It Seems Always to Circle Back
to what kind of education and inspiration we offer the next generation
Still working my way through the Dawn of Everything, and taking seriously the challenge to rethink a lot of what I thought I knew. The following is perhaps exaggerated, but a legitimate response, and another call to think clearly about what we are doing, and should be doing, when we prepare the next generation to continue our journey.
I think it is time that all of us should consider anew what common thinking calls “the State.”
It and its shadow, “civilization,” form the core of our settled notions of politics and history.
It is a construction used to anchor what, in our fear of chaos, we call reality.
It is an intuition so firmly held that we seldom even consider alternatives and blindly ignore evidence to the contrary. As Graeber and Wengrow write, by “classifying societies by means of subsistence (so that agriculture could be seen as a fundamental break in the history of human affairs); an assumption that as societies grew larger, they inevitably grew more complex; and that “complexity” means not just a greater differentiation of functions, but also the reorganization of human societies into hierarchical ranks….” (page 442, The Dawn of Everything)
Like all mirages, as we approach, bringing new research to the subject, we see it dissolving into many different forms of power, authority, ritual, agency, and collaboration.
New archeological scholarship challenges our conceptions of the past lived experience of many peoples scattered across the globe. We no longer are certain that the past reveals the rise of kingdoms and empires, as elites extend their rule over larger territories and force dependent populations to toil for their welfare. As proto-cities become cities. As proto-chieftaincies become monarchs. As bureaucracies extend the rule of centralized power over larger territories.
Instead, there seems to have been no universal form of “development,” no end to the improvisations of communal life.
To me, all this makes possible the hardest responsibility of our time, to challenge all authoritative social structures and design.
We are familiar with the landscapes of earthquake and hurricane, of flood and drought, the ruins that must be removed and the new factories, parks and homes that must be built. We are less likely to see clearly the wastelands of present societies, the failures of present institutions, the frailty of our barriers to disease and pillage.
I find that with age, the mountains become higher and the ground more uneven. The irony is, if we can call it such, that we seem to be asking the young to see it this way as well, to be deterred by the size of the challenge.
And we seem determined to limit their journey into the future by giving them an education that does little more than prepare them for the work and world of the past. A vision that only promises them the roles and lifestyles of the present generation.