gly > Recent Status Updates

"Forest gardens are another kind of evidence of the sophisticated management of resources. Recent research has shown that the forested environments around First Nation villages, even those abandoned more than a hundred years ago, exhibit many food plants that do not normally grow together or naturally occur in the area." (p. 73)

"As is evident in their art, Indigenous peoples also had phenomenal woodworking technology... trees were culturally modified. People peeled bark to weave mats, hats, and garments, and removed planks or blocks of wood to carve sculptures such as masks, doing so in such a way that the trees continued living." (p. 72)

"Capitalism will not die. It must be killed by the masses of its victims." (p. 16)

"Instead of the rich profiting from our misery, we can build local and regional programs to rebuild our communities and force the government to provide our communities with unrestricted funds under total community control until we can build our own financial base. We can even call this reparations if we choose to do so." (p. 16)

"We can [continue the work] by planting seeds of our own and understanding the significance of what we have to offer because of what others offered of themselves before us. This is how revolutionary potential can flourish and radical springs follow the winters that have weighed us down." (p. xiv)

“What is the thing we call government? Is it anything but organized violence? The law orders you to obey and if you don’t obey, it will compel you by force—all governments, all law and authority finally rest upon force and violence, on punishment or fear of punishment.” — Alexander Bergman, in ABC of Anarchism (p. 61)

“The existence of the state and a ruling class, based on the exploitation and oppression of the working class, are inseparable… This is why Anarchist-Communists argue that any attempt to use state power as a means of establishing a free, egalitarian society can only be self-defeating because the habits of commanding and exploiting become ends in themselves.” (p. 59)

“[Anarchist-Communists] wish to create non-authoritarian mutual aid organizations… neighborhood assemblies and cooperatives… not run for profit, but for social need… we can begin now to build the infrastructure for the communal society so people can see what they are fighting for, not just the ideas in someone’s head. That is the real way to freedom.” (p. 57) !!!

“[Anarchy] encourages innovation and experimentation, prompting its adherents to respond realistically to contemporary conditions. It is the concept of making ideology fit the demands of life, rather than trying to make life fit the demands of ideology… [they] believe in social revolutionaries to empower the masses of people... build[ing] organizations to build a new world, not to perpetuate domination” (p. 55)

“Anarchists reject such centralization of authority and the concept of a central committee. All groups are free associations formed out of common people… this enables the group to expand limitlessly while maintaining its anarchic form of decentralized self-management. It is somewhat like the scientific theory of a biological cell, dividing and redividing, but in a political sense.” (p. 53)

“The reality is Anarchists are social revolutionaries, who seek a stateless, classless, voluntary, cooperative federation of decentralized communes based on social ownership, individual liberty and autonomous self-management of social and economic life. The political demands of the masses must take priority…” (p. 49)

“We need to preserve those things which need to be preserved in mass society during a transitional stage to Anarchist socialism. I do not mean preserve the state as any form of institution, but rather allow masses of people to create cooperatives to produce food, housing, and other social needs on a mass scale for themselves and others…” (p. 48)

“Federalism is a form of social organization in which self-determining groups freely agree to coordinate their activities. Federalism is not a type of anarchism, but it is an essential part… Federalism emphasizes autonomy and decentralization, fosters solidarity and complements groups’ efforts to be as self-sufficient as possible.” (p. 36)

“Anarchists believe only peasants, workers and farmers can liberate themselves and that they should manage industrial and economic production through worker’s councils, factory committees and farm cooperatives, rather than via a party or government… They will refuse to surrender self-direction to the state, political parties or vanguard sects since each of these merely aid in establishing… domination”(p 35)

“By propagating the misconception of anarchist violence—mainly by refusing to compare the violence used by the powerful and the out-of-power—police violence against protesters is justified… This all reinforces the perceived ‘need’ for the state to intervene in society’s madness—which it contributes to and manages—and ‘protect’ citizens from each other.” (p. xxi)

“Sociologists in particular cannot forget Weber’s key observation that the state holds the monopoly on violence; the evidence can be witnessed in murderous wars, incarceration of citizens, and symbolic and actual violence against people. Thus, to associate ‘anarchist’ with ‘violence’ misses the most obvious of contradictions…” (p. xx)

“Anarchists generally oppose hierarchy, competition, and domination, and instead support efforts of horizontalism, cooperation, and self-management. These goals can be viewed as dialectical.” (p. xviii)

“it is inappropriate to create a world free of oppressive authority figures by using the state—a major institution of oppressive power—to eradicate oppressive authority.” (p. xviii)

On Academia: “I suspect—but cannot prove—that this desire to be objective, to be scholarly, and to be respectable, is also what has kept their analytical focus away from one of the most in respectable of movements: anarchism (that, and the reformist interests of these scholars, generally). (p. xi)

“excavation suggested [Triquet island] was occupied up to 14,000 YA… it provided solid evidence that people had occupied coastal regions during the ice age, and it singled out Triquet as one of the oldest reliably dated archaeological sites in the Americas.” (p. 43)

Caves in Haida Gwaii: “They found the remains of dogs dating to 13,000 YA, the oldest evidence of domestic dogs in the Americas.” (p. 44)

“… archaeology, above all, is a form of storytelling. and as with any story, it all depends on the perspective of the storyteller.” (p. 10)

“Many people believe that cultural evolution follows a standard pathway, often known as the theory or model of unilinear cultural evolution, but the idea… has been widely debunked… What works best for one community may not work so well for another. ” (p. 13)

… so far no women… interesting

I’m back on tumblr @ 6ly

An easy and thought-provoking read so far. Lots of evolutionary psychology and anthropology in the first half.

I’ve been trying not to view this book as objective science, but rather, as an interpretation. There’s been a couple questionable parts, but again, this is only their take on human history.

It’s the ideal segue to personal research and delving deeper into certain centuries that attract the reader.

I'm fairly skeptical about this book because of lines like

"Countries that consume the highest amount of dairy products, such as Switzerland and the United states, have some of the highest incidence of osteoporosis, while other countries, such as in Africa and Asia, where virtually no dairy products are consumed, have the lowest rate of osteoporosis and hip fractures." (p 62)

I have to stop coming on here cause I've been finding too many interesting books. I can't keep up