There seems to be a dominant view among those public intellectuals whom I admire that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was due to the United States’ project of trying to install Ukraine into NATO. This view is spearheaded on Youtube by John Mearsheimer, but it has as supporters such prominent intellectual as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Chris Hedges, and Stephen Kinzer — to name a few.
Why this proclivity to blame the U.S.? I think it is due to their acute awareness of U.S. imperialism — in its invasions and coups, which all of them have written about. It seems, therefore, reasonable to look for the U.S. involvement in the Russian-Ukrainian affair as well. These intellectuals also think that the flight of Yanukovych was a U.S. orchestrated coup!
Contrary to their view, I believe that there was no coup; Yanukovich simply ran aways from everyone’s hostility. And this fact coincided with U.S. interests, but it was not caused by the U.S.
As to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is best descibed by an analogy used by Johnny Harris as the refusal of a boyfriend to let his ex-girlfriend go. Putin is the boyfriend and Ukraine is his ex-girlfriend.
I’ll let you decide which narrative is more suitable: the threat of NATO or the ex-girlfriend analogy after watching the following videos:
The first video is a debate beteen John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, for the NATO narrative, and Michael McFaul and Radislaw Sikorski, opposed.
The second video is a debate between John Mearsheimer and Carl Bildt.
The third video is a criticism of John Mearsheimer by Alexander Stubb.
The fourth is a series of videos by Johnny Harris. In the first video he comments on the pre-invasion plans of Russia. In the second and third videos he makes his comments after the invasion.
Harari writes that Humanistic Ethics consists of the principle: if it feels good — do it.
Contrast this with the following passage from C. D. Broad:
“The Factors on which the Rightness or Wrongness of an Action Depends. On my view the Net Value of an act depends jointly on three different factors. These are
(i) its Intrinsic Value or Disvalue. i.e. the value or disvalue which it has in virtue of its own intrinsic qualities, as distinct from its relations to other things and from its effects;
(ii) its Immediate Fittingness or Unfittingness to the situation in which it is performed; and
(iii) its Utility or Disutility, i.e. its tendency to produce good or bad consequences.” (C. D. Broad, “War Thoughts in Peace Time,”Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research (1953). pp. 249.)
Harari’s principle is factor (i) in Broad’s list. It thus ignores (ii) such as the keeping of a promise despite how one feels about keeping it. And it ignores (iii) such as getting into a homosexual relation in Iran where the punishment is death.
In his book: Homo Deus (Chapter 7: The Humanist Revolution), Harari views Humanism as replacing the religious mythologies of the past with a humanist religion. I think that his view of humanism is both unscholarly and naive. It is unscholarly for ignoring the Humanist Manifesto of 1933, and it is naive by offering his own idiosyncretic version of a manifesto.
In order to better understand the Humanist Manifesto I (1933), the reader can read its history in The Genesis of a Humanist Manisfesto (1995) by Edwin H. Wilson. Briefly, it was the brainchild of Unitarian ministers who recruited the philosopher Roy Wood Sellars to compose the first draft. And to understand Sellars’ mind-set in characterizing humanism with the words “religious” and advocating “socialism”, it is advisable to consult his two earlier books: ”The Next Step in Democracy” (1916) and “The Next Step in Religion” (1918) [Both words were omitted in Humanist Manfesto II (1973) and III (2003)]
The word “religion” is ambiguous. Normally, it is used to refer to religions basesd on a belief in the supernatural. But given that Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism are included in studies of religions, the concept of a religion may be expanded to cover also what are called ideologies and world views, as is done , for example, when Communism is described as a religion. In this expanded sense of “religion”, both Sellars and Harari characterize “secular (i.e., non-supernatural) “humanism” as a religion.
As to the word “socialism,” it too is ambiguous. In contemporary usage, it means State control of industry and more. But what Sellars means by “socialism” is the ideal of amelioration of the living conditions of all human beings through liberty and justice. And he advocate doing this through an unspecified “democratic” process.
In dropping the words “religion” and “socialism”, Humanist Manifestoes II and III mean to be more generic is advocating a common good.
Harari, by contrast, is very specific in what he means by “humanism.” He means to contrast the pre-humanistic appeal to God and authority with the “humanistic” appeal to the umbrella term — “feeling.” And his characterization of humanism is in fact a characterization of capitalism and liberal democracy through the following misleading and inappropriate slogans.
Humanistic Politics: The voter knows best.
Humanistic Economics: The customer is always right.
Humanistic Aesthetics: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Humanistic Ethics: If it feels good – do it.
Humanistic Education: Think for yourself.
If the reader thinks I am presenting a caricature, below is a reproduction of pp. 234-5.
The most egregious naive view of Harari is his view of ethics as a prescription to do whatever feels good. But I will put off a criticism of this for later. Here I want to say something about the title of his book: Homo Deus.
I realize that he is using this title for its – let us say – shock value. But though his intent is to argue for the possibility or even probability of enhancing human characteristics, such as physical and mental powers, and even the creation of human-like machines, the title is literally a contradiction in terms. Why? Because of our conception of God and gods. [See C. D. Broad,
“The Validity of Belief in a Personal God”]
Simply put, the ancient Greeks imagined the gods to be immortal, while humans are not. [See Robert Graves,The Greek Myths]
So, the title of Harari’s book conveys the view that a mortal can become an immortal, which is impossible for the following reason. Anything with parts can be destroyed. God, as conceived in the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions has no parts, while humans do. Only two things can be said to be indestructible: ultimate parts – if there are such – as studied by quantum mechanics. And the universe, if the conservation of energy is true. And this is why for Spinoza the universe is identified with God. Consequently, neither man nor any artificial intelligence can be a Deus.
I have written six previous commentaries on the book [see below]. And, though I have further commentaries to make, here I want to focus on their claim of being a “new” history.
In which respect is it new?
1. It is new in the sense that it is the most recently published.
2. It is new in the sense that it takes into account the archeological discoveries of the past 50 years or so.
3. It is also new in that it tries to take into account all the anthropological findings.
4. But it also claims to be new in discarding the so-called “dominant view” and the “received wisdom.”
It is this last claim which appears to me to be something like a “straw man.”
Let me explain. A straw man argument is one which targets a fictitious position — a position invented simply for the purpose of refutation. And if one alleges to attribute such a position to a real person, then one is in reality attributing it to a fictitious person — a straw man.
In claiming that some position is the “dominant position” or the “received wisdom”, one is making a sociological claim, a claim which can be supported by a survey or a poll. [I did such a survey in 1998, trying to find out which philosopher was most influential. See: Philosophical Influence — Statistically Determined]
But the authors have not conducted any kind of survey, or named any book or authors; so their claim is simply a dogmatic assertion.
Let us now turn to the formulation of this so-called “dominant view,” “conventiona narrative,” and “received wisdom.”
As far as I can formulate it, it is the the claim that historically there was a series of linear discrete changes from foraging to farming to cities and states. If we use a time line, this historical situation is to be represented by several non-overlapping progressive historical lines. And the authors’ allegedly new position is that the situation should be represented by several overlapping historical lines. Let us call the former the Discrete View; the latter the Overlapping View.
And one of the overlapping lines, according to the authors, should be called by the neologism “play farming.” This is the claim that there was an experimental part-time farming before full-time farming. The claim was made in Chapter 6: Gardents of Adonis.
To be fair to the authors, perhaps they think that although parts of the Overlapping View were widely believed, it was the Discrete View which had to be expressed in a caricaturish manner because of the absence of evidence. [Or, perhaps such a view represents a historical bird’s eye view!] If their view about the lack of evidence is true, then, according to them, the discovery of Catalhoyuk, gives us the first evidence for part of the Overlapping View, i.e., the view that cities and farming existed simultaneously with foraging.
Let me comment on this particular claim. The claim that Catalhoyuk is the first evidence for part of the Overlapping View is not true. Yuval Harari in Sapience (p.85) writes:
The Natufians were hunter-gatherers who subsisted on dozens of wild species, but they lived in permanent villages and devoted much of their time to the intensive gathering and processing of wild cereals. They built stone houses and granaries. They stored grain for times of need. They invented new tools such as stone scythes for harvesting wild wheat, and stone pestles and mortars to grind them.
Being only a bystander in anthropology, I went to Wikipedia to find something more about the Natufian culture. The Natufian culture was named and discovered by Dorothy Garrod in the 1930s. [Incidentally, the only reference to Natufians by Graeber and Wengrow is on p. 246 where they attribute to them only the practice of “curating human crania.”]
Below is a video about the Natufian culture:
Catalhoyuk is dated to c. 9,000 BC; whereas Natufian culture is dated to c. 13,000 BC.
My conclusion is that the dominant belief was and is the Overlapping View, and that the evidence for the Overlapping View preceded the discovery of Catalhoyuk. So, it is puzzling as to what else is “new” in their “new history.”
I have read and watched a few reviews and commentaries of the book, and the best of these so far is the following:
7. The Origins of Male Dominance and Hierarchy; what David Graeber and Jordan Peterson get wrong
10. David Graeber & David Wengrow “The Dawn of Everything” critique: The Wisdom of Kandiaronk
10.1 David Graeber & David Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything”: What is an “Egalitarian Society”?
Comment: Daniel Bitton, in his video, claimed that David Graeber either ignored or was ignorant of “immediate return societies.” This is not true. [His comments may only apply to material he has read in Graeber before the present book.] On page 128 of their book, we find the following opening sentence: “The greatest modern authority on hunter-gatherer egalitarianism is by general consent, the British anthropologist James Woodburn.” And they go on to talk about the distinction between “immediate return” and “delayed return” economies. And they go on to conclude: “This might sound like the basis of something hopeful or optimistic. Actually, it’s anything but. What it suggests is, again, that any equality worth the name is essentially impossible for all but the very simplest foragers.” [129] Given this judgment, the question is whether an “equality worth the name” is possible or impossible for a complex(?) or larger (?) society. I suggest that to anwer this question we should take note of the various socialistic experiments which were done in the 19th century in the United States (e.g. Shakers, Rappites, etc.), the anarchistic experiments of Nestor Makhno in Ukraine, the Spanish anarchists (1936-9), and the Zapatistas and Rojava today.
10.2 The Dawn of Everything: How Graeber & Wengrow’s book makes us bad at politics
Comment: Daniel Bitton is too optimistic as to what the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381 could have done, as well as to what the Occupy Movement in 2011 could have done. In the former, they made demands which were returned with rhetorical promises; in the latter, if demands were made, they would have been answered with something like: “we will take your demands into consideration.” In both cases, the uprisings were either crushed or disbanded. And if the so-called “colored revolutions” were the inspiration, all they managed to do is to replace one individual with another. Perhaps the right word for this is “coups,” but I would not call them “revolutions.”
After listening to Daniel Bitton’s criticism of David Graeber, which is to the point and very sensible, I listened to some of his other podcasts on “What is politics?” as well as the following two interviews in which he offers his criticisms of Graeber and his own anthropological views.
#155 Anthropology and Materialism Part 1 w/ Daniel Bitton
Comment: Daniel Bitton mentions a video of an interview with Chris Knight. Here is the video:
Chris Knight – The Anthropology of David Graeber
#156 Anthropology and Materialism Part 2 w/ Daniel Bitton
See also: ‘The Dawn of Everything’ gets human history wrong, Climate & Capitalism, Dec. 17, 2021.
This consists of two articles: the first by Chris Knight, “In Fundamental Ways Incoherent and Wrong”; the second by Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale, “All Things Being Equal”
On page 426, they write: “Over the course of this book we have had occasion to refer to the three primordial principles of freedom, those which for most of human history were simply assumed: the freedom to move, the freedom to disobey and the freedom to create or transform social relationships.”
Commentary: I have no objection to these freedoms. But I do have an objection to calling them “primordial.” A better approach is provided by Joel Feinberg in the book Social Philosophy, 1973. In the first chapter, “The Concept of Freedom,” he analyzes the concept of freedom as the absence of constraints, and then he distinguished internal from external constraints, on the one hand, and positive from negative constraints, on the other. Thus giving us a fourfold classification with examples:
Positive Constraint
Negative Constraint
Internal Constraint
headache,
obsessive thought,
compulsive desires
ignorance,
weakness,
defieciencies in talent or skill
External Constraint
barred windows,
locked doors,
pointed bayonets
lack of money,
lack of transportation,
lack of weapons
If there is to be a primordial principle, it surely should be the freedom to strive to survive. This means the freedom to be a hunter, gatherer, farmer, and pastoralist. And all these freedoms can be summed up as the freedom to use subsistence land.
An internal negative constraint is beautifully illustrated in the film “Walkabout,” in which a young boy and girl are stranded in the Australian outback, and without the fortunate encounter with an Aboriginal youth, they would have died. He has the knowledge and the skills to get food and water which are necessary for survival. Below is a trailer:
Graeber and Wengrow wrote: “The first thing to emphasize is that the ‘the origin of social inequality’ is not a problem which would have made sense to anyone in the Middle Ages.” p. 14
I find this to be a self-serving claim. If it were true, then the claim that contact with American indigenous people was an eye opener — as the authors claim — becomes credible.
But is it true?
Before the discovery of the New World, there were various peasant disturbances. [See: Popular revolts in late-medieval Europe] What were peasants grumbling about? Since most peasants were illiterate, we have to go by what they did and by reports of what they said they did. But we can do better by following the sequence of events following the Black Death (1346-1353), in which about a third of the European population died.
From an economic perspective of supply and demand, the demand for peasants increased while the supply of peasants decreased. The result was a wage inflation for peasants.
Consequently in England King Edward III in 1349 passed the Ordinance of Labourers, and Parliament in 1351 passed the Statue of Labourers. These laws made work compulsory, and set controls on wages and the price of goods.
In 1381, the discontent with the prevailing state of affairs burst forth as the English Peasants’ Revolt.
We may take the sermon of the priest John Ball (preaching at Blackheath in 1381) as expressing the sentiments of the peasants.
“When Adam delved and Eve span,[a] Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty[b] men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, He would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.” [a. Delved meaning dug the fields, and span meaning spun fabric (or flax).
b. “Naughty” then having a stronger sense of “evil, malicious”.]
And here we have an expression of a grievance against inequality, which contradicts the claim of Graeber and Wengrow that no one in the Middle Ages would or could make sense of the problem of inequality.
