The Dawn of Everything - Part 3

[00:00:26] **Trish:** Welcome back! We've

[00:00:28] **Hirad:** It's been a while.

[00:00:29] **Trish:** been on a brief hiatus, but we're back.

[00:00:32] **Hirad:** Well, we've been working hard. It hasn't been quite the easiest book to get through,

[00:00:36] **Trish:** That is an understatement. Yeah,

we're through, we're gonna record this episode, we're gonna put this book to bed, move on to something else, something shorter, I think, hopefully, we've decided, but we'll let you know about that. But yes for Those who may be joining us new, this is our third installment of David Graeber and David Wengro's Dawn of Everything.

[00:01:00] **Hirad:** So if you haven't listened to the last two episodes I recommend going back and listening to those first. But if you just want to jump in, in the middle of things, then you know, you can just listen to this one too.

[00:01:13] **Trish:** So I've got a gripe with this book. I feel like I'm just gonna start here.

[00:01:18] **Hirad:** All right.

[00:01:19] **Trish:** And you can, you can argue with me. 

So the whole first half of this book was sort of like tearing down traditional sort of stories and narratives that we've built of how humanity arrived at the spot we are now.

So we, you know, talked about the agricultural revolution. We talked about a lot of ways that we've traditionally viewed pre industrial or pre agricultural societies and this Garden of Eden, Novel Savage. Savage stuff. And I thought that the second part of this book was going to be giving me some answers. And, like, it definitely has not. This is an anthropological survey of ten zillion data points of, , everything from, , Mesoamerica, South America, Indus Valley, Pakistan, just to it taught me a million things just to show me that I don't know anything.

[00:02:14] **Hirad:** Wait, what did you think that it was going to answer? What question did you think it was going to

[00:02:19] **Trish:** How we got stuck here.

[00:02:21] **Hirad:** I see, I see.

[00:02:23] **Trish:** Or like what happened so like with the agricultural revolution like we all besides maybe those guys who live on like the sentinel island everybody practices agriculture so it's not like the story of the agricultural revolution that we were told but it also now we all do it.

It kind of didn't tell me, , how we got there. So, I mean, like, this is a useful book and you learn a lot, but, this is why people read Sapiens. It gives you a nice little story. This book doesn't give you any story. It just tells you all the stories you know are wrong.

[00:02:58] **Hirad:** Well why are we switching positions? I feel like this was my gripe last time. 'cause I said they don't know how to craft a story.

[00:03:05] **Trish:** And, no, you're just, you were saying that they don't know how to craft a story. I'm saying there's no story to even be crafted

[00:03:10] **Hirad:** no story. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:03:12] **Trish:** So

[00:03:13] **Hirad:** that's a good point. I feel I, I, I mean, I, I grant you that point. They did, they do not answer that question of how did we get stuck, but they definitely do a lot to build a case that we don't have to be stuck in this paradigm. That there may be other ways, and there have been other ways.

[00:03:32] **Trish:** Yes. But so like, this is, I mean, this is why I kind of feel like I'm going to pick on you a little bit. It's like, when we talk about these episodes and how they want to be structured, you are kind of always saying to me, , what's the story we're trying to tell? And I think that that is, I mean, that, that is good storytelling.

That's the way you should sort of approach these things. But this week I'm like, there's no, the story is that there's no story to me.

[00:03:54] **Hirad:** Yeah, you're right. I guess for that specific question, there is no story. 

[00:04:00] **Trish:** But take any question that the book says, there's no story. It's like we have just like a panoply of people doing all sorts of stuff all around the world and if you want to start like take your little string of yarn and connecting dots, I mean you can. I don't think that it necessarily is going to lead to correct conclusions.

[00:04:22] **Hirad:** I hope we can get David Wengro on the podcast and and

[00:04:26] **Trish:** Don't tell him I said all this.

[00:04:27] **Hirad:** taken. We won't tell him these episodes are out before before he agrees to do the...

[00:04:35] **Trish:** So that's why, maybe I'm, sorry, rant's not quite over yet. So this is the thing like, I don't even want to try and summarize what all these chapters about. Like, go read the book, listeners. Like, it's really, really good. You will learn a lot. But , there's literally no point, I think, in , summarizing.

Anything.

[00:04:51] **Hirad:** what are we, what are we recording for then?

[00:04:55] **Trish:** So we can argue about other, but do you know where I'm coming from? Like I expected you to push back on that a little bit, but I

[00:05:01] **Hirad:** I feel like this is kind of merging very well with Mike. Unfortunately, I can't really push back. It's merging very well with my criticism of the book previously, because it's, that was the feeling I was getting when I was reading the book. It's a lot of , it's, it's a lot of data in, in this book.

And it's, it's basically, I think, written for the academic audience mainly, because it's just like very. Rigorous in building up its case from various data points. But you're right, other than kind of pull the rug out from existing paradigms, it doesn't really do a whole lot in building a new one.

I guess the main thing that is the main message that they try to hammer home is we live in a state, no pun intended, where we just lack political imagination. Where we believe that this one system in which we're stuck right now is the only one that's possible. And here we wrote a thousand pages about why that's not the case.

[00:06:00] **Trish:** yeah. Cause I feel like some people would even say, well, our system's not perfect, but it's pretty good. And actually I've got a lot of sympathy for this position. I don't know what you think.

[00:06:13] **Hirad:** Well, I've been, I've been thinking about this a lot. So, and also for listeners, I actually just got back from attending a conference. That's that's about, that was about network states and it was called the network state. So that's a separate book we may cover later in the podcast. Not sure.

But it's, it's, the conference was all about people who want to build parallel societies and essentially be politically creative. So I've been, I've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot, and I think we, it would be foolish to think that we can come up with new political paradigms or social structures that are not messy the way human affairs are always messy.

There's always going to be something that is lacking, something that's, there's always going to be a problem because we're fallible, we have limited knowledge. All of that, I think my main takeaway from this book though, is I think one of the most beautiful things about the United States is it's federalism and the fact that it actually allows many different kind of experiments within some, within some constraints.

It allows many different experiments to be playing out and you can kind of see, Hey, maybe like California implemented. Some policy and then Texas implements a different policy and we see how people migrate between them. So it's actually a beautiful little microcosm of political diversity. But it's still all within a very.

Predefined paradigm, there is room for experimentation, but only within a given sandbox. aNd we just, what I hope to see in the future is more experimentation within a much greater sandbox or within, with much more variables that we can play with, and then we'll see, some of them will work better than others.

So different ones will have different trade offs and maybe people will move differently amongst them. But. I think that's kind of my takeaway from this book.

[00:08:10] **Trish:** yeah,,

[00:08:11] **Hirad:** should we talk a little bit about what are some of these possibilities and why we think these alternative possibilities might be there?

[00:08:19] **Trish:** right. I guess, sort of going back to what you were just saying, there is one sort of useful framework that I got from the book, and he was talking about the three freedoms how did he exactly, it was like the right to move around, the right to disobey, and the right to reimagine social order, and he sees that people having these three freedoms as a fundamental way that people can continue to build and try new social organizations

[00:08:47] **Hirad:** Yeah. I, and I feel like if, if we do get to this paradigm of you know, many systems. This kind of needs to be the the ground level freedoms. I think one key point that he raises at some point in the book, we may have covered it in the past is is that freedoms that you put on paper, but you can't in practice exercise.

don't really mean anything, right? If you, if I have the freedom of movement, but I can't afford the, the ticket to you know, go from point A to point B, then I don't in any meaningful way actually have that freedom. And I think that that's an important thing to keep in mind is you actually need to be able to practice that freedom , in reality.

[00:09:32] **Trish:** Yeah, mm hmm

[00:09:34] **Hirad:** So there was, I think the the other key thing that I took away from the latter half of the book was, so those are the three freedoms and there's the three primary forms of domination. And one of the things that we learn here is that throughout. History. There have been many societies that have had some of these forms of domination, but not necessarily others.

So the the three forms of domination were, the control of violence, which is the first thing that we think about when we think about what a state is control of information. This can mean different things in different contexts. So there have been, civilizations in the past where the elites in society might have exclusive access to , special knowledge that could be something like Shamanic knowledge.

Or in our modern state, it could be things like state secrets the surveillance state and you know, all of that kind of intelligence that the bureaucracy has.

or anything that kind of helps the states to maintain its grip on, on power information that the, the system has that the rest of us don't,

[00:10:42] **Trish:** technology Yeah,

[00:10:44] **Hirad:** it gets worse and worse with technology.

And the final element is charisma. People with a lot of charisma tend to be able to control others. And there have been societies in the past where kind of competitions of charisma have been the only. means by which by which kind of hierarchy has been established. So people kind of have these heroes in in sports or or in any other kind of domain that it may be.

And they kind of elevate these heroes to. Higher status and, and we have all the, all these three, like the, the modern state is defined by the fact that it has all these three forms of domination, , in that we have, you know, sovereignty, control of violence or monopoly on violence. We have the administrative states, which again has more intelligence and more access to special knowledge.

About everything that, you know, the, the general public does not have and we have these charisma competitions that we call elections, which I find interesting that even in places that are dictatorships, they still have elections oftentimes. And they, they just go through the exercise, even though the outcome is clear, but they still need to.

You know, act it out in some way to, to have that legitimacy. And the, and the point that they make in the book, interestingly, is that , we think we live in democracies like here in the West today in 2023 , but the reality is that a King from 500 years ago was, was not operating a state.

It by the same definition that we are operating today in that a lot of times, even, you know, Louis XIV you know, famous for saying, l'etat c'est moi he I

[00:12:32] **Trish:** I mean, I don't know what that

[00:12:33] **Hirad:** I am the state, I think that's the translation. I think me and the state are one. But he did not have the means of projecting his power into the granular daily lives of, you know, the everyday peasants or the, the citizenry, right?

Which is a power that a prime minister or president does have today. And they can, they can control things like your spending. They can tax you to death on every single thing that you do. They can control the most basic things you do in your life. Whereas that's something that the authoritarian ruler of 500 years ago, , could not claim to do.

[00:13:14] **Trish:** Yeah, I thought that that was interesting how We sort of see that, , when they talk about this in the book, sort of this package of all three together and the, the narrative that we always had about this was that, we had agriculture and this led to an accumulation of resources.

and the accumulation of all this grain meant there could be extra and some people might get more then be able to accumulate power yada yada yada they would get the use of force and it would sort of all coalesce into this state apparatus like we have now and again in the variety of examples that they showed.

He's like, Oh, we see things that emerge sort of like a state in all sorts of different ways. Like sometimes it was through a charismatic leader that people naturally started following, or maybe it was a system of administration that started to come together to manage some public good.

So again, it's the story is that it's not the story that we've been told, and that it looked different all sorts of places, That you didn't necessarily need a big top down system to manage, , large scale, , agricultural products or irrigation systems or 

[00:14:32] **Hirad:** yeah.

That was that was a big chunk of what we covered in the last many months is was actually talking about this concept of cities , and we kind of think of. You know, the city as kind of the beginning of civilization, right? That's when we come together in large numbers. That's when , the theory goes or the kind of , the classic explanation goes that we discover agriculture, agriculture can support larger number of peoples.

That's why cities arise. And now we need to protect things. And that's why you know, the hierarchy arises and a monopoly on violence arises.

[00:15:06] **Trish:** And then democracy was like a tempering, , so we kind of got, , really authoritarian, but oh, it's okay, then we invented, , democracy as a way to sort of tamp down on, , authoritarianism.

[00:15:16] **Hirad:** Yeah. And, and the, the reality is that we can go back many thousands of years. People have always lived in cities. In fact, people have lived in , arrangements where they did interact with people from far and wide, people that are not necessarily within their quote unquote tribe. I'm actually not sure even if that term really means much now in the, , in the context of but you know, you can go back to I forget it was thousands of years ago in modern day Ukraine, there, there have been groups of people that are living in , large societies and which we can tell from.

From kind of the archaeological evidence that's been left behind. They all lived in very similarly built houses and kind of like something we covered in the last episode about you know, architecture in Central America. These houses were constructed very similarly across a very wide area. So there would be one area that might be housing Many thousands of people.

Then there'll be like another identical area far away. And it might be housing thousands more people. And similarly in in Mesopotamia, we see evidence that people that lived very far from each other. This is before what we would consider the the rise of the early cities. Or the early kingdoms in Mesopotamia, long before that, people who lived far and wide, they would be trading with each other, where in one area, certain good would be produced, and then it travels long distances to places far away from where it was produced, and, and vice versa.

So we see evidence. Of trade in that way, and one interesting concept that Graeber talks about in the book is that cities were actually, people were collaborating like, like this across wide geographic areas, and what a city is, is basically shortening that distance where people used to collaborate across these , vast expanses, those long long distance.

Now with the cities, they can just be next door or or in the next block. But even in those early city states many of them were kind of run collectively. They were run by these councils that would determine the affairs of, you know, whatever neighborhood or, the whole city, if it might be.

[00:17:36] **Trish:** Yeah, exactly. So like the traditional narrative that you get people in big groups together and you know like, oh we're not like evolutionarily equipped to deal with so many people and so we need this big political sorry like bureaucratic scaffolding to help us all coexist in one place and that's how you get locked into how we view modern cities now with the hierarchy and the state and sort of like the economic system that , it just isn't the pattern that you see.

Like you were mentioning, people came together. There was , you know, often like this is the problem with archaeology is you don't really know how it looks, but like you didn't seem to see structures or things that. Accompanied large scale bureaucracy, where you didn't necessarily see, like, monuments, or you didn't see palaces, or you didn't see houses that were different, that looked like where, like, a gentry would live, or something.

So it just seemed that, , sometimes you did get, , a very like, you know, like, in Egypt, in a few of, like, the classical cases, like, you definitely got, sort of, Cities and hierarchy in this package of civilization. But not necessarily. And sometimes cities were depopulated and sometimes like all sorts of stuff were happening.

And you can definitely cherry pick examples to make the traditional narrative work. But if you actually are going to do a survey of where people came together and we're living in huge groups of thousands of people.

[00:19:06] **Hirad:** Mm hmm.

[00:19:07] **Trish:** It looked a lot, a lot of different ways.

[00:19:10] **Hirad:** 100%. And I feel like we so there's lots of things in what you just said that I want to double click on. So in the previous episodes, we kind of mentioned these sites like I think it's called Çatalhöyük or Çatalhöyük in in modern day Turkey, where , I think even Sapiens talked about this.

It's a site in Turkey where these massive monuments were built. We know that thousands of people would come together seasonally., I think if I remember the date correctly, it was around 8, 000 years ago. So this is well before the modern state that we are or the modern kind of kingdoms and hierarchy that we have been taught in classical kind of tellings of history

that right away should just disprove Dunbar's number, the whole claim around people,

[00:19:55] **Trish:** I mean, just to be clear, I don't think, like, Dunbar's number is actually wrong. They're just saying that people in cities, like, still make their own little, , kind of 150 person, , mini village, right? And so you all live close together, but you're still like, yeah.

[00:20:08] **Hirad:** yeah, the conclusion from Dunbar's number that, that before some kind of administrative state or before some kind of kingdom that we can't actually collaborate across large numbers and therefore human society is actually confined to, . 150 people. , it's wrong both from archeological evidence and also from genetic evidence and also from evidence that we see from tribes that we can observe or we have observed , within, you know.

Historical memory. So for example, he mentions that in the, in North America before the arrival of Europeans you know, there have been systems in place where, you could leave your tribe in one part of North America , and travel thousands of miles away. And there might be a class system in place where even though they, you've never met the people, but you know that you're forever.

In, in, in far and wide societies, you're still a member of the same clan and there's someone to receive you and kind of show you hospitality , and people did do this and they frequently got up and moved. And so this is just something natural , that people have done. So this idea that we just live in tiny societies unless there is like a king above us that says, you know.

[00:21:22] **Trish:** Yeah, that can organize everything.

[00:21:25] **Hirad:** Yeah, I think that's just ridiculous.

[00:21:27] **Trish:** This is so interesting how we got so stuck, , in this Hobbesian thinking that you need top down hierarchy because everything is too complicated, if not. Like, it's just so interesting once you start to, like, really think about that because almost nothing that, like, humans try and centrally plan goes well.

[00:21:45] **Hirad:** Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[00:21:47] **Trish:** Right? Like, Central Asian economies are disastrous. Like, it just feels like, yeah, like that we don't have any really good examples of, , this being, the best and most efficient system.

[00:22:01] **Hirad:** Yeah, that's absolutely true. And, and it's, but it's so funny if when you talk to people about, you know, alternative ideas, it's been so instilled in us that we need some kind of top down control. Otherwise things will. You know, go haywire. Oh, recently I listened to an episode of the Jordan Peterson podcast.

And the guest that he had on was kind of running a special school in the US with like a special program where they kind of don't follow the traditional , the school system that we inherited from, time of the industrial revolution. And they do things differently. So they have a curriculum, but instead of segregating kids by age and putting them, kind of like a factory line through this process from K to 12 what they do is they form these pods of kids of various ages.

And essentially the older kids always help the younger kids to to do their thing and vice versa some of the time. But the pod is like this group of kids that are responsible for essentially teamwork, right? They're, they can kind of help get each other over the humps. And then there are also teachers available if you choose to kind of use them as a resource.

We don't have to. The, the key thing is that you work through your curriculum and it's all gamified and to kind of make it fun and interesting and all that. And one thing interesting that this guy said that caught my attention was that sometimes they can absorb kids from the traditional school system into this program, but if it happens too late, if the kids are a little too old, and I forget where the kind of like the rough cutoff was the kids coming into this program were completely lost.

They didn't know what to do if, if some kind of top down authority was not telling them. And I just, when I heard that, I just thought that's such a microcosm of our society at large, where we have been trained and this model of like some kind of top down you know, instruction, uh, or, or rules.

And we don't actually know how to organize ourselves. I think it might be true that it is actually a bit of a lost muscle that we haven't exercised, but I think it's also true that. Everything we do in life is actually, we, we're not actually completely free to do whatever we want if it's not for the police, what we're actually free to do is like within the constraints of What we're of our social relations and our social relations, even with people that we don't know, right?

It could be if you're in a grocery store and you are in a line, but there's a line and you don't butt in the line. It's not because the cops are going to come arrest you, right? There is some kind of moderation happening based on your relationship with other people and an understanding of what is expected and what isn't.

I mean, if you were in some other country, maybe you don't respect the line, you know, because nobody does. And that's not what's expected, but really. It's not the law that's keeping you in check, it's your

[00:24:48] **Trish:** Yeah.

[00:24:49] **Hirad:** bond, social bonds to other people. And we just seem to completely miss this and

how we think about our society.

[00:24:56] **Trish:** I think schools like that seem really... Interesting. Sometimes I wonder if it's doing a little bit of a disservice to the children because we're just like in this whole society. , schools function really well at what they're supposed to do, which is prepare you for university, to prepare you to like write a bunch of Or like do a bunch of tasks that you're told to get a job where you just do a bunch of tasks.

Like, you know what I mean? Like the system is sort of like well designed to like figure out who's

[00:25:22] **Hirad:** well designed for bullshit.

[00:25:24] **Trish:** It is exactly for people to go out and get their bullshit jobs. You can see that episode previously in the queue. I kind of liked it. I mean, I'm not saying I like the system. I'm just saying that , I don't know if I would send my kid to a school.

Like that. Even though it does sound cool and I kind of like, I mean, I want to support it, but I was like, they're going to come out with this little weirdo who , hopefully like, they're smart and can , think of a good startup idea or something. But if not, like, you're kind of ill equipped. Maybe not.

Maybe , the school actually is getting you there. You're just more of a creative thinker.

[00:25:54] **Hirad:** well, so that's interesting. I feel like you would be ill equipped for A prize not worth having, like it's, it's such a, so I've been, I'm actually very curious to, to hear your take on it, because I've been thinking about this a lot. This book got, got me, you know, it's, it's, this is the wonderful thing about Graber, like I, I, he, he is the

[00:26:13] **Trish:** And Wengro. We gotta stop leaving out Wengro.

[00:26:16] **Hirad:** Well, in this specific case, I just said Graber because I'm including bullshit jobs in this, , compendium of, , these books have moved me off of positions that I never, ever thought I would move off of. I take these things kind of very seriously.

Like if, if, if I read this book and it kind of convinces me of that of this problem and it convinces me that that we are not being imaginative enough and that it is possible that we live in a system that does not have all three forms of domination. I want to

[00:26:49] **Trish:** start a cult?

[00:26:51] **Hirad:** 100%. Of course, I'm going to start a cult. Yeah, I've been talking about starting a cult for ages. The only thing is I didn't know which direction I need to aim. And, and this book kind of gave me a sense of sense of that. So I, and as I've been thinking about kind of starting this, this cult I don't have like a, I mean, I have a religious And that I grew up in Iran and , I learned whatever the Iranian government , wanted me to learn about what Islam is and whatnot. So I call that extremely limited and extremely poor religious education, but you have a very good religious education in the Christian paradigm.

So one thing that I've been thinking about since. Since all of these ideas have been regurgitating in my head is that when we talk about bullshit, when we talk about like, you know, we have, we put kids through these systems and what they do is they keep doing these false things, but now you're saying , you, you would rather, if you had a kid, you would rather the kid goes through the bullshit system rather than the.

[00:27:52] **Trish:** I'm just saying I'm not sure.

[00:27:54] **Hirad:** Okay. Okay. But

[00:27:55] **Trish:** Like, you know, I wonder. Like, yeah, I'm on the fence about it. I don't know. Because I did well in the bullshit system. I think you did well in the bullshit

[00:28:03] **Hirad:** I did. Yeah. I mean, I didn't realize it was bullshit. Yeah.

[00:28:06] **Trish:** Yeah, yeah, but like, I don't know, , if someone just told me, , what to do and exactly how to do it, I was like, awesome, not very hard, , sure,

[00:28:13] **Hirad:** Yeah. So I'm starting to think of these things as these things that lock us in this paradigm that we can't seem to escape. I'm thinking of them as these false idols. Like we are, we live in a societies that are worshiping false idols and 

[00:28:33] **Trish:** Sorry, listeners, I just need a minute to absorb the language that this man, this friend of mine, who hasn't believed in jack for like, so long, continue.

[00:28:46] **Hirad:** Yeah, so and, and, and I, I, I mean, these are like some, I've, I've been in touch with various people that have kind of put things to me differently over the, over the last little while, but the idea of believing in something that is not a false idol is believing in something that yields you actual results.

Right. Like I think that was, I, I don't know these stories very well, but I think like, if you think about the story of Abraham, um, it was, you didn't think it would go here, did you?

[00:29:15] **Trish:** Here we go. I

[00:29:18] **Hirad:** This story is roughly that there were all these like cities that he knew about. And he could see that they're kind of doing things that are, that don't make sense. And he decided to, like, essentially present this new alternative that was not a false idol, right? That was kind of the, I'm getting the, the 50, 000 foot view kind of right?

[00:29:41] **Trish:** mean, I guess if you just, like, take God out of a biblical story, maybe?

[00:29:48] **Hirad:** No, I mean, that's, that's actually, so that is putting God in. Like, it's, it's putting God in place of these false idols. Because 

[00:29:54] **Trish:** Yeah, yeah, 

[00:29:55] **Hirad:** idols are the things that...

[00:29:56] **Trish:** But wouldn't you say God is a false idol? I mean, I wouldn't, but

you would. 

[00:30:00] **Hirad:** God is, is the thing that doesn't give you bullshit. God is the thing that gives you the real... , like true success, right? And, and if, so that's the, that would be the measure of like, if something is bullshit, then it is a false idol.

But for you to change that kind of pattern that locks you in that. yoU know, unproductive pattern of existence. You have to find God, which is the thing, the set 

[00:30:26] **Trish:** He just, he used air quotes right there for, since we're on an audio podcast. I

[00:30:31] **Hirad:** Well, I mean, like it's, it's, it's, I, I can't say things about like an anthropomorphized being, but I can say things about certain patterns of behavior that yield better or worse results that are more like, to me, this is the most productive framing of God. Like it's, 

[00:30:46] **Trish:** trying to figure out whether you're actually being metaphysical or not about this.

[00:30:52] **Hirad:** What difference would it make if you act in according to, like, in accordance to certain , you can call it God. If you act according to the, to the commandments of God, or you can you can also say, if you act in accordance to the Tao of Tao Te Ching You will get certain results or, and you will be you will essentially as like to borrow a phrase from Jordan Peterson, you will be making worthy sacrifices for which you will receive just rewards.

But if you, if you worship false idols, you will get bullshit results, which is what we're, this paradigm that we're stuck in.

[00:31:30] **Trish:** Oh, boy. Where to begin here? I mean, I see what you're saying. Saying, but I think that you seem to be framing God as some sort of transactional thing where like you put in this input and you get this thing that you want out of it. And I don't

[00:31:48] **Hirad:** Yeah, it's not necessarily that, that it is, it is the thing that you want, but it is the thing that. Is, is worthy to be aligned. With, I would say,

[00:32:02] **Trish:** Okay.

[00:32:03] **Hirad:** I don't know how to put it better than that right now. This is also the first time I'm actually articulating what's to someone like this and in this language

[00:32:11] **Trish:** So I'm not, not sure how much I agree with you on that. But yeah, I, and I guess

[00:32:16] **Hirad:** reaction, I guess.

[00:32:18] **Trish:** My reaction is that, , it kind of sounds like you're still putting humans, like, it kind of sounds like you sort of want to be the god, right? Where you're like, I can control things around me by, , doing certain things and getting the result that I want, right?

[00:32:35] **Hirad:** no, no, no, no. I, in fact, I would say like getting the result that you want is actually the thing that you absolutely can't control. I think if, if like. Being obsessed with getting a certain result is actually very much the path to worshiping a false idol. That's actually exactly how you, you, that's actually the thing.

You take the action, you have to take the right action. This to me is like, this is what happens if you have a society of good people that act correctly, is you do the right thing without anticipating that the result comes and, you trust that the result will come. And, but, but it's not up to you.

[00:33:14] **Trish:** but isn't one thing that we sort of saw in the book that Graeber and Wengro would argue is that humans were experimenting all over the place with what was considered right or what was considered wrong. And sometimes right would be sacrificing, like mass executions to sacrifice for whatever festival they wanted.

Sometimes it was like ripping guys hearts out, like, wasn't like the Aztecs and like, it was all sorts of weird stuff. And so , I'm kind of like, how do you arrive at what is the right or the wrong thing in whatever context? In sort of what you're talking about, it was trusting that the right thing is going to take you somewhere.

How do you even know what that is? , isn't that what we're playing with? , sometimes some societies think infanticide. Is the right, , you know, it's all, some people think that like women are basically chattel, you know It's just like, it's all over the place. And so I don't really understand.

[00:34:07] **Hirad:** Yeah. I mean, I don't have a theological answer for you right now.

[00:34:13] **Trish:** so it just seems a little bit. , I mean, I definitely would, , say that I know, , what's right or wrong, but, , it's very biased, right and it comes from, , holy books but, , isn't that sort of what, , The Dawn of Everything was about? It's like, here you have people, , experimenting with all sorts of stuff and just, , completely dispensing with, , the linearity.

Of that , we're learning what's right, and we're , learning what's good, and we're learning how things have to be, it's kind of , taking us off this escalator that , you know, this proverbial escalator we think we're on.

[00:34:44] **Hirad:** I don't know. I don't think of it as a linear thing I think it's actually, it is a cycle. I think many societies have probably found ways of being, of, of not worshiping false idols and then fallen into worshiping false idols. I actually think it's probably an inevitable cycle.

That humans go through over and over again

[00:35:02] **Trish:** What are your false idols, though?

[00:35:05] **Hirad:** so I think it's not, it's not like a personal thing. I think it's actually the the things that we value, like the things we learn from bullshit jobs is , for example, we, we value money, we value status from a certain thing. We don't value caring labor.

, we value possessions. We don't value community in, in many ways. 

[00:35:30] **Trish:** I'd agree with that.

[00:35:32] **Hirad:** Yeah. And I think these are just, just some of them. And like the, and, and like the thing that kind of triggered. This whole tangent here was you saying it would be a risk. And I think I agree. I think many parents would be, would think in this way that if you put your, , kid in a school that teaches them actually how to be self sufficient, how to be a self starter, how to be self motivated.

How to take the initiative.

[00:35:57] **Trish:** yeah, how to diffuse conflicts, and be , diplomatic, and work through things, and,

[00:36:01] **Hirad:** like that is actually considered a risk in our society. Right. And that seems to me just, it's, it's, that is the, the, like the red, huge red flag of we are worshiping false idols because the things that we value are the exact opposite of things that are constructive , and lead to good things. Right.

And so to put it in metaphysical terms, We know those kinds of things yield good results, and yet, we are so, , our society kind of pushes us so much in the opposite direction so we are, we are , we're misaligned with the way, with the reality of things, which you could say is like the, you know, the creation, like creation is like, things work in a certain way, and you are actually opposing it Or pushing people away from you know, those practices or those patterns of behavior.

[00:36:52] **Trish:** Yeah. It's so interesting how different, , systems of, I want to say, like,, government, but a lot of times these were, , , small bands and stuff, so, , it's not really, , the right term, but, , there was, , definitely, like,, decisions and things, and sometimes it would be, , , the way that they would function was having to, , come to a consensus among, , large groups of people.

Like, how, when was the last time, like, I feel like I couldn't even get consensus with, , me and my husband on decisions? Like, you just kind of decide that one person's gonna, like, can you imagine living in a society like that? It's like, we're just gonna hash this out until there's a consensus? That's bananas.

[00:37:25] **Hirad:** Yeah. And that's why I think we should not think of these things as of societies that lack the messiness that we have today. I'm sure they had that, their reality, right?

[00:37:37] **Trish:** Or just simplistic, or silly, or outdated, or , you know, cutesy, or like, just as simplistic, I guess, is what I'm coming back for. That's One thing that I think, that I hope that is coming through on this podcast is how we need to stop seeing ourselves as better than other humans through history.

[00:38:00] **Hirad:** What else kind of stands out from, from the latter half of the book?

[00:38:06] **Trish:** I think the misappropriation of evolutionary thinking.

[00:38:10] **Hirad:** Okay.

[00:38:11] **Trish:** Which is, I mean, I feel like I'm just a one trick pony and I just bang on the same point all the time, but it just feels like the narrative we've been sold is that where we are now was sort of an inevitable conclusion, right?

And that I think is like the main thing that in the book that they're trying to totally break down is this teleological thing where we're seeing where we are and trying to project back and see like well of course it was all gonna build to this or culminate to this and it's just it's kind of the way that humans think of evolution too right we're just some weird little species that's only been around for what like 40, 000 years or something and 

[00:38:51] **Hirad:** hmm. More than that. Yeah.

[00:38:52] **Trish:** I thought that's when we, , out of Africa, right? When we started, , populating the world and, , those, , it's not, , we haven't been a lot, like, Homo sapiens have not been around for that long. What, like, 200, 000 years, maybe? This is, , a geological, , blip in the radar. Yet we definitely think we're the pinnacle of evolution because somehow we just assigned that all the characteristics that we have are definitely the most advanced and the most important and definitely the coolest and we're going to the moon and doing all this cool crap. I mean, that is cool, but like the point being is that if peacocks went extinct tomorrow, like the rest of the world would be , yeah, they were kind of weird. Don't really understand how that ended up popping out of the evolutionary matrix, but there you have it. And now they're gone.

And I kind of feel like humans are the same way, right? Like we might just be some weird thing that popped out in a blip in the radar. And , I. Just get so frustrated with, , the stories we tell about ourselves.

[00:39:50] **Hirad:** Yeah.

I think you keep banging on this drum because that's kind of like a huge running theme throughout the book and every chapter is just talking about something different. So some, some of the ways in which, like, I feel like this was covered in the last few chapters is This idea of , what we consider a state and then kind of projecting back into history.

So now we have this system that we might look at and we see, Oh, this is like a state here. It's got some kind of hierarchy. It's got this, this person at the head or this kind of Monopoly on violence in some ways. It's got this administration. It's got this competitions of charisma and.

Oh, let's just go backwards and see how alike this thing is the thing that we're looking at. So let's say we look at some kingdom from 500 years ago. Oh, it's kind of like on its way to being kind of like a state, or we go back to Egypt, to ancient Egypt, and one of the things they mention is there are all these periods that are in Egyptian history, they're called like the, what was the name of it, the interperiods, or the interim periods or something.

[00:40:50] **Trish:** It's sort of, they're viewed as like dark ages,

[00:40:52] **Hirad:** Yeah, they're viewed in this dark ages, but there are huge amounts of time where like Political structures were completely inverted from, from this system of having pharaohs from being male dominated from lots of different things that we might, we might associate. So like anything that's like, if it's not, it's not exactly looking like the thing we consider to be the final form.

It's just like, it's written off as this like anomaly that we don't really have to. Bother ourselves

[00:41:20] **Trish:** but it's not even that we don't even have to like bother ourselves with, but we're going to like label it with something that's like a little bit like negative, right? Like it was a dark age. Oh, things were bad. It's like the same thing, like before the enlightenment and everything is like, Oh, the medieval dark ages was like, is not really, I feel like accurate.

[00:41:40] **Hirad:** Yeah,

[00:41:40] **Trish:** But it fits the nice story that we like to tell about how we're so friggin awesome.

[00:41:45] **Hirad:** so there's actually an argument Out there that we are actually living in a dark age right now, which I think would might

[00:41:53] **Trish:** Didn't we argue about this before? I feel like we were at the pub and we had a big argument about this one

[00:41:58] **Hirad:** we might have

[00:42:00] **Trish:** But yeah, like there was another like good example of when, what was the city where they built all the social housing? It's like for a while they were building like big pyramids and big monumental things and then they just stopped and actually built, this was in Mesoamerica. What was the name of the city?

Do I have to look it up 

[00:42:15] **Hirad:** Teotihuacan

[00:42:16] **Trish:** Thank you. But yeah, you see these periods where they were just like built a lot of housing for everyone that like looked very, it all looked pretty similar. Like it seemed like people, like it was kind of, I mean, I, that's the other thing the book taught me is like, I kind of hate the word egalitarian now because like, I, I don't know what it means Hirad, but like everything in this book, I know what it doesn't mean,

[00:42:40] **Hirad:** Yeah. Well, I, yeah, that, that, that, even like the definition of egalitarian, they dismiss it pretty quickly early on in the

[00:42:46] **Trish:** but they never give me a definition that I can use. Oh, I guess.

Yeah. 

[00:42:50] **Hirad:** think, I think they don't know, I think this was actually like very clear in the, in the like latter half that they just don't know anything about, you know, we were going off of purely archaeological evidence here, some of which we can't even completely interpret, right?

[00:43:03] **Trish:** But anyways, back to, wait, the place? Say the name again?

[00:43:07] **Hirad:** Teotihuacan.

[00:43:08] **Trish:** Thank you. But that place, it's like, we would look at like when they stopped building like dumbass pyramids and like monuments and stuff as like some sort of like regression or something even though they probably Well, we're probably living, like, happier, nicer lives as a result.

I mean, I don't really know what was going on, like, but we just know that there seems to be, like, a lot of, like, comfortable houses with, like, well planned, like, areas for people, like, come together and, like, shared gardens and, I don't know, it seemed okay.

[00:43:36] **Hirad:** yeah, I'm so I'm actually living in Barcelona right now. And as I was reading the description of these housing units in Teotihuacan, it was kind of like I was imagining it like a like a thousand year old Barcelona because like here they have all these like, all these apartment blocks that are basically identical.

And they all have their own like predefined shops in them. And like a little inner courtyard. And as he was like describing those, I was like, Oh, that's kind of like some of their apartment units with like an inner courtyard that are all identical. It sounds kind of familiar. But

[00:44:07] **Trish:** all, was that because of Franco or, like, when were they all built?

[00:44:10] **Hirad:** no, they were actually, it's a, it's a amazing story. They were, I need to dig into it, but from what I understand, this pattern was started over like, well, like in the 19th century, it was well over a hundred years ago, and there was a point where Barcelona was just kind of overpopulated and it just, that.

The old city just couldn't handle things anymore. And it turned out there was this urban planner that had been studying how to build, a new Barcelona for like decades. He had been working on this and, and somehow his plan won. And I think it's such a... This city is so unique for that.

I don't even think another European city can can come close. It just has so many unique characteristics when you walk around and it just works really well on that, this whole like urban design is one example of like You know centrally planned design that is actually working well.

[00:45:04] **Trish:** But I mean, like, the point here is not that, like, you can't have, like, central planning because, like, obviously, like, you know, building anything sort of large scale requires planning, but, like, it's kind of like where, like, the buy in is cut, like, is it something that, like, people want to do and, like, feels like it's sort of, like, a ground up organization or is it, like, a top down, like, got a great idea, we're going to, like, bulldoze this whole, like, crappy neighborhood and make a boulevard, you know what I

[00:45:31] **Hirad:** Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I was just, just kidding with that.

[00:45:34] **Trish:** No, but I also like, so this is the thing, because like I go on and on about like how nice these places seem with the social housing and everything, but like, this is where it's like really challenging my own assumptions. This is going to sound really dumb, but I kind of feel like Canada is an embarrassment on the world stage because we don't have enough like cool monuments and stuff.

And our like prime minister's house is like basically condemned. And I always like think it's really annoying how Canadians are so cheap that they won't like build, I don't know, build cool things.

[00:46:04] **Hirad:** no, I, I agree. And, but, so one of the things that's actually interesting here is that any building, like I actually, where I live, it's probably the worst place that Barcelona has to offer. Like, it's probably the worst neighborhood. 

[00:46:16] **Trish:** I live in the worst neighborhood in Vancouver,

so this 

[00:46:20] **Hirad:** but, but like, this is nothing compared to like Vancouver's worst neighborhoods.

Cause like in Vancouver, well, Vancouver's not the worst neighborhood. I would say it's actually not exactly where you are. It's like a little bit further. Right. It's like East Hastings. But 

[00:46:32] **Trish:** five blocks away, all right?

[00:46:35] **Hirad:** Five blocks away. It's like, it's a huge, you wouldn't live

five 

[00:46:37] **Trish:** it is, yes, no, it's true, it's true, yeah 

[00:46:39] **Hirad:** but here it's not like that.

It's basically, it's just a little dirty. That's it. But you look at any random building here and it's gorgeous. And it's got this like intricate details. But anyway, now we're talking about like urban design in Barcelona, which is not relevant, but back to Teotihuacan. There was two stories in the book that were very interesting.

But one was Teotihuacan and one was Cahokia, which was another thing that kind of was a bit of a myth busting for me was these huge kind of cities having existed in North America before the arrival of Europeans. But Cahokia was I think on the Mississippi River near modern day St. Louis. And Teotihuacan I think is like modern day Mexico or Central America.

And what was interesting with both of these, again, we can only know from archeological evidence is that they were, they both experienced this massive reversal. In the case of Cahokia, we can tell that people were kind of developing what we would expect as hierarchy. There were temples being built.

It seemed like there was a lot of kind of religious. kInd of emphasis on religious activity and religious buildings.

[00:47:45] **Trish:** tell this from, like, to, like, the funerary stuff, like, you'd find, like, all sorts of people that seemed to be executed with, like, shells and, you know, like, they were buried in a certain way. So, like, there was definitely, like, large scale Religious stuff happening.

[00:47:59] **Hirad:** Yeah. And it was, and it seems like it's control was kind of expanding across a pretty wide geographic area. And there was kind of like a lot of satellite cities that were kind of following its lead but. In with both Cahokia and Teotihuacan, there is this kind of sudden reversal. In the case of Cahokia, it's just a sudden depopulation where people just kind of gave up and left.

We don't know, I don't recall exactly if there was like

[00:48:24] **Trish:** They don't know 

[00:48:25] **Hirad:** or bloodshed and yeah, we don't know why, but we do know that it just suddenly stops. In the case of Teotihuacan they didn't leave the city, but where they kind of like for the first 300 years of its existence they were doing what we would kind of come to expect from, you know, the typical kind of Central American civilization based on what we know from like the Aztecs, let's say.

They had these pyramids, there was a lot of human sacrifice, there was a lot of religious activity going on, kind of similar with Cahokia, but around kind of 330. Years into this project suddenly there was a reversal. Suddenly the, there are walls built around the pyramids to kind of block them from.

from kind of the view of the public spaces it seems they are then abandoned. And the only construction that we see after that is a lot of social housing. And this is a place that was well over a hundred thousand people living there. And. I'm sure some people might be homeless, but there was definitely a lot of social housing, or a lot of identical housing, no more construction of pyramids, and these are some of the ways in which we can tell.

[00:49:34] **Trish:** And with Cahokia, the interesting thing too is like, it didn't even just depopulate, but it seemed to be, like, it seemed to become almost like a place that Yeah, exactly. Like, it was kind of known as this, like, dead zone. It was like, whatever had happened there left such, like, a distinct mark on the people around there that they were less like, no, like, it's almost like, this is like you know, what's it called when they, like it's

[00:49:59] **Hirad:** Forbidden?

[00:50:00] **Trish:** Yeah, yeah, or just sort of like a place that's like haunted or like bad like whatever was there We're just like forgetting about it completely

[00:50:08] **Hirad:** Yeah.

[00:50:08] **Trish:** And we're not gonna go back and do that thing.

So it wasn't just sort of a like, oh, you know You know it fizzled out like it would seem to be like a decision

[00:50:19] **Hirad:** Yeah.

[00:50:20] **Trish:** And hold a lot of weight.

[00:50:21] **Hirad:** And I think they kind of draw on this. We don't know exactly, you know, what the oral histories were and, and how the cultures dissipated or how they ended up how those populations ended up kind of feeding into the other populations that are kind of like the later populations of, of North America.

But what we do know is that there are, there are kind of these mythologies or these like epic stories that are kind of shared amongst a wide range of cultures within kind of the Northeastern, tribes in in North America. And I thought it was very interesting because these, this myth kind of tells us a lot about their priorities, about what they value and, and what they stand against in their, in their culture.

So this is called the Epic of Gayanashagowa, I can't pronounce that one if I don't look at it. And it basically involves this story of, there's this monster that is kind of deformed, and it's, it has this special power of controlling people, where it's like other people do its evil bidding. And a hero arises that is called the peacemaker and slowly starts recruiting various tribes to start kind of collaborating together and make peace among amongst each other.

And eventually starts kind of bringing in all the people into this, Collective that all, I don't know, I guess, like, yeah, into this, like, coalition to restore social order. And the last one to join the coalition is, is the monster himself whose kind of deformities have been healed over time and can be kind of returned as a human being to society.

And what Graeber and Wengro highlight that's, that's interesting about this was that, In this epic that is shared by many tribes of the kind of like the northeastern woodlands this idea that somebody can control others and get them to do to do his bidding is like the ultimate evil. This idea of like a control of others is considered very, very bad.

Whereas for us, it's just... You know, that's, that's what, that's what Kings would do.

[00:52:32] **Trish:** Yeah, and it's so interesting when I was younger, I like would not have understood how to appreciate like this sort of mythology. It just all seemed like weird and simplistic. And so this is like, this has been really good for me, like reading this book and sort of like understanding how a lot of like, yeah, like the mythology like functioned in a, in a society.

[00:52:55] **Hirad:** And it's also that this is another kind of like a myth busting factor in the book where again, we've been taught these these lines around you know, the simple idyllic, primitive people. But the reality is that All of these societies around kind of North Central, south America that did not have any interaction with Europeans.

They, they were thinking very deeply about the kinds of political systems that they wanna have. So in this case, Iroquois were keenly aware of, like,

[00:53:26] **Trish:** Iroquois.

[00:53:27] **Hirad:** how do you say it,

[00:53:28] **Trish:** Iroquois.

[00:53:29] **Hirad:** Iroquois they were keenly aware of like what the possibilities were, and they had this very. And explicitly anti authoritarian system in place.

But one, one group that I thought was also interesting that we should talk about was the, let me see if I can say this one, the Tlaxcala who were a tribe in near where the Aztecs were, and they were actually critical in helping Hernan Cortes, who was kind of the, the first. Spanish explorer he defeated the Aztecs with help, with help from Tlaxcala.

And we actually have written records of like oral histories written from, written about 500 years ago that talk about the fact that Tlaxcala was basically kind of, sort of a republic. There was no king. That Cortez could, could negotiate with. So everything had to go to their like council and the council had to debate it.

And then they would have to make a collective decision of whether to help Cortez or fight with Cortez or ignore Cortez. There's like all the things that they debated. And there was this one quote, from Xicotencatl, the elder from these deliberations that says, why would we who live without servitude and never acknowledge the king spill our blood only to make ourselves into slaves?

so This was when they were deliberating whether they should help this Spaniard or not. Which also kind of tells you that they had a read on who they were dealing with because they, they knew what was kind of around the corner if they, if they helped him. And yet, apparently, they decided to go ahead with it anyway.

[00:55:08] **Trish:** Yeah. I know, it was, it's, ugh, like this book is just really, it's full of so many interesting things. It's not a story, but it's good. So I have a question for you, because... If you'll remember a few episodes back, I feel like we vehemently defended liberalism and we may, maybe I just, I probably said this, but I think you agreed with it, saying that it was the best idea that humanity has ever come up with

[00:55:41] **Hirad:** Okay.

[00:55:42] **Trish:** like We're like, this is the answer.

And does this, like, in light of this book, trying to like, approach ideas with a new open mind and air of humility. Does it make you feel like you, like, how do you feel about,

[00:56:04] **Hirad:** Liberalism?

[00:56:05] **Trish:** or no, just like taking such a firm sort of stance on like how, because we definitely were like, I think that I'm okay. I can go back and let's do it. I'm pretty sure we're, we said that this was like the best idea humans have ever come up with. Literalism. Liberalism. And if you would still defend that as vehemently, or if you're like softening on that, or.

[00:56:26] **Hirad:** As in that, that it is the best idea, that it's definitely, like, the

[00:56:30] **Trish:** Or just, like, being such a staunch, like, you know, like, I don't know. I feel like this has, like, kind of pulled the rug out of, like, my own, like, I don't even know what to think about anything anymore. So maybe I'm actually having my own little sort of, like, philosophical existential crisis and I'm projecting that on you.

But I'm just wondering if you go back on, like, some of the stuff that we've, like, Oh, we've got this figured out. We like this idea. This is definitely the way we're gonna, like, be evangelists of this idea. Yeah.

[00:57:00] **Hirad:** I feel like the North Star that I think doesn't change, and I, and I, famous last words, but I feel like it would be hard to have change. You know, maybe, maybe if Graeber was still alive, he could write another book that that would make me change my mind on this. But, The North Star is that like, this is what liberalism means to me is this idea of taking for granted human fallibility and the fact that any individual has limited knowledge and that it has to be anything that we do needs this kind of decentralization so that many people can kind of butt heads and, and come with something that's better than what any one person can come up with.

Right.

I don't think that's been. challenged here. And if anything, I think my enthusiasm about us kind of trying more political experiments is exactly in line with that liberalism. Ironically, I feel like we don't need a lot of things that we, we consider essentials to liberalism. I don't think we need democracy and I don't think we need, 

a lot of these, like, things that we take for granted as, like, fundamental

[00:58:05] **Trish:** we put, it's like we put a lot of things in the liberalism basket that don't necessarily need to be there,

[00:58:10] **Hirad:** Yeah, yeah. I do think, kind of, Graeber, with those, like, three fundamental rights he kind of, like, hit the nail on the head. I think if you have those I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot over the last year. I've seen You know, the whole Iranian revolution thing has been happening and, and there's a lot of debates.

There's, there's a few groups are kind of like within the Iranian opposition are kind of constantly at each other's throats. So there are people that basically want to implement like European or American style democracy. And, and there are people that essentially want to restore The monarchy that was there before 1979.

And these people are constantly going at each other for, for, you know, if you join the Iranian social media, it's just a shit show. But, these debates are so stupid because there are, like, I think what's like the North star that we should all be aiming for is kind of, I, I kind of phrase it as like human flourishing, right?

And I can imagine places that are authoritarian and support human flourishing and places that are democratic and don't. So I feel, I find this attachment to one particular form of government to be stupid. Like I, I would rather live in Singapore than many democratic Nations and Singapore was like kind of concocted by this one guy who ended up running it as prime minister, quote unquote for like 40 years.

And now his son is the prime minister, I think, or, or, you know, they just didn't call themselves Kings. They kind of have this different institutions. They had different ways of doing things. I think if you listen to like Lee Kuan Yew, I would actually love to cover one of his books on the podcast at some point.

It's like a remarkable story, right? They kind of, they created this incredible country out of like a piece of dirt in the middle of the Pacific that nobody wanted. And yeah, I think that's just good. That's like people there are better off today than they were 40, 50 years ago. It's no doubt about that.

[01:00:06] **Trish:** So a lot of things, yeah. That I guess, that people , would sort of like latch onto liberalism. You would use it in a more, in a much more narrow sense. But that excludes a lot of things that maybe people would usually think. Go. That's part of a package deal.

[01:00:22] **Hirad:** Yeah, I don't think it's a package deal. Like if you think, think of Singapore, I think they have good diplomatic relations with most people at most places. I would imagine Singaporeans would have a, not a very hard time. moving somewhere else if they wanted to. They're generally well, well educated. They are pretty wealthy overall.

So they have the means to vote with their feet and leave if they wanted to. And I think as long as you have that. Then have at it if you want to, you could be North Korea for all I care, except North Korea is actually a, a national prison. That

is what it 

[01:00:58] **Trish:** yeah, you can't get out.

[01:01:00] **Hirad:** Yeah. They have guards to keep people in at the, at the borders. Usually, usually borders are for keeping people out here. This is for keeping people in. So it's, it's North Korea is the exact opposite. But if, if. North Korea wanted to, like, open its borders, let anyone who wants to leave, leave, and also that was a real possibility in that they weren't destroying any kind of diplomatic relations to such an extent that no other country wanted to let the North Korean in, which is kind of what's happening in Iran.

If you're Iranian, it's very difficult to leave in, in a lot of ways. Otherwise, I'm sure more people would.

[01:01:31] **Trish:** Is it difficult to leave, or is it difficult to get in somewhere else? Because I feel like it's like a two fold question. Like, North Korea, it's difficult to leave, but like, I feel like anywhere will take you, right? Like, if you can get to America, like, from North Korea, then like, you can stay.

[01:01:48] **Hirad:** So there's that, like, yeah, I mean, that's, that's like a whole thing about like, whether you like being a refugee and whatnot, but I think it's both. So, and one thing is like, if you're, again, we come back to these like rights that you can actually practice, right. If we accept that the right to leave.

is a fundamental right, then you should be able to afford it. That's the first thing. So a country that, that, that, that is actually such a big thing. That basically means that any government that wants to provide this fundamental right must provide good management of the economy, because if you don't provide.

Good management of the economy. It means everyone's going to be so pissed poor that they actually can't leave. That is entrapment. That's like, that's, that's trapping you in that paradigm. Right. But also like the Iranian government is, is like you know, probably the biggest state sponsor of terror, which means everyone's going to have their doors locked to to Iranians that want to go abroad, unless you jump through many, many hoops that are, again, more, even get even more expensive.

So in those ways, and then also the. If the government doesn't like you, it also keeps you in. That's a, that's like a punishment that they give out. It's, it used to be that like in, in the medieval times, the one punishment that could be handed off to criminals, like banishment. In Iran, if the government doesn't like you, they, they punish you by forcing you to stay.

[01:03:09] **Trish:** I feel like I just want to kind of keep going on this tangent. I read a book like a few years ago, it was called Open Borders. It's like a Brian Kaplan, you know, that guy from yeah, anyway, I, I really liked Brian Kaplan. And I really liked his books, but he had one and he was sort of, yeah, making the proponent for like the U.

S. to just have open borders. Anybody wants to come like welcome. Almost like open the floodgates or whatever. And so like, and part of me feels like there might be like a little bit of a logical consistency because I totally agree with you with the like, the importance of the freedom of movement. And like, I'm not sure I totally agree with Kaplan but it was a very compelling argument and something that I sort of feel like maybe, and I mean like, this is an interesting discussion here in Canada because I feel like we have had really high immigration for years and it has had some repercussions with like housing and whatever and so that's kind of like part of our like national debate right now is like what sort of immigration levels like we want to keep this up.

I don't know, I just was wondering if you had any thoughts on like open borders.

[01:04:15] **Hirad:** I would be, I would love to, maybe we should cover that on, on, on the podcast.

[01:04:20] **Trish:** my goodness, you would love it. It's literally a graphic novel. I'm not even joking.

[01:04:24] **Hirad:** should, so it should only take us six months to read.

[01:04:27] **Trish:** I know, exactly.

[01:04:29] **Hirad:** So I've actually, so I, I think some listeners may not know I'm just letting all the crazy out here last winter. I I lived in kind of in a cabin in the woods in central British Columbia.

In the middle of the winter and it was amazing and I remember one of the things that I was thinking about is like, you know, speaking of kind of false idols and, and kind of the rat race and all that you know, we have like a lot of land and it's just there and there's nobody else there. Like, it's just, you can, you can go somewhere and there's a lot of land.

You can just be there, right? And, and you put things in that land and things come out of it and it's food. You can eat it, right? And you can have animals on there. And I was just thinking like, this is really, and it's free. It's all free. It's all there. You don't have to, you don't have to do any, you don't have to talk to anyone.

Yeah. It's just, it's empty. And well, but this is the thing, like we, we do have to talk to someone in practice, but I was thinking like, this is,

[01:05:32] **Trish:** the crown land, it's not just freedom. Like we're, like we, I,

[01:05:34] **Hirad:** well, that's it, this idea of it's a crown land is. It's so bullshit. It's such

[01:05:40] **Trish:** I knew that was gonna trigger you. I, like, baited you and you just...

[01:05:45] **Hirad:** no, it's, you know, this is again, another thing that's like you, you'll be shocked to hear this language from me. I was literally, I remember it was like looking at it and it's like these thoughts going through my head. I was thinking, this is just God's creation. They can't control this.

[01:05:56] **Trish:** Oh my goodness.

[01:05:59] **Hirad:** And so like, I don't, I'm, I'm, I'm, and one of the themes that this book kind of talked about was this, the fact that our sense of ownership. Comes from Roman law, which basically and it kind of extended to their sense of slavery, right? So we own things as in I can do whatever I want to do with this It's

mine Including destroy it.

It's mine to abuse basically, right? Whereas like a lot of other places, they don't have this sense of ownership. Ownership is more stewardship, is more caretaking, right? And the thing that's been going through my head actually since this recent conference is, and I would love to research this more in the future.

I don't have any answers to it right now, but what would it look like if we actually. Didn't own things if we were more in this kind of like caretaker capacity. I mean, I, I kind of, on the one hand, I feel like any kind of political body needs to be able to draw a border around itself and be able to include or exclude.

Cause otherwise there's, it's just no way that. It can be a coherent body, but then how can we minimize that? Like, like how can we take a minimalist approach to a polity more or

[01:07:08] **Trish:** Maybe there's a border, but there is a certain amount of porosity.

[01:07:12] **Hirad:** Certain amount of porosity or the borders are extremely limited and there's like gaps in between that you can I mean, like if we, we get strict, very limited, like right now we just have the, we've carved out the entire planet in nation states and there, every chunk of it is actually someone has a claim to it.

And I think it would be interesting to just pull the rug out from under the legitimacy of this idea.

[01:07:35] **Trish:** It's true, and I guess this is one of the things that I think that like, Wengro and Graber are really like, really like, beating their drum about, is that just because you can't like, imagine how it works, doesn't, that like, that's not a good reason to dismiss it as. It's like thinking about ideas or like playing with ideas or maybe like trying things on salsa.

Like they really, really do like challenge you to be creative. And I feel like that is because like, I mean, like I've, I like ideas. I like harebrained ideas. I love thought experiments. So like for years I went to this like libertarian reading group where we just like, and a bunch of the people were like, and caps and stuff.

And, I thought it was really fun imagining society worked a different way, but, like, if you talk to, like, normal people, they're always just, like, they get so bogged down in the details of, like, how that would actually work, or, like, what you need, and it just, like, yeah, so I sort of felt like I just loved, sort of, How they were saying that like humans have always been creative and they've lived all these different ways and like you're the problem because you are stuck thinking that this is like it's the best so it's not perfect but it's the best we should take it or we shouldn't or you're just like yeah have no imagination

[01:08:59] **Hirad:** Yeah. And I think especially after this conference, I, I'm convinced that the answer to those people is not to convince them or argue with them is to just build the alternative with enough crazy people and, and show that. It is possible actually, and I actually really do want to work on this.

I want to it'd be, I was very inspired to see that people are trying to put together these various experiments. You know, there are people that are focused on all kinds of crazy things, like building new cities. And you know, they, for city building, sometimes

[01:09:35] **Trish:** the line

[01:09:36] **Hirad:** thE line is one.

Yeah. 

[01:09:37] **Trish:** Sorry you meant that a lot more serious than I like was

[01:09:42] **Hirad:** I mean, no, there is, as far as I know, it's, it is actually getting built. I mean, that's the king of, or the,

[01:09:47] **Trish:** I know, but it's, okay, so this is again, well, I'm like, this has to go show how ingrained things are because I was like, this thing is like, literally insane.

[01:09:56] **Hirad:** Oh, maybe, yeah, we'll see. We'll find out. I mean, the guy has the money is going to spend it and build it. And we'll see if if it works or not. And maybe he has, he also has the power. Maybe I'll just force people to be in it. I don't know if they have the right to exit or not, but we'll, we'll find out.

[01:10:11] **Trish:** Yeah.

[01:10:12] **Hirad:** But yeah, so there are people running these experiments where they, they buy a. large amount of land. And then they, they might want to have some experiment where, you know, they want to build a city in the U. S. that is not car centric, right? So, and that one's like, not a crazy experiment. There's a lot now, European cities are often not car centric and they just want to kind of bring that concept there.

But, but that's like a big thing. Like it's a, it's a city building project where they, they get architects to like design the entire city, like where housing is going to be, where the essential amenities are going to be, how the infrastructure is going to work. And so they're doing it on that level.

Some people are doing it at the level of kind of building new communities that can that can have membership. So sometimes you have like a little bit of land or like an apartment or something in, in multiple places. And if you have a membership to this community, kind of like a passport, you can basically go and enjoy the amenities at, at each of this, at each of these locations,

[01:11:12] **Trish:** a club med?

[01:11:14] **Hirad:** kind of, yeah. But it's just like, I guess, like the marketing is appealing to like a particular type of people in this case. But one of the things that I think in this conference I did not see is again, the culture. And I feel like, and it's the culture and the philosophical, and dare I say, the religious grounding of, of An alternative paradigm of social organization.

And I actually feel like, you know, the, the founding fathers kind of were drawing on a lot of philosophers that came long before them, right? And, you know, this we take for granted the right to free speech is something who's like. The case for it was made by John Stuart Mill and, and others long before the founding of the United States.

And, and by the time that opportunity came up, well, that all this body of work was there to build the case for that. And I feel like we're probably around there, around like that. We're, that's where the, the point where we're at. We, we may not actually get to build the alternative, but we can. Work on laying the groundwork for escaping this, this paradigm that we're in.

[01:12:21] **Trish:** Mm hmm.

[01:12:23] **Hirad:** There you go. I just let all the crazy out on

[01:12:25] **Trish:** Good.

[01:12:26] **Hirad:** in this episode.

[01:12:27] **Trish:** It's great. I don't know if we should wrap it up. is there anything else you want to, like, talk about sort of in earnest or? 

[01:12:35] **Hirad:** I kind of just wanted to talk about the fact that I was, I was surprised to learn that there are actually a lot of experiments going on right now. Which I say we should be hearing about these things. These are huge. You know, there is like a there's an anarchist community that is controlling significant chunks of Northern Syria today.

[01:12:56] **Trish:** See, the problem with anarchy, okay, no, I didn't know that to answer your question, but and this is always , you know, in our reading group, when we talk about potentially, like, living in anarchy. Unfortunately, all the places where anarchy exists are like bad places to live right now.

Like, no one wants to live in Syria, no one wants to live in Somalia, like we have to come up with like a better example than places that have just descended to complete chaos.

[01:13:19] **Hirad:** Well, but, but again, but actually in this case, it's actually the one part of Syria that's not complete, complete chaos. So this, Yeah.

[01:13:27] **Trish:** Would you actually want to live there though? Like maybe it's doing better, but does that mean it's like a two instead of one on a like scale? Scale of a hundred of like places you want to

[01:13:36] **Hirad:** yeah, but, but like they're doing it. That's the part that matters. Like they, they, but what's interesting is they're doing it in a country that is ruled by an authoritarian president who apparently can't actually dislodge these guys. And they're, and so in this particular case, the reason why it came about was actually during ISIS, cause ISIS kind of exploded in that area.

And,

[01:14:00] **Trish:** Oh boy.

[01:14:01] **Hirad:** and 

these groups were like the groups that are kind of like the anarchists there today, actually put together the most effective fight against ISIS more effectively than the, than the actual net, the national army. And, and in this particular case, This is not a generalizable case. They actually had support from the U S because they were fighting ISIS.

And that kind of like helped them kind of probably get more entrenched. But, but also in roughly the same area that used to be Tlaxcala the former Republic that helped Hernan Cortes. defeat the Aztec Empire. There are these guys called the Zapatistas, I believe. And throughout the entire history of Mexico since the Spanish conquest, this area these people have constantly been kind of throwing off the yoke in various ways for, for centuries. And there is actually I believe an anarchist community that kind of came about in the 90s and still there in Mexico. And in where I am right now in Barcelona.

During the Spanish Civil War, the entire city was basically under anarchist rules and the, the vestiges of that are still around. There is a very viable kind of anarchist party, more viable than what we would, we would expect from like a similar party that might exist in Canada. Because they have, they have this history of anarchism.

I'm seeing like anarchist bookshops and and all kinds of things everywhere. And what's interesting is in Barcelona, there are entire areas that are occupied by anarchists. So they kind of go take over buildings that are not theirs and they can't be dislodged for some reason. So homework for yours truly is is that I am going to be going around and trying to talk to these guys um as much as I can

be just kind of get the lay of the land and figure out what they're up to.

[01:15:53] **Trish:** Listeners, just for the record, I think that I am not quite as, infatuated with the idea of, like, squatting and taking over other people's property as Hirad is. I mean, it's interesting.

[01:16:07] **Hirad:** I'm, I'm curious, I'm, I'm curious

[01:16:09] **Trish:** I don't know. I, I guess that's, yeah, I think that I, and I'm curious for you to report back on what they say.

I just feel like, you know, like everyone, I feel like likes to draw the line of like, you know, cause like the thing these days is this is like complaining about rich people, right. And who has too much and billionaires, but like everyone likes to like draw the line, like right above them. Where I feel like there's still, like, a lot of the population that would, like, probably draw the line, like, below you and I.

[01:16:41] **Hirad:** Yeah, yeah, 

[01:16:41] **Trish:** so, you know, sometimes it just feels a little bit arbitrary as to who, like, is the quote unquote rich. I don't think I'm rich, but, like, I mean, compared to, like, the downtown east side.

[01:16:52] **Hirad:** yeah.

[01:16:54] **Trish:** very wealthy, I guess.

[01:16:57] **Hirad:** But but I don't understand the connection. So what's, what is that?

[01:17:00] **Trish:** Cause it's like squatting and taking it like, it's like reappropriating other people's property, right? Who you like, cause you like perceive that they have too many resources, right? Like this person has been able to accumulate too much. And so, you know, like most people really like a billionaire is those jerks, right?

Like they definitely have too much, but I'm just saying is that like, I get like, it just feels like we're drawing an arbitrary line somewhere. And I feel like you could make a case to like draw it. Below me, but I like my stuff.

[01:17:28] **Hirad:** Yeah. No, I see what you're saying. Yeah. I guess like this is like a side effect of this book is that I'm, I'm so detached from any kind of strong political, like talk to me three years ago. And I would have told you these guys are just nut jobs and the government should just go in with the strongest military might and deal with them.

I don't think that anymore necessarily, maybe I do, I don't, maybe I don't, but it's like a time for re evaluation so, so yeah, I definitely want to kind of understand how they think. Mind you, one of the things that's also you know, exists a lot in Barcelona is that there's a lot of graffiti saying tourists go home.

So I'm not sure how well, how well I'll be received.

[01:18:10] **Trish:** I mean, you're not really a tourist

anymore, right? You got a 

[01:18:14] **Hirad:** But I'm, I'm a, I'm a digital nomad. So they'll, they'll actually see me as a huge part of the gentrification problem leading to locals not being able to afford housing. So yeah, we'll find out.

[01:18:23] **Trish:** Yeah.

YEah, I guess that the story that I'm trying to. Take from this is it's kind of funny because it's like the dawn of everything a new history of humanity and just like on a very personal level I think that the biggest thing besides feeling like I'm now basically took a university course in anthropology is just having like a little bit of like humility about where sort of we are and trying to like, be like, have a little bit more self reflection about the things that we put in our society.

And I think that sounds very trite, but it's like, yeah, I don't know, to me the story is sort of about being humble and like remaining curious. and sort of like having like all these like ridiculous thought experiments that people make fun of me the why you'd want to sit around on a Saturday afternoon at a book club talking about how life could be it was like oh maybe that wasn't such a giant waste of time like maybe we should all like i hate being prescriptive about it but

[01:19:26] **Hirad:** Well, maybe maybe we're not at the end of history as many factors are are proving right now.

[01:19:35] **Trish:** so on our beer scale one being a drain pour i wouldn't drink it Two being, I'll drink it if it's free. Three being, I liked it. Four, it gets a prominent place on my bookshelf.

[01:19:49] **Hirad:** Why, why does the beer get a prominent place on the bookshelf?

[01:19:52] **Trish:** I, I switched, I accidentally switched halfway back to books instead of

beer. 

[01:19:57] **Hirad:** What was the four for the beer?

[01:20:00] **Trish:** It's the favorite. Three is like, I like it, I would buy it. Four is like, oh, this is like one of my favorites.

[01:20:06] **Hirad:** okay.

[01:20:07] **Trish:** So for the book, I would be like, One, I would actively dissuade people from buying it. Two, I'll download it from LibGen. I'll steal it. 3. I'll read it and recommend it. And 4. It gets a prom a physical copy gets a prominent place on my bookshelf.

[01:20:25] **Hirad:** I think this was definitely four for me.

[01:20:27] **Trish:** Ooh. Me too.

[01:20:31] **Hirad:** I mean, if something of that size, that's just perfect for a prominent place on the bookshelf.

[01:20:37] **Trish:** I'll look so smart.

[01:20:40] **Hirad:** Particularly when you can actually say I read it.

[01:20:43] **Trish:** I know, and it's kind of funny for me to like something so much that I feel like was so in like I said, like, I feel like this book taught me like a thousand things to show me that I don't know anything.

[01:20:57] **Hirad:** Yeah,

[01:20:58] **Trish:** And like, don't you feel like this is the story of life? I feel like, you know, you peak when you're 18 and you're like, I've got it all figured out.

And the whole rest of life is just learning and everything you learn just shows you more of the stuff that you don't know. So I feel like as I go through life, like instead of like accumulating knowledge, I'm just like an accumulating and appreciation. For like all the stuff I don't know. Do you ever feel like that?

You read like one book and the things that you read is just, I don't know. Now I'm just going on and on.

[01:21:26] **Hirad:** Yeah,

[01:21:27] **Trish:** That's how this book makes me feel. All right. So what's next?

[01:21:30] **Hirad:** I don't know. We haven't, we haven't made a final decision, have we? Probably something shorter. Actually I think Graber also has a short tract on anarchy. And that would be interesting.

[01:21:43] **Trish:** I mean, if you want to get back, that would be interesting and I would definitely be down for that. And if you want to get really in the weeds, he has one more book you haven't read.

[01:21:50] **Hirad:** That, I'm not reading that. Not within the

[01:21:51] **Trish:** Ah, come on! See, I can say that because I've already read it, and it is, again, like, a really meaty, really dense, really, really

[01:21:59] **Hirad:** no, I just need, I need a break here. My brain, also these people that say like they read a book a week, you know, fuck those people. Do they not do anything else? Also, I feel like they lie most of the time. They just like skim it and they don't

[01:22:14] **Trish:** mean,

[01:22:15] **Hirad:** grapple with it.

[01:22:16] **Trish:** it also just depends on what sort of, like, there's a lot of books that are easy to read, right? So, I mean, don't hate, just because you have to take your dog on a walk for four hours a day doesn't mean... 

[01:22:28] **Hirad:** Yeah, not sure. I think the, I'm, I'm right now very inspired by this book and by the prospect of, like I said, kind of laying the foundation for. Or, or trying to like envision what else might be possible and how we might do it. And then trying to do it I think, I think we can, we can do things at a very small scale.

And then just see, I actually think like that's probably the most important work we can be doing is like organizing people and you can, it can be as simple as getting people in a room somewhere on a weekly basis. With some, with some,

[01:23:06] **Trish:** I'm like, you mean like, church? I'm just joking. Haha! Haha!

[01:23:10] **Hirad:** yeah, yeah I've actually been meaning to try church for a long time. I never got around to it, but and I don't think there was any point of me going here because I'll just want to understand a word that's of what's happening. Maybe my Spanish is better, but like a church, but for political radicals

[01:23:26] **Trish:** Right. And I mean, okay, like I, I mean, you're definitely are like a little bit more prone to the radical. I feel like I'm even just more open to things that I think I was typically like a little bit dismissive before, like co ops, like, yeah, like just kind of like really like easy. It's like we don't have to necessarily like, Yeah.

Dismantle the entire political, like, monetary system, which I mean, like, it's fun to, like, think about, but like, yeah, like, just, like, kind of say, like, federalism and, like, trying, like, tweaking things on the ground and just sort of being involved in more, like sort of grassroots, easy things in your community.

Mm

[01:24:03] **Hirad:** Yeah. And I think if, if you're unhappy with government, which I mean, I am, I think at basically every possible level and way that you can be I feel like the most important thing that you can do for a long time, and I, I heard, I saw this reflected in the conference as well, where, you know, people are talking about, you know, everybody at this conference that I was attending was.

Kind of fed up with things for one reason or another. And there, it's all a conference of people that are interested in building parallel societies so that they can escape the, the current system that we're living in. But there was one thing that I, I think I raised and. Some people just didn't have an answer to, but some people kind of had had also realized that this is kind of a blocker and, and, but they still didn't have an answer to which was kind of this monopoly on violence.

Because if you do a really good job of building a parallel society and like to the point where it is an actual threat to the existing paradigm someone's going to be knocking on your door and we have many examples of this. So there was there is one guy within the crypto ecosystem where he kind of built this tool because within within crypto, everything is very public and every transaction, you can kind of trace it where it came from and who went to.

buT there is this tool called tornado cash, which essentially kind of scrambles things and makes it impossible to trace. And and the guy who wrote the code for this was literally arrested by authorities in the Netherlands. And I don't know exactly the details of his case right now, but, but they got him for now.

So at some point, if you do something that is. noticeable, someone's going to knock on your door. And I think what I'm most obsessed with right now is like, how do we build this? How do we build a viral kind of moral framework such that the people who are supposed to knock on the door just don't show up to work that day?

Or or if they do show up to work, they don't know if the guy next to them is going to be there five minutes from now or not which is actually a kind of problem that I think people in Iran have been grappling with for quite some time, because. You know, so far in Iran, you know, this conflict clashes keep happening between people who want to overthrow the system and the people who are showing up to protect the system, right?

So I, at some point I was thinking that like having your own you know, military force is the answer, but I think there is like more of a, the actual route to access is is

[01:26:29] **Trish:** my.

[01:26:29] **Hirad:** mind, is in ideas.

[01:26:34] **Trish:** I don't want to have to have my own flippin military.

[01:26:39] **Hirad:** I

[01:26:39] **Trish:** I don't even want to have a gun cause I'll probably get mad and shoot my husband, like.

[01:26:46] **Hirad:** All things we can we can edit out in post.

[01:26:51] **Trish:** I'm just saying, you're not married, you don't understand.

These 

[01:26:56] **Hirad:** I, I, when, when you started that sentence, I thought it was going to be, it was going to end it like I'm going to shoot myself in the foot or something, but no, it was like the target was already clear.

[01:27:07] **Trish:** this is why we don't keep weapons and I'm sure he is definitely wanted to shoot me too. Like marriages. I love my husband. It's great. But like, anyways, guns are very dangerous. But yeah, oh my goodness. Yeah. You're keep. How do I like? Keep us anchored out of Crazy Town, where like, I need to like, build my own like, security compound.

[01:27:32] **Hirad:** What do you mean like keep us and in the podcast anchored or like what?

[01:27:36] **Trish:** Yes, I kind of want to keep you tethered to at least somewhere where like, the average person, like, what we're talking about does not seem completely bananas.

[01:27:49] **Hirad:** I don't know. I feel, I feel like we, we go bananas and then the people who like bananas they, they listen to FreshLens.

[01:27:56] **Trish:** Okay, maybe we just decide that we're going to be on the fringe. And maybe people will listen because they just like, let's see what these two lunatics are talking about. I do have people like that, that I 

[01:28:05] **Hirad:** Yeah, but if we keep, if we keep this up though you'll definitely be on some list with me. I think I'm, I'm probably on one already. I don't know.

[01:28:13] **Trish:** listen to. Yeah, I don't doubt it. But yeah, so, alright, two four stars, I'll contact Signal Publishing so they can put the little emblem on their cover for

marketing, yeah, exactly and we should, we should see what Wengro's up to and if he's really bored some afternoon, wants to talk to a couple of, one normal person and a radical,

[01:28:38] **Hirad:** Exactly. Cool. Well, we'll talk to you later and thanks for joining us listeners.

[01:28:45] **Trish:** yeah, talk to you next time.