FINISHED READING - The Ultimate Hidden Truth Of The World by David Graeber

'Imagine that the experience of lockdown and economic collapse actually allows us to see the world as it really is and we acknowledge that what's referred to as "an economy" is simply the way we collectively keep one another alive, providing one another with the things we need, and generally take care of one another. Say we also reject the notion of social control.'*

David Graber unexpectedly died in 2020 at the age of fifty nine. He was an American Professor of anthropology, who made a study of modern social and cultural phenomena, and was an extremely influential commentator and theorist. A life long anarchist, he was also deeply involved in the political and financial protest movements that became Occupy Wall Street. He coined many terms still in use today such as 'We are the 99%' and 'bullshit jobs'. 

As a theorist, he was adept at disrupting common assumptions by presenting a whole new way of looking at an issue. In the first essay in this book There Never Was A West, he subverts the whole notion the West has of itself as the originators of democracy. By questioning whether some form of basic democratic decision making and consensus seeking actually was prevalent in most early civilisations. That the whole notion or a civil urbanised society could not function without it in some form.

He also re-examines the whole notion of Athens and it's demos as the source for Western notions of democracy. First, the demos didn't extend its political participation to women nor slaves. And Second, when the Renaissance rediscovered classical civilisation, or the French and American Revolutions happened, they chose to model themselves on the Greek and Roman Republics, and if anything they despised the ideals contained within democracy. Only much later on, in the early decades of the 19th century, in the middle of the age of empires, did a more noble presentation of democracy slowly form itself in the Western mind as it's 'gift' to the world. 

In The Phenomenon Of Bullshit Jobs, he asks where the increased leisure time went, that we were once promised would appear as technology improved. He discovered there was the hellish creation of empty 'bullshit jobs' that even the people who execute them know  have no substantial meaningful purpose. Jobs in telemarketing, human resources, public relations, financial services, academic and health administration. What is now broadly known as the service sector. The definition of a job being 'bullshit' is - if they were to go on strike would anyone notice or their lives be seriously inconvenienced by this?

His involvement in the Occupy movement, caused him to study policing strategies. In the essay On The Phenomenology of Giant Puppets, he enquires why the first thing police do during any demonstration is to take down 'the puppets' and other Papier mache made mocking figures. And why is it when demonstrations are planned with the police, the ones who first break the boundaries and agreements made, are the police themselves?

In What's The Point If You Can't Have Fun, he suggests that most animals have behaviours which are not necessary for their survival, but they do them simply to have fun. We need to reassess the purpose of our human need to be playful, and how having fun can actually be the source for real boundary breaking creativity, and thinking outside of the box, That a single minded serious focus simply on profound meaning, purpose and productivity sort of misses the point of.

'Imagine we jettison the idea of production and consumption being the sole purpose of economic life and substitute care and freedom.' *

I found this an extremely stimulating book to read. It was such a joy to simply watch an intellectually flexible mind take things apart, examine all the inner workings and then put it all back together, sometimes into an entirely different shape. Graeber had a playful wit, that even in an apparently dry dissection of the finance industry or economic theory flashed it's mischievous brilliance.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

* Taken from the essay The Museum of Care, in The Ultimate Hidden Truth Of The World by David Graeber, Published by Penguin. 2024.