David Rolfe Graeber (/ˈɡreɪbər/; February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and The Dawn of Everything (2021), and his leading role in the Occupy movement, earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    1 day ago

    150 seems to be the number for humans.

    What do monkeys have to do with war, oppression, crime, racism and even e-mail spam? You’ll see that all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense once we go Inside the Monkeysphere.

    The article formatting is hosed because it’s so old, but this is the most important thing I’ve ever read to describe wide swaths of human behavior. Give it a shot and the world will make loads more sense.

    https://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

    Funny note; For all the times I’ve posted that here and on reddit, not one soul has come back and said any part of it was bullshit.

    • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zipEnglish
      41·
      1 day ago

      it seems accurate to say that most people conceive only of “people i know well enough to fully humanize” and “all other humans.”

      I take a huge issue with the portrayal that all of us are willing to fuck over the second group all the time with no acknowledgement that over the centuries we’ve built elaborate customs and mores for interacting with strangers or within groups or between groups.

      The author focusing on hypothetical examples of monkeys mistreating monkey strangers exclusively is inaccurate to the reality we all live in. There are monkeys out in the real world who just help monkey strangers altruistically. Just stopping to help change a tire gives the lie to the author’s premise.

      Are there asshole monkeys? Sure. But we’re not all assholes to monkey strangers.

      AND even in small knit monkey communities sometimes there are “defectors” (game theory term) and the society can react to them in many different ways.

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        19 hours ago

        But we’re not all assholes to monkey strangers.

        Article says nothing of the sort, only that it’s understandable why we view things like a busload of dead kids in Iran as less tragic than our mom dying. I think you’re focusing on single trees, missing the forest.

    • EsmereldaFritzmonster@lemmings.world
      2·
      1 day ago

      This article isn’t wrong, but it seems to be emphasizing that we remember our limitations and think critically when dealing with complex issues. It doesn’t really match this post which seems to be promoting living in tiny, isolated, self sufficient villages. It’s occurring to me in real time that he means communes