Conversation

Notices

1. CEO of Anti-Clock Society (be@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Jan-2023 04:58:11 JST CEO of Anti-Clock Society

   Reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow and it's blowing my mind repeatedly

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Jan-2023 04:58:08 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @be A few things are springing to mind...

     1) I know there's worse aspects, but as a geographer what strikes me about the Columbus myth is the notion that people back then didn't know the Earth was round but Columbus did. Reality: Through the magic of trigonometry they had a surprisingly good idea of just how round the Earth is, but Columbus thought it was smaller. It take him longer to reach the Americas than he thought it'd take to reach Asia.

   • CEO of Anti-Clock Society (be@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Jan-2023 04:58:10 JST CEO of Anti-Clock Society

     in reply to

     Every narrative I learned about history is wrong; a myth invented to rationalize colonization.

     Adrian Cochrane repeated this.
   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Jan-2023 05:03:14 JST Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @be Also I'm thinking of how bothered I am by the Great Man framing most tellings of history are constrained by. And while it does have issues with orientalism how much I appreciate an old TV show "Connections" for pushing back against it!

   • CEO of Anti-Clock Society (be@floss.social)'s status on Wednesday, 04-Jan-2023 02:51:44 JST CEO of Anti-Clock Society

     in reply to

     It's not that the historical facts I was taught didn't actually happen; that's not what The Dawn of Everything is about. Rather, the narrative which weaves them together, and leaves out lots of other facts, creates profoundly misleading ideas which confine public discourse and political imagination.