.630 --> 0:13:17.089 measure the advancement of a society according to how much 0:13:17.230 --> 0:13:21.740 leisure its members enjoy? or by how equal they are, 0:13:21.850 --> 0:13:26.510 or by how sustainable they engage with the ecosystem that 0:13:26.550 --> 0:13:30.170 they're embedded in, or by how much freedom regular people 0:13:30.210 --> 0:13:32.589 have over their own lives. You know, we can pick 0:13:32.690 --> 0:13:35.910 different measuring sticks and get different winners and losers in 0:13:35.990 --> 0:13:39.660 this competition of advancement. But the measuring stick we're working 0:13:39.700 --> 0:13:43.400 with when we speak of civilization clearly isn't very helpful 0:13:43.620 --> 0:13:47.200 for many of us. All societies are not working with 0:13:47.220 --> 0:13:51.500 the same measuring stick. despite the efforts to impose this capitalist, 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:55.150 neoliberal measuring stick on everybody. You know, we have countless 0:13:55.190 --> 0:13:58.890 experiments and examples of different ways of organizing life across history, 0:13:59.450 --> 0:14:03.650 some lasting for centuries, others millennia, some expanding into empires, 0:14:03.809 --> 0:14:10.190 others staying small, some prioritizing equality, others prioritizing hierarchy, accumulation 0:14:10.230 --> 0:14:14.219 versus mobility. You know, we can't assume that All of 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.900 humanity is trying to reach the same predetermined destination. So 0:14:17.940 --> 0:14:21.850 the whole language of more and less civilized doesn't really 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:26.190 cut it for me. But the language of civilization does 0:14:26.690 --> 0:14:29.750 work for the people that it serves. The people who 0:14:29.830 --> 0:14:33.030 see their society as the highest stage of human development, 0:14:33.550 --> 0:14:37.800 which must be imposed on others by evangelism and conquest 0:14:37.900 --> 0:14:42.510 and so on to bring development. And the same attitude 0:14:42.550 --> 0:14:47.340 which is extended to people by European colonial powers to 0:14:47.420 --> 0:14:51.600 invade these lands for wealth and territory, to conquer them, 0:14:51.740 --> 0:14:55.100 to treat them as a lesser on the ladder of 0:14:55.140 --> 0:15:00.280 human development, that very same attitude extends beyond people to 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:05.979 nature itself as something vile and unproductive and waiting to 0:15:06.020 --> 0:15:10.530 be mastered by civilisations. But one thing that's really stuck 0:15:10.570 --> 0:15:14.310 with me in reading, for instance, James E. Scott, which 0:15:14.330 --> 0:15:16.090 he talks about this in Against the Green, is just 0:15:16.130 --> 0:15:24.200 how fragile and not inevitable this civilizational development was, you know? 0:15:24.790 --> 0:15:29.260 These early states very often collapsed, very often fragmented. And 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:36.020 for many people in those contexts, the collapse, quote unquote, 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:41.220 was an escape to freedom. You know, it was something 0:15:41.260 --> 0:15:43.880 that gave them an opportunity to disperse and to create 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:49.370 smaller communities and to have greater autonomy and fewer obligations 0:15:49.450 --> 0:15:52.850 to rulers. And so with all that history in mind, 0:15:52.910 --> 0:15:56.150 I find the concept of civilization, you know, something to 0:15:56.170 --> 0:15:59.800 think about, but certainly not something to idealize. Yeah. 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:02.660 Something that just came to my mind is a speech 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:07.140 that Daruti gave to the cops yesterday. On the eve 0:16:07.180 --> 0:16:11.300 of the Catalan revolution, right? So 19th of July. So 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:14.080 the cops have been sent, right? They know that the 0:16:14.180 --> 0:16:16.940 military is going to rise up against them, right? They 0:16:17.020 --> 0:16:21.280 know that in the coming days that they will either 0:16:21.340 --> 0:16:25.160 have to fight their own military or accept the end 0:16:25.230 --> 0:16:28.890 of this like liberal democracy in Spain, right? This republic 0:16:28.930 --> 0:16:32.390 in Spain. The Catalan government has still sent the police 0:16:32.650 --> 0:16:35.330 to seize weapons from the anarchists, right, who are the 0:16:35.370 --> 0:16:38.610 most capable people of fighting this coup. They would rather 0:16:38.670 --> 0:16:41.060 state than no state, I guess, right? The state's always 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:43.860 going to have more solidarity with the state than its constituents. 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:48.940 And he says to the cobs, sometimes when we're given 0:16:48.980 --> 0:16:50.900 an order, we have to disobey it. And even if 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:53.440 the order comes from a very big and important person, 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:58.950 to translate, obviously, and paraphrase to, we civilize ourselves with disobedience. 0:17:00.330 --> 0:17:03.750 It's a really interesting phrase, right? To him, I guess, 0:17:03.990 --> 0:17:10.310 the concept of civilization is dignity and autonomy. The person 0:17:10.369 --> 0:17:12.530 who has given up their autonomy to the state is 0:17:12.630 --> 0:17:17.689 not civilized because they have given up that autonomy and 0:17:17.730 --> 0:17:20.590 allowed the state to be the one that makes their 0:17:20.609 --> 0:17:23.670 decisions for them, right? It's an alternative use. 0:17:23.850 --> 0:17:25.810 It's like an invasion, basically. 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:26.940 Exactly. 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:27.580 Yeah, yeah. 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:30.580 Like he's taken that term and said, like, it's fundamentally 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:34.869 uncivilized of you to allow the state to be the 0:17:34.930 --> 0:17:37.050 one that makes the choices for you. It's just a 0:17:37.090 --> 0:17:40.350 really interesting, yeah, inversion of the terminology. 0:17:41.369 --> 0:17:45.429 Yeah, yeah. I think it's curious because when I look at, 0:17:45.470 --> 0:17:50.920 for instance, there's this book, Civilized Death by Christopher Ryan, 0:17:51.500 --> 0:17:57.340 and he uses this concept of human domestication. Okay. And 0:17:57.380 --> 0:18:01.460 he argues that, you know, just as humans selectively bred 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:04.699 and conditioned animals to fit into environments that we designed 0:18:04.780 --> 0:18:10.250 for our own purposes, civilization shaped us to fit the 0:18:10.290 --> 0:18:13.730 needs of these large hierarchical systems. Okay. You know, with 0:18:13.750 --> 0:18:18.409 sort of routines and obedience and punctuality for activity, dependence 0:18:18.530 --> 0:18:21.429 on these institutions. And so it's kind of interesting to 0:18:21.470 --> 0:18:27.600 me that, you know, by Durruti's Freeman, the domestication of 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.900 civilization is precisely what makes us uncivilized. 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:33.899 Yeah, like the forced pacifism, I don't know how to 0:18:33.940 --> 0:18:38.510 say it, is what makes us uncivilized, it makes us undignified. 0:18:38.530 --> 0:18:43.270 Yeah, and I guess that is another use or connotation 0:18:43.330 --> 0:18:47.490 associated with civilization that he's utilizing there, which is civilization 0:18:47.530 --> 0:18:48.120 as dignity. 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:48.540 Right. 0:18:48.930 --> 0:18:52.840 As being upright or dignified as a person. To be 0:18:52.900 --> 0:18:57.010 civilized is to be you know, a certain standard or 0:18:57.109 --> 0:18:58.770 caliber of person. 0:18:59.170 --> 0:19:01.030 Yeah, exactly that, yeah. 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:05.239 And so he's kind of pointing to civilization as corrupting 0:19:05.300 --> 0:19:12.080 that caliber by making us slavishly dependent on the institutions 0:19:12.180 --> 0:19:14.420 over which we have very little control over. 0:19:14.940 --> 0:19:17.560 Yeah, it's like an interesting, like, inversion. I'm not sure 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:19.260 how useful it is. Like, I'm not sure if it's 0:19:19.300 --> 0:19:22.919 a term anyone needs to recapture, but it's interesting, you know. 0:19:23.290 --> 0:19:25.810 First thing, even if I find that an invasion is 0:19:25.850 --> 0:19:32.000 not necessarily practical in terms of day-to-day communication, I think 0:19:32.980 --> 0:19:37.619 playing with concepts, tinkering with concepts, invoking them, I think 0:19:37.660 --> 0:19:41.520 it's still useful in better grasping them. Yes. In better 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:45.389 formulating our sense of what they are and what they 0:19:45.390 --> 0:19:45.930 are not. 0:19:45.930 --> 0:19:49.090 Yeah, definitely. Like the meaning of a word is something 0:19:49.150 --> 0:19:50.760 we co-create over time. 0:19:51.100 --> 0:19:51.320 Right. 0:19:51.390 --> 0:19:55.080 It's not like a, a fixed thing. And obviously we 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:57.060 have these dictionaries and they have the meanings of words, 0:19:57.140 --> 0:20:01.200 but like language is just a way of communicating concepts. 0:20:01.940 --> 0:20:04.399 And so like we can, we co-create that meaning as 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:05.880 we redefine those concepts. 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:23.350 Exactly. so much of modern civilized life clearly isn't good 0:20:23.390 --> 0:20:28.290 for us i say that after stretching my back with 0:20:28.609 --> 0:20:32.370 you know great futility as i spent most of my 0:20:32.410 --> 0:20:37.889 day sitting yeah working at a desk You know, a 0:20:37.930 --> 0:20:41.250 lot of people are working jobs they find meaningless simply 0:20:41.290 --> 0:20:43.429 because they need the income to survive. You know, they 0:20:43.510 --> 0:20:47.149 are spending most of their working hours indoors, unexposed to 0:20:47.190 --> 0:20:51.389 fresh air. Yeah. If they even have fresh air outdoors 0:20:51.450 --> 0:20:55.360 because many of us live in urban environments where the 0:20:55.520 --> 0:21:00.139 standards of air quality are not the best. You could 0:21:00.180 --> 0:21:02.699 also speak of the rates of stress and loneliness and 0:21:02.740 --> 0:21:06.540 anxiety and depression and burnout. that have continued to rise 0:21:06.700 --> 0:21:11.879 even as our material wealth as societies, not necessarily as individuals, 0:21:11.980 --> 0:21:16.980 but as societies and our technological capabilities have both increased. 0:21:17.980 --> 0:21:20.119 I don't think you have to be a primitivist and 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:25.620 advocate for some return to prehistory to recognize the negatives, 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:29.750 the real same. And while I think many technological developments 0:21:29.910 --> 0:21:37.490 associated with civilization have genuinely improved people's lives, You know, antibiotics, dentistry, planes, 0:21:37.730 --> 0:21:41.429 the internet, especially for disabled people and those medical conditions 0:21:41.470 --> 0:21:43.250 that would otherwise be untreatable. 0:21:43.330 --> 0:21:43.530 Yeah. 0:21:43.590 --> 0:21:48.060 You know, these are very beneficial innovations. Yeah. I just 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:51.560 don't think that civilization as we have structured and conceived 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:55.609 of it has a monopoly on innovation. In his book, 0:21:55.869 --> 0:22:00.440 Wild Thoughts, Claude Lévi-Strauss had made the point that many 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:07.760 of humanity's greatest technological breakthroughs in agriculture, weaving, pottery, animal domestication, 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:12.570 they were developed long before we conventionally think of as civilization. 0:22:13.410 --> 0:22:17.490 Human beings have always been creative, we've always experimented, we've 0:22:17.690 --> 0:22:21.310 always invented, and we always will. Everything that we can 0:22:21.430 --> 0:22:24.090 or should go back, because I mean, there are billions 0:22:24.510 --> 0:22:27.010 of us now, mostly in cities that are far from 0:22:27.109 --> 0:22:31.280 ecologically sustainable. But I think if we keep the history 0:22:31.460 --> 0:22:35.659 of our diverse social forms in mind, then as we 0:22:35.680 --> 0:22:39.060 go forward, we can try to preserve what genuinely enriches 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:44.800 human life while leaving behind the institutions and assumptions that 0:22:44.880 --> 0:22:48.410 no longer do. By the way, do you by chance 0:22:48.550 --> 0:22:54.820 have a blueprint? for the future of our species? 0:22:55.420 --> 0:22:59.399 No, I don't think I do, other than working it 0:22:59.460 --> 0:23:00.020 out together. 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:02.439 Yeah, me neither. Hoping someone might. I guess we'd have 0:23:02.460 --> 0:23:04.360 to figure that out together. Exactly. 0:23:04.380 --> 0:23:07.560 Yeah. Maybe that is the blueprint. 0:23:07.980 --> 0:23:11.420 Exactly. I'm really not interested in seeing that there's one 0:23:11.560 --> 0:23:15.600 correct society that everybody has to adopt. Yeah. I think 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:19.050 we can learn something from the incredible diversity of human 0:23:19.090 --> 0:23:22.830 societies that have existed And we can use that not 0:23:23.490 --> 0:23:27.350 for mimicry, but for inspiration. You know, to realize that 0:23:27.390 --> 0:23:33.930 we too can pursue these uncharted territories and develop something new. 0:23:34.369 --> 0:23:37.210 Or to take old concepts and stretch them into new forms. 0:23:38.010 --> 0:23:38.810 Yeah, definitely. 0:23:39.430 --> 0:23:43.210 The author Daniel Quinn, in his book Ishmael, had made 0:23:43.250 --> 0:23:47.730 a point that tribes... can be defined not by hunting 0:23:47.750 --> 0:23:51.989 and gathering or ethnicity, but as a social organization that 0:23:52.050 --> 0:23:55.210 allows people to make a living together. And so by 0:23:55.230 --> 0:23:59.840 this definition, people still today create tribal forms of organization 0:23:59.980 --> 0:24:03.200 all the time, whether it be mutual aid networks, affinity groups, 0:24:03.260 --> 0:24:08.870 intentional communities, wherever people freely organize themselves around shared needs 0:24:08.970 --> 0:24:12.460 and shared purposes. One thing Quinn emphasizes is that these 0:24:12.500 --> 0:24:15.820 kinds of societies can be very flexible. You know, when 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:18.980 these arrangements are no longer working for us, we can 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:21.840 change them. We can walk away from them. We're not 0:24:21.940 --> 0:24:24.120 tied to them in the way that we are basically 0:24:24.180 --> 0:24:28.550 bound by an enormous bureaucracy that we're supposedly in social 0:24:28.609 --> 0:24:31.710 contract with today. And so really, for me, that's what 0:24:31.830 --> 0:24:34.490 I want to focus on, a world where people have 0:24:34.810 --> 0:24:40.389 greater control over their lives, more decentralized, more cooperation, a 0:24:40.430 --> 0:24:43.930 world where organizations are things that people can freely join 0:24:44.050 --> 0:24:48.359 and reshape and split and leave, and they're no longer 0:24:48.390 --> 0:24:52.880 saving their needs. I really care about GDP metrics and, 0:24:53.900 --> 0:24:58.980 you know, megacity concentrations. I just want to know, you know, 0:24:59.140 --> 0:25:05.150 how we get from here to there together. And to me, 0:25:05.190 --> 0:25:08.770 that is something that requires... as I've said many times 0:25:08.810 --> 0:25:12.450 before on this podcast and on my YouTube channel, it 0:25:12.510 --> 0:25:19.810 requires opposition to systems of domination through confrontation and non-cooperation, 0:25:19.850 --> 0:25:23.600 through things like strikes and boycotts and other forms of resistance. 0:25:23.700 --> 0:25:27.280 And it also requires, on the other end of that equation, 0:25:27.900 --> 0:25:30.300 that we prefigure the world we want to live in 0:25:30.859 --> 0:25:34.960 by promoting certain ideas and philosophies. But more so by 0:25:35.160 --> 0:25:39.359 building the actual relationships and institutions we want to live 0:25:40.180 --> 0:25:42.199 in and be a part of. And I think that 0:25:42.240 --> 0:25:45.570