It Could Happen Here - Cultures at the Dawn of Everything Ft. Andrew

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Andrew joins us to talk about the history of regional cultures and how they developed.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

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where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking music, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us,

and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the podcast about things falling apart and sometimes how we can put them back together. Today, it's me, Garrison, Chris, our producer Sophie, and Andrew joins us once again. Yay! I love that guy.

Oh, me too! Me too! Hi, everyone. Hello. Welcome to another episode of Andrew talking about whatever he feels like talking about. talking about whatever he feels like talking about. Okay. Today's episode, I am happy to announce that I finally,

finally finished Dawn of Everything by Dave Graber and David Wenker. It took, it took a while. You know, there were some points in time, some weeks that just went by where I didn't even like make a dent. You know, life got in the way and stuff but i finally finally finished it and now i get to talk about it and say you know with some authority that i've read don't have everything you know yeah it's a very dense book but um

it was 100% worth it i mean there's some critiques that i've been digging into by some um authors in the field um and so i highly recommend people look for critiques as well not just you know taking it and consuming it wholesale but in addition to those critiques like armed with those critiques um such as by people like um what is politics on youtube and also a couple academic writers as well i think you could get a lot out of the book and i certainly have yeah this is this is a very good book i'm excited to talk about it because i read it like oh it was a while ago now like it's like five months ago or something oh wow i feel ashamed to talk about it i've been like waiting for the chance i've been i've been i've been picking up bits and pieces of it but unfortunately my book list to get through is uh

way too long at the moment so i've not been able to actually dive fully into the text itself um but it is definitely on my list after i get through my 20 other books I need to read for my job. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. At least we get to read books for a living. There was something adjacent to that. And I mean, it is a difficult book, I would say, to like discuss in its entirety. I don't intend to, not to raid any parade or anything chris but i don't intend to talk about the entire book you know because that's like several hundred pages

yeah you know and each chapter covers like so so much um but i actually wanted to talk about chapter four in particular um where the authors explore the concept and the origins, in a sense, of cultures in one particular segment. I mean, there are a lot of mysteries of the Upper Paleolithic that we don't know, right? I mean, that's why they're mysteries. But, you know, we've come to learn, you know, through the course of the book that, you know, this assumption that everything was just these small, tight-knit bands, and that was just the entirety of the human social arrangement until states. At least it's new to the layman to realize that this is not necessarily the case, that there is a lot more political, structural, you know, diversity in that time period. We don't know at that point in time, you know, what languages people were speaking.

You know, of course, linguists have been able to like reconstruct like proto-languages and stuff. And I mean, I'm just a hobby linguist, just like I'm a hobby everything else. But I think it's been really cool to see how linguists are just able to do that like can we just take a second to realize that like linguists are able to take scraps of existing languages and just kind of piece them together to get a sense of like how they're related like how do y'all do that um but there's a lot we don't know right we don't know about their language and about their myths you know um their conceptions of the soul what their favorite foods were i mean we know they

ate but we don't know what like joe skeleton thought about his breakfast that morning but what we do know is that you know from the swiss alps to out mongolia in the upper people were using a lot of the same tools, playing a lot of similar musical instruments, carving similar, rather interesting female figurines, wearing similar ornaments and conducting similar funeral rites. And there's also reason to believe

that people actually traveled a lot more than we would expect them to do. And actually traveled longer distances than we would expect for that time period. I mean, we don't have, they didn't have rather, you know, like cars or chariots or trains or planes or anything like that. planes or anything like that so to think that these long distance um journeys were occurring you know places like australia or in like north america is just really interesting to think about yeah i was wondering if you can talk about like one of the things i thought was really interesting about this is the way that they talk about culture areas where you have these yes yes yeah you have these like very large i mean like almost like like half continent sized areas where people are speaking similar languages like the same language and you have these like you have like these clan

structures that are like you know you you can go from like go from like missouri and you can end up in like mississippi and you'll be in a place where they still have like you know the sort of like four basic like clan lodges are still the same you'll meet people who are like from your clan and he has this really interesting line about how like sort of kind of intuitively like the world's gotten like the world like even when there was like people spread over geographic distance like the world sort of got larger as technology progressed and not sort of like smaller in the way that people sort of think about it because like in i don't know instead of there being these sort of like mega like culture areas you can go from one place to

another and you'll there'll be people who speak the same language and you can sort of slot into the like systems that are there you suddenly have this like incredible diversity of stuff right right so i mean specific to like north America, you know, where you had all these different clan structures, we usually tend to think of, you know, these groups as, you know, especially like your immediate relations with people that, you know, it's like close skin, family, that kind of thing. But there's actually, at least in some studies of hunter-gatherers there's some suggestion that their composition can be quite cosmopolitan so you know you have these these groups and

biological relations might only make up a small percentage of like total membership they're actually drawn from a wide pool of individuals of a larger stretch of area i know not all of them even speak necessarily the same first language um there's this youtuber an indigenous anarchist youtuber named twin rabbit and he had this excellent excellent video i need to re-watch it on planes sign language which is this um method of communication that indigenous Americans used across the plains to conduct trade and diplomacy and discussions, even if they didn't share the same language. to travel halfway across the continent moving across people who spoke entirely different languages and still find you know camps that had people of you know their same totemic moiety you know and those people which we treated like their brothers and sisters you know so like no hanky-panky but you know they had this this you know cross-continental bond of like hospitality

from the great lakes you know to louisiana bayous you could find settlements of people speaking entirely entirely separate languages unrelated to their own and yet still you will find you know bear clans or elk clans or beaver clans that were obliged to host and feed them, you know. And we could only really guess as to like what kind of systems were like and how those systems might have worked 48,000 years ago, you know, similarities and material uniformities and stuff of these different tools and musical instruments and stuff suggests that there might be a bit of a similar system in place at that time. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows Presented by I Heart and Sonorum An anthology of modern day horror stories

Inspired by the legends of Latin America From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America

since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Duda Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I

love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners,

for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

roughly around like 12 000 bc we start seeing like new pottery you know getting dropped we starting to see the outlines of more specific cultures in specific areas new stone grinding tools uh new ways of preparing and eating wild grains and roots and other vegetables um different ways of chopping slicing creating grinding soaking draining boiling and storing smoking and preserving meats plant foods and fish and suddenly we start to see something that um really brings people together and that is cuisine and cuisine you know being the birth of cuisine being the birth of cuisine, being the birth of like really more specific cultures. You know, the kinds of soups and porridges and stews and broths. And basically what they were talking about was the way that people who like wake up and eat fish stews every morning tend to you know develop a different sense of themselves in relation to their world compared to people who might wake up in the morning and eat some

porridge with like berries and wild oats you know and then from there they start to develop different tastes in in clothing you know in in dancing and drugs and hairstyles um i remember later on the book um the davids point out that some indigenous um native american groups were actually known for specific hairstyles and i kind of knew that based on the fact that you know we tend to associate mohawks with people you know Mohawk hairstyle Mohawk people but I didn't realize that you know other groups also had their own kind of like culturally specific hairstyles right and there's also like courtship rituals and forms of kinship and styles of rhetoric and so of course you still have these large cultural areas in the Mesolithic larger than some nation states but he's starting to see a bit more

specificity a bit more diversity in shorter spans of area if we look at now for example where you know we have in the amazon all these different languages and cultures that coexist merely kilometers from each other i think the overall trend of human cultures you know over the past tens of thousands of years has been the opposite of marginalization and it makes me think a bit about the whole concept of the nation state and how it tries to like bring people together to this like one narrow conception of what it means to be you know xyz and how humanity naturally seems to like resist that and naturally seems to like split off from that like even when you have situations with the forceful spread of english in you know the

caribbean colonies you still see like a diversity springing up with a bunch of different, unique creoles and dialects, making the language something different. If not for the enforcement of language standardization through the school system, I think we would actually see an even more rapid explosion of, you know, linguistic diversity developing out of these creoles and dialects. You know, like a couple centuries from now, you know, Patois and Trinidadian Creole and British English may be entirely incompatible, even in Britain itself. You know, you might have a case where london english and i don't know sussex english or whatever starts to sound like entirely different and we already have that with accents but just to see how you know even in short spaces of time i show it as a century or two because for

example trinidad um was not always an English-speaking colony. We actually spoke French Creole for most of our history. And only in the 19th century did we have that period of Anglicization, where English was brought in. And to see that in that short space of time, in that handful of centuries, that Trinidad already has its own unique English-based Creole. It was just fascinating to see. There's something really interesting to me about the way this process plays out, because it's

almost like you have this sort of like, you have this period in Mesolithic. All the period names are blanking out of my head but like like 40 yeah so like you have this period where you have kind of like you you have a lot of cultural

standardization like spread across a long period like a bunch of places and it's used sort of as a mutual aid thing it allows people to travel because you can go to a place and know that like there will be people who are like you there and they will take care of you and it's interesting to me it's like okay so this breaks apart as sort of like these these new cultures like as people develop local cultures around like food and around just like graber has this thing that he loves talking about he's been talking about for ages called schismogenesis which is like you have two people it was like i think i think his original example is like a few people who are arguing with each other and they like disagree minorly over like one thing and then by the end of the argument

like they're they've taken like completely mutually opposed identities to each other based on like an incredibly minor disagreement and you get this with yeah you get like you get cultures that sort of like define themselves against each other, and they have things that they like and things that they don't like. And it's interesting to me that you see the state trying to sort of reimpose that kind of 40,000-year-old cultural homogeneity on all of these places that are incredibly not homogenous. of these places that are like incredibly not homogenous but they're doing it for like the opposite reason they're doing it because they need standardization in order to sort of like make their make their bureaucratic like systems work better and make their sort of like yeah seen like a stage kind of thing yeah yeah and also like like i mean this was a huge thing everyone in the in like the early the late 90s and early 2000s thought that like the extent of capitalism on the

around the globe was going to make make everything exactly the same there's only one culture and that like kind of really didn't happen but there was this real sort of i don't know like there was this real sort of fear that that it wasn't just going to be the nation-state spreading like homogenization but like capitalism was going to sort of like spread homogenization and i guess i guess the thing that they wound up doing instead was like figuring out that you could just sell everyone in their individual cultural niche which to some extent yeah because like we see mcdonald's in the u.s and mcdonald's in bangladesh and mcdonald's in japan and they sell all the same mcdonald's stuff but they've also like sort of specified to their you know specific country yeah we have the worst version the u.s is the worst version of it by the

way the the uh uh the like taiwan has one that has like they have like rice uh sticky rice patties it's it's so much better than the u.s yeah i mean i will say though if i did end up traveling to taiwan i mcdonald's would probably be the last place i would want to go yeah we we wound up eating there and we were we had to catch a plane and so we wound up eating like um taiwanese taiwanese mcdonald's airport food because we had like five minutes it was a oh you know what they say about airplane food um but yeah that's exactly what's well to get into actually the whole idea of cultural differentiation you know um and this this tendency that humans have to subdivide and to distinguish themselves from their neighbors and i mean it's natural to assume that you know this differentiation comes from like differences in like language you you know, with, you know, language splitting off over the centuries and people associating with their native language and ethnicity.

But that already tells the full story, you know, like, for example, in Northern California in the early 20th century, the ethnolinguistic map had really a jumble of languages that drew from entirely different language families, you know, as distant from one another as like Arabic and Tamil and Portuguese. And yet these groups still shared, you know, broad similarities, you know, how they went about gathering and processing food, you know, their most important religious rituals how they organize their political life um and they also managed to keep themselves distinct you know you had the yurok and the hupa and the karok and so forth and i mean to some extent these identities did map onto linguistic differences but their neighbors who spoke different languages still had more in common with them than people who came from their same language family in another part of North America. Of course,

you know, European colonization had like a severe impact on like how Native Americans were distributed. But we still tend to see this trend of how like these modern nation states, but we still tend to see this trend of how like these modern nation states they went around at the time to you know order populations into these neat ethno-linguistic groups you know this idea that the world should be divided into these like homogenous units with their own history and everyone has a claim to like a certain territory and all that it's been it's really a concept that is born out of this mythology of the nation state and you know of course we had to be real careful before we project those kind of uniformities back in time yeah it's definitely really like 200 years old like it's

pretty young yeah exactly exactly but um there are some concerns, you know, with the concept of culture areas, because that whole notion of culture areas came out of North American museums who wanted to arrange their stolen artifacts to illustrate their theories of the different stages of human adaptation, you know, like lower savagery and upper savagery and lower barbarism and so on.

And so they had to determine whether they were going to organize these artifacts based on language family or regional clusters or some sort of traced history of ancient migrations. Eventually, they realized know this way of organizing to regional clusters seemed to work best where the art and technology of different eastern woodlands tribes had some very similar um things in common compared to like trying to group people based on like say the athabascan language or all the people who relied on fishing or all the people who cultivated maize um and they were able to find similar patterns in

the Neolithic villages of central Europe you know finding these regional clusters of domestic life and art and ritual and so like this whole cultural area concept was kind of a way of pushing back against this way of you know talking about human history that like ranked populations into higher or lower anything you know this this idea of of claiming that you know people were of a certain superior genetic stock and had reached a certain advanced level of technological evolution and so rather this there's been a there was a shift in anthropological focus to look at the diffusion of more cultural traits like ceramics and sweat lodges and you know the treatment of young men or certain sports.

And so they wanted to try to understand how these different tribes of certain region came to share this mesh of culture traits. So one of the people who were thinking on this, you know, whole culture traits cluster idea was a guy named Boas, right? And he wanted to figure out why it is that like geography seemed to define the circulation of ideas you know it's like mountains and deserts form these natural barriers and how basically the diffusion within those regions was basically historical accident

a lepo hypothesizing that there was some sort of like way to eventually develop a kind of a natural science developing how and even predicting the ebb and flow of styles habits and social forms and eventually marcel mouse pulls up you know and he's basically taught he basically like writes a bunch of essays on nationalism and civilization and he says basically this whole idea of cultural diffusion is nonsense because it's based on a false assumption and the false assumption is that the movement of people technologies and ideas is some sort of rarity something unusual instead mouse argues that like people in past times traveled even more than people do today and it's just that when people interact with people

of other cultures and they see their cultural traits they reflect on that and find a way to relate that to their own cultures right so like people who were traveling back then obviously all of them you know were aware of basketry you know or or or featherworks or whatever the case may be that other people were using a couple miles away same to be said for like certain drum rhythms or certain you know games or like for example he spent some time focusing on the distribution of the ball games around the pacific ocean around the pacific rim from japan to new zealand Zealand to California. And what he realized is that whether people pick up certain ideas, certain traits from other cultures comes down to how they want to be defined against their neighbors, against their closest neighbors.

The question becomes less about why certain culture traits spread but why other culture traits didn't because if you're aware of all the things that your neighbors and stuff are doing all these foreign customs and arts and technologies i mean we know that the silk road for example even we talk about the silk road you know we had a silk road going from China all the way into Europe and all across the Silk Road, all across Central Asia and West Asia. And despite that constant, you know, sharing of ideas, not every idea that, you know, came from China or came from Persia or, I don't know if Persia was around during the Silk Road, but you know what I'm saying saying like not every idea that was along the silk road everyone necessarily picked up on even if it was a technology that might have benefited them because cultures are effectively structures of refusal so for example um

there's this guy on youtube um religion for breakfast he did a video recently on the pork taboo in certain cultures and certain religions right and one of the things he pointed out was that the taboo tends to be strengthened in times of like repression so for example or in times of or in terms of cultural definition. So for example, he was pointing out that in the period of Roman conquest, the Jewish people were more inclined to define themselves as, you know, against the consumption of pork compared to the Romans. You know, for example, the chinese are the people who use chopsticks you know they don't use knives and forks or you're the thai the people who use

spoons and so on you know it could just be said said that you know it's like aesthetics like styles of art or music or table manners of course those things won't differ but even like technologies that have like an adaptive or utilitarian benefits might still be risk it might still be refused by people who might even benefit from them like for example the athabascans in alaska refuse to use inuit kayaks despite the fact that they are a lot better suited for the environment and their own boats. And the Inuit, for example, don't use Athabascan snowshoes, at least in the time that Marcel Mauss was writing. And then, of course, this is a self-conscious process. This is a process where debate and discussion of all these different customs would have been occurring.

For example, in the Chinese courts, when different foreign styles and customs would come into the lands, there would be debates and arguments put forward by the kings and their advisors and their vassals, and their vassals, you know, discussing, you know, whether they would ride the horses or drive chariots or adopt like the Manchu dress codes and customs. And so societies, Mao said, live by borrowing from each other, but they define themselves by the refusal of boring than by its acceptance welcome i'm Danny Thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the shadows presented by iHeart and Sonoro.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those

responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry

and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother

trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Cuba. Mr. González wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian González story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts

dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The question of how culture areas form and how cultures split off is definitely a political one the decision to adopt a certain form of agriculture or to cultivate a certain crop more specifically or to adopt a certain style of dress it's not just like a matter of mere utility of mere caloric advantage or material efficiency or it's also a reflection or a questioning

of the values that that group of people holds or purport to hold who they consider themselves to be. I like to think about the development of cultures, you know, I like to think about how our ancestors or distant ancestors even considered themselves. You know, it's easy to just fall into this trap because it's a very

common cultural trope that you know once you go before the invention of writing or whatever all of our ancestors were just like ooga booga cavemen kind of thing but to think of them as self-conscious and politically um conscious politically considerate, thoughtful actors, not, you know, static or passive props. It's just, I think it's just very cool. I think it's just very cool. I think it's very cool. And I think that we should keep these developments, this recognition in mind as we, in the modern time, look to try to transform the cultures that we live under and to try to develop new values,

new values of anti-authoritarianism and anti-capitalism and of a greater priority on mutual aid and on egalitarian social relations. Yeah, I think there's a lot of very interesting political consequences of of thinking about this because like i think that there's sort of like two tendencies that that we sort of get stuck in when we think about like our social structures which is there's there's the there's one which is the sort of like i guess it's called a capitalist realism which is the assumption that like nothing else could possibly like this is the only system that works. Nothing else can possibly exist.

And that's unproductive. And, you know, you go back and you look at like any other culture or society and it's like, well, no, like there's there's like an unbelievable, like nearly infinite number of ways you can organize your society. you can organize your society but then i think i think the second one is that like yeah if you look at this sort of cultural diffusion and cultural refusal stuff you you see a lot of examples of people doing stuff that like under sort of like classical economic or like sociological laws they shouldn't be doing right like there's no reason why you shouldn't use a more efficient canoe if you're in a place of the part of the world that's like extremely hard to survive in right and and i think that there's this tendency to sort of like reduce culture and reduce just all of the ways that our social and political systems function to these sort of like oh

they're the product of these like abstract historical forces and like ah it's all like it's all determined by technology and like how you farm and stuff it's just not true yeah I mean not to say that material conditions aren't you know very important in understanding you know how these cultures develop

and that's one part of the other thing that I found was a bit lacking I think that not all the time those dots were clearly connected I'd say of um don't have everything that i found was a bit lacking i think that not all the time those dots were clearly connected um i'd say but i do think people put too much stock in solely material and materialist um explanations and that kind of ends up precluding or leaving out the more messy human realm of explanation yeah and i think i think part of why this happens is that like it's much if you assume everyone is like behaving according

to historical forces or like the thing that they're trying to do is like maximize um they're trying to like maximize their utility they're trying to like maximize the amount of calories they have that that's a very easy thing to like you like think about numerically right like it's a very easy thing to refuse the numbers it's extremely difficult to refuse the numbers like to reduce to like reduce to numbers a society that is like i'm going to i'm going to intentionally make my life harder for myself because this is the way we do things and we've decided we don't want to do things like other people we've decided that we have some kind of political value that we have that makes it such that we're going to like induce difficulty into our lives and like that i don't know like that that kind of stuff the the the fact that culture is not just a sort of like

superstructure that gets that's like a product of like some kind of economic base like that that is very important and something that gets ignored or downplayed constantly that i think i don't yeah like i think like yeah i think i think you can argue that don't everything like maybe goes too far in the other direction but i'm i'm sort of okay with that just because we've been so far on the side of like everything is historical forces for so long that you need something to remind people that like societies make conscious political choices and not only have they made conscious political choices for like tens of thousands of years i like we also can make conscious political choices that are not just sort of like pure reflections of like

however many tons of iron have been extracted and like what percentage of like workers are currently working in hospitals versus like making cookies or something right thank you for that oh oh oh analysis Chris

I agree that's a joke like 12 people will get Thank you for that oh-oh-oh analysis, Chris. I agree. That's a joke like 12 people will get. I love you if you understand that joke. Also, I'm sorry. Yeah, so you can wrap it up, Carson.

All of this has been very fascinating what what i've learned the most is that i need to finish reading all my books so that i can read the dawn of everything um i know i i like i like got it for my dad for christmas because um because i i knew that it would be uh at least i think i did my memory could be i could actually be wrong i could have only intended to get it for my dad for Christmas and then forgotten to actually get it. But I've been meaning to both buy it for myself and get it for other people because I've heard a lot of interesting things about the book.

So it is definitely on my list. It's been a pleasure listening to y'all discuss it. listening to y'all discuss it. Andrew, if people want to check out more of your work, where could they go about that? Right.

So, you can still find me on Twitter at underscore St. Drew when I'm not hiding. And you can also find me on YouTube, Andrewism, youtube.com slash andrewism where i post videos about also stuff random stuff you know that i'm thinking about politics history all that jazz a few days ago as of time of recording um andrew put out a wonderful video

on solar punk stuff um i've no idea when this episode will air, so it's probably been like a month or two or something. But definitely check out the Andrewism channel. It's one of my favorite spots to watch something when I feel like I can't put any words on the page. I go watch your things, because

it's very helpful. Yeah, so that does it for us today. You can find us at twitter and on twitter and instagram at happen here pod calls out media you can find me posting about hyper objects and liminal spaces at hungry bow tie and i heard that you have a twitter chris yeah it's at it me chr3 uh you can find me mostly complaining about other people who are doing communism wrong i guess that's most of what i post about love that for you uh you too will be able to differentiate between the 16 different actually that's not even true there's not even 16 there used to be

long ago in a galaxy far far away i made a decision and that was that I was going to sacrifice my brain to understand the different kinds of Maoism. And if you, too, want to understand why it still exists and all 20,000 varieties of them, yeah, go there. If you don't want to do that, do not. You'll be happier. Well, what a ringing endorsement. Goodbye, everyone. Go. I don't know.

Oh, should we plug the other shows yeah i guess everyone's tuned out at this point i hope they've all stopped the podcast player so i think i think uh that's gonna be free yes go outside and be free there i can you can you can edit that into something that is more concise. Sorry, Daniel slash Ian. I don't care. out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories

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