Comments on David Graeber and David Wengrow's Book (2021) "The Dawn of Everything"

By Razie Mah

Two anthropologists, David Graeber and David Wengrow, offer an invitation to an intellectual feast: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, N.Y.). Unfortunately, David Graeber dies in 2020, shortly before publication.
The menu follows a semitic textual structure. In greek textual structure, a topic is covered systematically. Opinions are raised, examined then discarded. One possible explanation is left standing. In semitic textual structure, all sorts of literary tricks are used in order to raise awareness of possibilities that were hitherto neglected. Among these is the possibility that Thomas Hobbes and Jacques Rousseau, foundational thinkers for the modern era, were responding to indigenous critiques of late medieval and early modern European civilization. The people of the Eastern Woodlands of North America were losing everything and they were not impressed by the character of their conquerers.
But, did the indigeneous North Americans consciously manifest the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity? Or did these ideals somehow get explicitly abstracted for a European audience, who were obviously fascinated by these unfamiliar peoples?
These disturbing possibilities appear in the first layer, A:A', of a complicated semitic structure, which I identify as A:B:C:C':B':A'. Each layer is more perplexing than the previous layer. The second component of the top layer, C', corresponds to an unsettling possibility, at least for political scientists. Chapter 10 is titled, "Why the state has no origin."
These comments add value to Graeber and Wengrow's discussion by offering what these two anthropologists do not know. The masterworks, The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word "Religion", touch base with many of the themes that these authors raise. But, they currently stand outside the scientific community. Why? They come from the strange discipline of semiotics, in the tradition of Charles S. Peirce. They use the category-based nested form in a synthetic technique, coupling association and implication. They re-articulate human evolution as adaptation into the niche of triadic relations. They propose that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. They propose that we project meaning, presence and message into our spoken words...
... including the word, "state".
... including the word, "domination".
Graeber and Wengrow invite the reader to an intellectual feast. These comments add meat to the menu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Jan 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781955931113

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

Book preview

Comments on David Graeber and David Wengrow's Book (2021) The Dawn of Everything

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords.com

2023 AD

7823 U0'

Notes on Text

This work examines a book by anthropologists David Graeber and David Wengrow, titled The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York). My goal is to comment on this work using the purely-relational structures of the Greimas Square and the category-based nested form.

‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

To convert from AD to U0', subtract 5800.

Prerequisites: A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction

Recommended: The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall, How to Define the Word "Religion

Table of Contents

Textual Structure

Concerning A:A'

Concerning B:B'

Eastern Woodlands and Hand-Speech Talk

A Recap

Concerning C:C'

Chapter 3 (C)

Chapter Four (C)

Chapter Five (C)

Chapter Six (C)

Chapter Seven (C)

Chapter Eight (C)

Chapter Nine (C)

Chapter Ten (C')

Textual Structure

0001 The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity does not offer a Greek textual structure, where the authors lay out what others say about the topic, critique those views, then present their own solution. Instead, this book offers a semitic textual structure, asking the reader to recognize a possibility. What possibility? Whatever anthropologists have been saying about humanity, it is not correct. Familiar narratives may seem correct. They are not.

One would expect that these two authors aim to open intellectual space in order to present their own solutions. However, their solutions are suggestions, not conclusions. As such, they point toward the horizon of a new age of understanding.

0002 Semitic textual structure is discussed in An Instructor's Guide to An Archaeology of the Fall. Often, such structure falls into complementary blocks. In this book, the pattern is A:B:C:C':B':A'. The following figure shows how each chapter plays into the pattern.

0003 My reading of this book will track the sequence A,A', B,B' and C,C'. Each doublet (or layer) opens its own possibilities. To me, these possibilities are all the more curious, because neither author is aware of Razie Mah's masterworks: The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define The Word Religion. These masterworks also discuss the dawn of everything.

Concerning A:A'

0004 I begin by considering the first level of the semitic textual construction. The title of chapter one (A) is Farewell to Humanity's Childhood. The title of chapter twelve (A') is Conclusion: The Dawn of Everything.

What is this dawn?

It is a kairos, a right time for a metamorphosis of fundamental principles and symbols.

It is a dawn of a new age of understanding.

0005 Understanding what?

Everything, including humanity's childhood.

The triumphalism of the so-called, Western Enlightenment, comes to a close.

This is the topic of chapter one (A).

0006 In 1754 AD (or 7554 U0'), Jean-Jacques Rousseau pens A Discourse on The Origin and the Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind. He proposes that, before the invention of agriculture and its promotion of the concept of private property, hunter-gatherers lived in child-like innocence. Afterwards, civilization and the state became necessary.

0007 Rousseau seems to stand in direct contradiction to Thomas Hobbes, who publishes his masterpiece, The Leviathan, in 7451 U0'. The Leviathan is the state. A state is necessary in the milieu of private property. Why? Conflicts of interest! Private property sets the stage for one person desiring what other people own. Theoretically, there is no limit to the acquisition of private property, so one person can own everything, and correspondingly, trust no one. Private property produces a war of one against all.

So, maybe Rousseau does not contradict Hobbes.

0008 For my own efforts, consider the four-part Comments on Thomas Hobbes' Book (1651) The Leviathan, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues. My conclusion is that the Leviathan strives to empty the perspective level of the societyC tier.

Institutions3aC occupy the situation level. Sovereign power3bC belongs to the situation level. The sovereign3bC virtually situates all institutions3aC within its dominion (the contenta level). So, what puts the situationb level into perspectivec? The concept of private property?

0009 Graeber and Wengrow object to Rousseau and Hobbes on pragmatic grounds. First, neither Rousseau (with his naive childhood of humanity stance) nor Hobbes (with the unbounded desire inherent in the ideation of private property stance) are supported by modern archaeological science. Second, both stances have dire political implications. Third, neither makes the past very interesting.

Both Rousseau and Hobbes propose explanations for social inequality. Both envision, one explicitly and the other implicitly, a mind-independent being, called private property. Well, it is a mind-dependent being that appears to escape the confines of personal thought, thereby transmutating into a mind-independent object of desire. I can desire to take, as mine, what you call your private property. I can do that through violence, deceit and mob-action. The state is the institution that prevents me from taking actions based on my unhinged desires.

0010 A question arises.

If the state stops me from taking the private property of others, then why should social inequality arise in the first place? Why is social inequality obvious to all?

This is what the indigenous people from the Eastern Woodlands of North America ask when they are transported to Europe to meet their superiors. Why don't Europeans care about one another? Why do they order one another around? Why do they think that their wealth means that they can command the attentions and actions of others?

Surely, the problem is not the state. Rather, the problem must be the crazy notion that a person can own anything at all. The nutty idea of property allows one person to order another person around. Back in the Eastern Woodlands, no one had thought of anything so stupid.

0011 So, what are Hobbes and Rousseau up to?

Does Hobbes project the ways of Europe onto all people, including indigenous Americans, who were doing just fine before 7292 U0'? Does Rousseau project a simplicity and ignorance upon the indigenous peoples of America? Obviously, these folk